Kickstarter is blowing doors on monetization strategies this year and challenging traditional consumer and auction paradigms. News dropped today of Scott Wilson breaking Kickstarter’s funding record by raising over $275,000 for his iPod Nano watch enclosure. And he raised that money in one week. One.
I first learned of Kickstarter from a post by Craig Mod where he broke down how he was able to fund the printing and publishing of his book, Art Space: Tokyo. It’s a must-read for anyone in any type of media who wants to stay relevant.
Forget that. You need to understand the success of Kickstarter of you’re a human being who works in order to obtain money to live. Period.
The hook for me, what makes Kickstarter so powerful is the human element. Call it social networking, call it viral, call it crowdsoucing. I call it human.
The Economist did an interview with one of the founders, Perry Chen. The whole interview is great, but this bit stood out for me:

Just like eBay or Etsy, you are obligated to do what you say you’re going to do–fulfil the limited edition, or create the event or experience that you promised to create–in exchange for someone opening their wallet and backing your project. The interesting thing is that these projects are funded by dozens, hundreds and in some cases thousands of people, but it is never completely anonymous. Within those backers are friends, long-time fans, family members, classmates, people in the gardening club with you. So there’s already a social fabric that’s brought into Kickstarter. The accountability is strengthened because those people are there.

People.
Just keep people in mind when you’re starting a new business plan. If you keep the focus on people and not on “how we’re going to beat the competition”, you’re already putting yourself in a better position for success.

AdCritic.com: 2007 Creatives Roundtable (via Gawker.com)

Last month, Creativity invited 11 highly talented and highly opinionated creative honchos from a diverse range of idea shops to deliberate on what they need to do, and who they need to be in order to get a brand message across in today’s unpredictable advertising climate.

I found the six interview video clips mildly informative. I think this might be due the fact that we’re watching the creative directors talk, opposed to seeing what they create, so it’s not their fault.
With that said, one statement did stand out for me from William Gelner, Group Creative Director at BBH. He said, “The best clients are looking for partners, not vendors.” This is great way of working with clients and it can only make better, more integrated work that elevates the client’s brand and message.
While a vendor does their job and then shoots out an invoice, a partner gets inside their client’s head, always there to guide the messaging as it evolves and changes. If you’re serious about the creative field, there’s really no reason you wouldn’t naturally become a partner with your client. Your enthusiasm, determination and creative vision should come through to your client and when they see it, they’ll have no choice but to jump on it.

Jobs would offer free music in a ‘heartbeat’ -Amen Steve, if anyone can sell it to the labels it’s you. Please make it happen. 🙂

Listen, I love my iPod, and I understand that the Cool Factor throws off any logical product price breakdowns, but does anyone ever stop to think about things for second?
I’ve been meaning to put together a chart (ala Edward Tufte) comparing all the current digital music players and their prices relative to their features.