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If you're still here, I'm sharing something I didn't want to post on my blog just in case it came off like I was exposing them by discussing their marketing strategy and how they appeal to their audience and how their audience identity is their USP. There's a much cheaper, almost identical digital product so this matters to their survival.

I'm not here to mess with their business. It's a good product!

Identity as a USP: one fail and one hit

In this weeks links I include a great podcast episode from a series I’m liking a lot called sideways. The episode is called “The west and the rest”, and it describes why underestimating the importance of identify undermines the strategic plans of otherwise smart people.

My mind links everything to products and tech.

It reminded me of a conversation I had many years back about why China would rather clone to the tiniest detail a bunch of “Western” apps rather than use the originals. I answered that cultural identify was an unobservable, but differentiating feature that mattered to those users. Identity was a USP.

I know the person I spoke to probably took that to mean “Non-westerners are so insular".

So let’s use a different real-life example to prove my point. One that isn’t as emotive as “east vs west”.

Lets use knitting.

In early 2022, two serial entrepreneurs who both had wives who knit, looked up the numbers on knitters and were staggered by just how huge the market was. Presumably inspired by “Wool and the gang”, they paid $80,000 for the domain knitting.com because of the SEO benefits and wanted to use that for market dominance. Their plan was to “disrupt” the knitting supply chain. "Wool and gang", but bigger.

This could have gone as well as their other ventures had, except they wrote a very detailed blog post on the business strategy, and made a similarly detailed podcast where described the business decision to do so, how much they paid for the domain, and talked repeatedly about “the market”.

They made it really clear in their tone that they cared not one iota about knitting, or thought very much about knitters. That they just wanted that market money. That it was ripe field waiting to be harvested.

​Knitters all over the internet lost their minds, descended on their blog post, and vowed to never buy a single thing from them.

Because no one wants to treated like a felid to be reaped.

No one wants to give money to someone who thinks they’re weird for their passion – even if it would make their lives easier.

The business tanked before anything could even happen. That is the power of identity being offended by something so innocuous as simply not “getting” knitting and not being a knitter.

Their previous strategy worked for adult colouring books and treadmills, but people don’t identify as adult colorers or “treadmill runners”. They do identify as knitters.

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TIIMO understands the power of identity

An example of an app that does understand the power of identity and walks that line carefully, while not being of the audience themselves, is Tiimo.

I've had an article in draft in my blog posts comparing Tiimo to the almost identical (and much cheaper) app Structured for the longest time, but writing about it feels a little mean?

I don’t think Tiimo have done anything wrong and I worry people would misunderstand. Their entire branding is about being an app for Neurodivergent people who struggle with planning. And the assumption with startups online is usually “BY X FOR X”.

So “by Neurodivergents for neurodivergents”. And is Tiimo was really someones university project that found some success, got some funding, and became a small business.

It’s a story of good work, a little luck, really listening to your audience and tailoring the product to their needs.

So, how did it go so differently for Tiimo compared to our knitter pals?

Tiimo been pretty good at getting spokespeople who are neurodivergent to blog for them. They highlight users who are neurodivergent on social media, and do advocacy and education on neurodivergence on social media.

The clue - at least in my opinion, I could be wrong - that it’s probably still coming from a place of “market to be reaped” mentality is the hiring page - where it said something to the effect of “Neurodivergents are welcome to apply but only if you don’t need accommodations”.

But remember, the audience are university students, and most people coming to these apps will only ever see the app store page and social media. They are not expecting to hire from their user base in the way, github, for example, might.

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The difference between them and the knitter.com boys is sensitivity to the power of identity and subtlety about being an outsider.

To recap:

• Don’t forget the power of group identity in being a motivator to use or not user a service or side with someone over another company or product.
• Make a plan for how to appeal to that groups ability to relate to you as a brand.
• Don’t publicly announce your out-group status.
• Do hire people from within the group your audience is in to write to your audience, or be a figurehead and handle interviews
• Do feature your audience and people within your audience on social media
• Do content that is for your group, inspired by their feedback, and advocate for them

Website I'm loving: Semaphore News

There is something about the type, background colour and layout that reminds me of old school print newspaper before newspapers relied on ad impressions. It has a calming, focused feel to it.

But that's not why I'm excited about the design. I'm more intrigued about how they try and use design of the news article pages to enable better media literacy and reader trust and break readers out of partisan news silos.

I think that's a bold and ambitious goal. Obviously, hiring a diverse selection of writers across the political spectrum is also part of that, but they do try to make it crystal clear in the articles which parts are fact, which is opinion, and where the story looks very different from a different point of view.

​The use of icons make the articles easy to skim and quicker comprehend. I wish them well!

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Apps I’m testing this week

• ​Landing.Space - seems to be occupying the hole left by old skool tumblr and polyvore for creative, artistic younger gen Z to make moodboards and collages for no reason other than expression. There's a lot of boards around books and fictional characters.
• ​Novelpad - an online app for writing fiction. I love it. Review is in my queue.

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This weeks links

• Podcast episode: sideways: The West and The Rest. How underestimating the importance of cultural identify can lead otherwise smart people astray with strategy and predicting behaviour.
• ​Obsidian theme: Prism in latte color.
• This free notion blog content planner from Notionology

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If you've read to the end - thank you! I will mostly link to articles on my blog so the emails will be shorter.

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xoxo Moodthy from wyld.media

113 Cherry St #92768, Seattle, WA 98104-2205
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