Crowdfunding & Indiegogo for newbies from a newbie

BlissEscape, Our first crowfunding project on Indiegogo

1. Colleen and I started exploring crowd-funding option for BlissEscape, the worlds first audio relaxation travelogue, few months back and launched our campaign on Indiegogo a week ago. In this post I discuss our rational for picking Indiegogo. And why we think it is a better platform for innovative projects that blur the line between existing categories.
2. Many people have since asked me the rational for choosing Indiegogo and crowdfunding etc. I thought a blog post (series) is the best way to respond to the questions.
3. I compared existing crowdfunding platforms I was aware of.    
4. Firstly, in my opinion crowdfunding is an excellent market research tool to estimate the potential sales (viability of your product)
5. Why did we decide to go with Indiegogo for our crowfunding?
1. It works in Canada ! 
2. BlissEscape is a better fit for Indiegogo given the wide range of projects it allows, compared to the limited Kickstarter. 
3. Indiegogo allows for flexible funding
4. BlissEscape is very innovative (not like next best photo app & software innovation, more like Doritos blowing up the snack category!) and rides on micro trends - of love for travel, growing stress, rise of mobile apps, mobile savvy moms, and laws of subtraction !
6. From out observation, if your project is not software or hardware based then Indiegogo is likely a better fit for your project compared to others. At least the community curation is easier to manage than blanket/canned statements from KS staff evaluators. 

4G LTE PlayBook Press Release: Promotion

On Aug 2^nd RIM made an announcement quite different from what we have recently come to expect from RIM. They put out a press release announcing the launch of the 4G LTE PlayBook. The press release is a typical example of verbose headline that says too much but communicates nothing. It is one of the worst promotions I have seen the last week.

Perhaps a better headline for the release could have been Research In Motion to launch Ultra Fast 4G LTE BlackBerry PlayBook Tablet on Aug 9 in Canada.


Here are links to the corporate press-releases from RIM's peers Samsung, Microsoft, and Apple they are all pretty dry, but some of them have headlines that communicate effectively.    

Example of a verbose headline 

Outlook.com: Product of the day

I just signed up for an email ID on outlook.com after hearing about Microsoft's latest take on email.  I was sceptical when I first learned about it on Twitter. But has been pleasantly surprised upon visiting Outlook.com . My initial impression of Outlook.com - it is modern and elegant.

I think Outlook.com is the best product I have come across today.

I want to congratulate the designers, UX guys, and marketers at Microsoft who brought outlook.com to life. They have nailed the most important of the 7 marketing Ps - product. The extensive improvements made here is all list in the blog post by Chris Jones.