Making products that spread themselves.
This post got me thinking…while it’s easy to think about how one could build more usability and experience into one’s products and services, it’s not so easy to think about how you’d make products and services advertised themselves. Or products that have “viralness” (ugghh!) built in.
Obviously, software products and services can do this easily but how would one do this in fmcg, or any tangible-goods based business? People have tried to do this before by making products “talkworthy” or by turning them into badges or status symbols but these are really strategies for adding meta-information to a product rather than making something that’s intrinsic to the product or service itself.
An hypothetical example would be a food product that couldn’t be eaten alone, or a book meant to be read in a group. Alternatively, you could (perhaps) imagine a car with Facebook integration. Through the GPS it might alert Facebook friends of your whereabouts allowing them to poke you in real life.
Seems to me that there’s opportunity here for someone to do something really smart. Create a product with it’s own marketing program built right in.