3 articles tagged ‘Crafting’
- 37signals: Theatre has a remarkable 37 seats
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The heart of the new office space is a nice surprise. People will notice and remark on the number of seats and the story spreads.
I recently posted on the mystery 37signals created around their new offices. Well, blog posts revealing the floor plan, construction details and a video showing construction progress have solved the mystery.
A pleasant surprise to many 37signals blog readers was what lay at the heart of the new office space: a classroom-like theater!
- Storytelling: Impossible when someone shouts “Fire!”
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There’s no time to think when you’re surrounded by fire. You need to put it out for good by starving it of fuel: customers who don’t fit.
Fire-fighting often becomes a core competency at software companies. The usual cause? Our dread of no revenue forces us to accept customers who are not consistent with our worldview. Unique customers cause trouble.
You’re doing the best you can to deliver great software. You pull all nighters and work weekends to satisfy each hard-won customer. Been there. Done that. But, while it’s great to play the hero fire-fighter occasionally, in the end something’s got to give.
Seth Godin nails it in the 2nd edition’s preface to All Marketers Are Liars Tell Stories:
There are small businesses that are so focused on what they do that they forget to take the time to describe the story of why they do it.
- Dust off your developers: We want to peek backstage
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Audiences want to go backstage, meet developers and see how they work. But watch out: if you don’t live your story you’ll get caught.
Packaging and labelling carry much of the load for physical goods storytelling. You have it easier: your marketers and software developers can work together and weave your stories right into your software.
Who those developers are, where and how they work is part of your story. Your audience wants to peek backstage, just like developers love to watch insider videos of Google’s fancy offices.
Going backstage used to be expensive. Developers visited customers on-site, or prospects visited the labs. Both were one-offs and not reusable.
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