I sneezed on the beat and the beat got sicker
Everything I know about launching a product I learned from Beyoncé
Beyoncé reached into her magician’s top hat and pulled out a rabbit none of us expected: A visual album with 17 songs all released on the same night and only available if you bought the whole thing on iTunes. In one move, she generated excitement, subverted a broken business model (free videos on YT for every song), and turned buying her album into an event.
The Internet erupted with joy, unwrapping an early Christmas present. See how Bey-fever spread across the world in a flash on Twitter.
The next time you are about to launch a product, learn from Bey with this checklist.
- Surprise and delight. Beyonce launched her album late at night, when no one expected it. Instead of months of build-up (like JT’s 20/20), she sprang from the shadows to capture the moment. As a fan, it felt like a surprise, rather than the ineluctable let-down that follows even the best project if preceded by months of expectant hyperbole. How to apply it: You don’t have to launch your code the moment it is complete, instead pick a strategic moment to get the best response from the market. The right moment will change with every launch—sometimes it will be in the middle of a Friday afternoon when no one is watching, other times it will be Tuesday at 9:30 am PST. Sometimes it will be expedited to out maneuver other players in the market, and sometimes it will be purposely delayed to better align with a coming moment in the cultural ethos. Pick your date to launch based on your business strategy, not just based on the last keystroke of being code complete. Your engineers might be temporarily frustrated with a delay, but if the whole point is to create the biggest moment possible, it will pay to have a plan.
- When you see a broken market, look for another way to win. The model of hosting videos on YouTube works well for YT and might work for the artists who hope to sell tickets to their shows. But it is asking a lot to imagine that after watching a video for free, the next thing a person will want to do is buy it from iTunes. Faced with this broken system, Beyonce’s team chose to tease the videos on YT, but then required you to buy the entire album to then get all 17 videos for free. In the end, you were buying a Beyonce movie, in the form of an album, distributed through iTunes. And you did it willingly and eagerly, like a kid who finally saved enough money to buy the one Star Wars figurine she always wanted. How to apply it: Instead of running a race against everyone else, where the odds and conditions are stacked against you, create a new race. And then another and another.
- “I sneezed on the beat and the beat got sicker” -Bey
4. Spread curiosity like Beyonce spreads pop hooks—with enthusiasm and relentless re-invention. How to apply it: Your team doesn’t need to be told to work harder, instead, you team will want to work smarter when they see you as an unending source of creativity, curiosity, strategy and grace. Approach each problem (particularly the hard problems that happen at the end when you are about to ship) with equal parts curiosity and creativity. Find a way through the intractable knot in front of your team by thinking in tangents, with orthogonal ideas to traditional methods. Radical remixing of associated (but divergent) ideas will get you around a roadblock. Do not use traditional thinking to solve a seemingly impossible problem. Instead think differently. Act like an artist. Re-invent the world like a sci-fi writer. Jump into the world of imaginary numbers then jump back out again. Don’t stay stuck in a rut. Engage the improbability drive. Get weird. Connect the dots in a way normal people wouldn’t. Solve it.
5. Address a fundamental human need, not just a product feature. Beyonce paints a picture of family, ambition, art, love, all rolled into one mess of representation, struggle, short-comings and triumph. Your product should solve a fundamental human need, not fulfill a product spec. How to apply it: Read this post.
6. Show, don’t tell. Did Bey write a long blog post about her album? Nope. Instead she released 17 videos all at once and you loved every one. To tease the whole project, her site flips wildly through images from the videos daring you to look away. You, of course, do not. If she had written an essay, you wouldn’t even have bothered to read past the second line. How to apply it: Any time you have the chance to show what you mean instead of talk about it, show it. The phrase isn’t a word is worth a thousand pictures…
Did I miss anything? Let me know on Twitter.
