From: David Lubkin (lubkin@unreasonable.com)
Date: Fri Mar 29 2002 - 00:17:27 MST
At 07:21 PM 3/28/2002 -0500, Alex Blainey wrote:
>David. I think Fallout Shelter is on first view a good product. I am
>concerned that most people won't be convinced to buy it until they see a
>brilliant flash of light in the sky.
Thank you. Looks like the public falls into three categories:
1 - Visceral yes. They are already committed to a prepared
mindset. Obviously, subscribers to misc.survivalism would be good
prospects. And I think extropianism by definition subsumes the more
rational aspects of survivalism.
2 - Visceral no. Along with sending it to you guys, I also told a mailing
list of software entrepreneurs I'm on. Most are liberal, anti-gun, fairly
young. A few people got it, but the most common reaction was that my
product was loathsome because it (they thought) preys on people's fears.
And that anyone who would buy it is a paranoid loon who's on the lookout
for black helicopters.
3 - Potentially persuadable. I hope that my calm, methodical style will be
effective. I say that the product costs no more than a good smoke alarm
because I want them to view it as a cheap, prudent precaution.
I was surprised that the reaction from the other list was so
empathic. Here's an interesting dilemma: I'm about to pitch this to news
media as something they should cover. Ideally, in the news section now and
then a review in the technology section when the product is actually
shipping. From what I know of mainstream journalists, they have a lot in
common with the chaps on that other list. So it seems like there's a fair
chance that the people I need to write about it are predisposed to abhor
the idea. *sigh*
Perhaps the right answer is to go directly to misc.survivalism, and maybe
gun or conservative groups, and see if I can establish a modest sales level
and customer base and then look for mainstream press coverage.
And perhaps the technical press (ComputerWorld, Handheld Computing, etc.)
would treat it as straight product news.
>Blimey ! was that a questionaire or was that a questionaire ?
And thank you for being the first to fill it out. Were there any questions
that you did not feel would be useful to me in making decisions about
marketing and future product development? I wish I could get those
nay-sayers to fill it out, too, so I have a clearer sense of the
demographics of the Visceral Nos.
-- David.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Sat Nov 02 2002 - 09:13:08 MST