Video: Powerful Storytelling

As a follow-up to my Nov. 17 post, I noticed that San Diego-based Slacker has posted additional Portable Player product photographs (a handful of new UI screen shots) to its website. But it still needs more to tell a great story. To their credit, the Slacker team is including a link in customer emails to video from an October segment that CNN ran on the company.

So why not use the power of video to your advantage? PR is one way. Another is pure marketing. An online demo (see Sirius Stiletto 2) can reinforce upcoming Slacker Portable Player reviews from tech writers, most of whom have written with excitement about the company's business model since its March launch.

With a million registered online users, Slacker has an audience ready to receive the product message through a richer online medium. Consumers can't touch or experience the product yet in retail stores, so trust and loyalty must be earned in other ways.

Simplicity as Brand

One of my favorite brands is Moots. The company builds bicycle frames and components available in one color: bead-blasted titanium. Think no frills, functionality and simplicity like the iPod. New Moots titanium frames fetch about $2,500, give or take a few hundred dollars. The Steamboat Springs, Colorado company is small, competing in a global marketplace where Taiwanese factories stamp out frames for huge U.S. brands. Moots spends roughly zero on advertising (not even Google ad words) yet has managed to sell in the U.S. and abroad for more than 25 years. That's brand equity. Customers (like me) carry the Moots message without hesitation. It doesn't hurt that the products are beautifully designed and handbuilt. But Moots doesn't just make bike products. It creates relationships. From the first interaction to post-sale communications, a bonding between company and consumer occurs over time. And consumers remember. What other new product today comes out of the box affixed with a tag hand-initialed and dated by the people who had a hand along the way in making it? Two years ago, Moots invited owners to submit essays on what they loved about their two-wheeled machines. The company personalized its annual product catalog through these stories and the faces of storytellers. This week, Moots launched its newly designed website, complete with a riders' forum section. Simple. Like its product. As word spreads, the loyalists will post. The curious will read. And converts will be won. Small can compete with big.