Monday marked the release of Snap Inc.’s much-hyped
Spectacles to the masses. Far from a traditional distribution channel, this was
carried out through Snapbots: glorified vending machines that spit out up to
two pairs at a time for hungry trendsetters wishing to jump on the bandwagon.
Snap Inc. have taken advantage of three
major principles of behavioural economics (BE) in order to ride the hype
train all the way to the station.
With so many markets flooded by shit products, people in
advertising have had to come up with interesting new ways of creating demand.
The strategy here is clever. By restricting distribution of their glasses to
just a few locations with a single vending machine at each, Snap Inc. are using scarcity
to position themselves as more sought after than is actually the case.
Consumers will ascribe more value to
the product in question simply because they expended more effort (be it time or
mental resources) to get their hands on it.
The scenes that followed in New York and at various
locations on the East Coast resembled the film Idiocracy even more than the drama surrounding each new iPhone release.
A recent article on AdWeek describes one woman’s
“journey” of waiting in line for hours simply to purchase a pair of glasses
that only records video for Snapchat
for around $140. All the while, people screamed into their phones at the banks
denying their cards because $140 is not a normal amount to swipe on a single vending machine in a huge empty room of rotating screens.
Evidently, though, the strategy has worked. Punters on the
day mingled about with their purchases, targeting frustrated line-goers who
would rather shell out an extra hundred or two than spend three hours in a
queue to potentially have ones card declined. Are the glasses really that
valuable? Probably not. But, by taking a leaf out of Apple’s book via the huge
queues that each new iPhone release generates, Snap Inc. have created a huge
amount of demand for something that, really, isn’t particularly revolutionary.
Another principle of BE that Snap Inc. are looking to
leverage is co-creation. Big-name
brands, and only them, are often right in assuming that consumers will
do the legwork of marketing for them. In Snap Inc.’s case this is quite
literal. Not only are the glasses’ bright and distinctive appearance a
real-time walking talking advertisement (particularly the standout circular
cameras adorning the frames), but the footage they produce can only be viewed
on the brand’s platform.
And because Snap Inc. are marketing and distributing the
Spectacles so effectively, no one seems to care that Google stuffed five times
the amount of tech into their spectacular fail Google Glass. This leads to the
final BE principle that Snap Inc. are focusing on: simplicity.
Take the old adage about the generation of creative ideas.
When we’re allowed free reign on ideas, we become burned out from considering
all the options. Placing restrictions on the ideas we are allowed to generate,
however, forces us to be more creative by proxy. Snap Spectacles only do one
thing, but they do that one thing incredibly well, and I’ll safely bet on
seeing some pretty creative applications of this tech in the coming weeks.
Scarcity, co-creation, and simplicity. Universal principles
that can be used to create demand and make any good or service look more
appealing.
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