A fictional ad

Selling a fictional product 10 years into future

MSURE is a fictional advanced technology that allows kitchen appliances to “connect” to people.

I was wondering if 10 years into future (is that far enough?) I did build a product called MSURE, how would I sell it?

So I made the following assumptions:

1. Amazon would likely be still around and still the best way to sell my product (after protecting my IP of course!).
2. That my product has already been validated in market (PM fit), I am using amazon to scale to larger audience. This matters to the tone of advertisement- basically trying to positioning MSURE against archaic ways of measuring. Case in point, this ad →

Apple’s I’m a PC ad campaign

3. I am not going to use browse pop-up (annoying), catalog-billboard-physical flyer (uncool) and social media post (just don’t like it). My instructions were to stick to image-based adverts hence product placement at e-commerce site seems to fit the bill (I’ll still find a way to re-use my old video though).

The fictional website

I had seriously considered posting a fictional amazon product (not kidding). Amazon calls them fake products and likely has no conception of a diegetic prototype — if it doesn’t serve their purpose, a la Prime Air. After half hour of research, it was abundantly clear that even attempting this just for lolz might be a costly endeavor for a lowly grad student and have legal ramifications which I don’t even want to start.

So I designed a fake-amazon-looking website called ‘muzon (nothing to do with ‘murica 😐) and count on audience’s willing suspension of disbelief [1] about the story-world (or by bad photoshopping skills). Have a look here. I even used a cool-or-creepy-but-definitely-not-cute amazon logo I found somewhere on the web→

~not my creation~

I could have spent more time creating a really good amazon doppelganger but I’m too lazy for that, instead I’ll outsource the work to audience’s willingness to suspend their disbelief (or expectations).

To view my product, type MSURE in the search bar of ‘muzon website.

The fictional product

Operation of the diegetic prototype

In the year 2032 advanced brain computer interfaces could be used to communicate with any smart device connected to internet. MSURE is the first kitchen appliance that allows users to telepathically connect with any measuring equipment (spoon, cup, etc.) in your kitchen.

You can just think the quantity of a particular object you want (e.g. sugar), then use your MSURE-powered cup or spoon to collect it. When the quantity matches your thought, the cup blinks green! That’s all you have to do! No kitchen scales, no key chain of spoons, no LCD, not even voice! MSURE allows your household appliances to talk to you personally, just think-sink-blink™.

References

[1] Blythe, Mark. “Research through design fiction: narrative in real and imaginary abstracts.” Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on human factors in computing systems. 2014.