Don't you worry, we've got your back...
You can keep your front
The saddest daydream
Say, have you heard that there’s some new, pretty incredible, possibly world-changing technology out there where chatbots can converse just like actual human people and we’re just beginning to imagine the impact this can have, from making therapy widely available at no cost to upending how teaching is done?
And also they can sell people a bunch more crap:
The NY Times reports…
Late last year, Manish Chandra, the chief executive of Poshmark, a popular online secondhand store, found himself daydreaming during a long flight from India about chatbots building profiles of people’s tastes, then recommending and buying clothes or electronics. He imagined grocers instantly fulfilling orders for a recipe.
I had a few thoughts after reading that:
I assume he was flying from the US to India, and that’s a long flight. It’s a lot of available time to daydream.
I’m guessing he first watched something people watch on planes. Maybe Top Gun: Maverick.
Isn’t it kinda funny how all of a sudden everyone is always watching the same movie on a flight? Like I remember there was the period where half the plane was watching Bohemian Rhapsody. And there was the Crazy Rich Asians period.
That’s still going to leave a bunch of time.
Your mind’s gonna drift. It just is. And given enough time, you’re gonna dream big.
And you’re going to dream about chatbots recommending I buy a shirt.
Or grocers filling orders!
(I’m not sure why this story was so disappointing to me. Maybe because I’m sure Mr. Chandra is a bright guy. And if given the resources he could do amazing things. And instead the amazing things are a chatbot telling me I should buy a medium blue striped shirt. And that for some reason - like the Conductor CEO last week - felt like this would be a great thing to share with the NY Times. And that we had a long period where seemingly every new technology was used for one singular purpose…The still camera allowed people to take naked pictures. And the motion picture camera came along and allowed for pornography. And then the VCR came along and brought pornography into the home. Then the DVD allowed for higher picture quality pornography. And then the consumer Internet allowed for pornography to be shared. And then high speed internet allowed for streaming pornography…Then, maybe 10 years ago AI and predictive modeling came along and while I’m sure there are many, many fascinating, world-changing uses for it, we’ve also seen it used 10,000 ways to sell people more shirts. So maybe that’s what’s sad? No, not that it should’ve been used to distribute pornography more efficiently (tho…). But that it’s always about more shirts.
Does Anyone Have My Back?
I know that when I buy software, I want someone to have my back. It’s important. My front can remain with me. But my back? No thank you. I don’t want it. You can have it. Please, have my back. Someone. Can someone have my back?
Email marketing something something SendinBlue, can you have my back?
Whew.
Let’s see, who else? Who else will leave me my front while they have my back?
ServiceRocket by Atlassian - do you have my back? And do you also have some sort of broken CSS on your page so the copy displays weird?
Oh good, you do.
What if I don’t have enough people working here in the Gobbledy offices - is there any agency who can leave my front to me, while they focus on the back?
I‘m not really sure it’s mission critical. Will you still have my back? The mission criticality isn’t a pre-requisite, is it? I hope not.
While contemplating my front, I was considering converting from Framemaker (tm) to Flare. But I was very concerned that if I made that decision, nobody would have my back. Until now:
Oh good. I was concerned, but once I saw that the logo was a guy in a beanie, I know that my back is gotten.
What I think would be useful is if someone not only told me they had my back, but also had a photo that was a pretty on-the-nose representation of my back being had.
Microsoft, can you help?
That photo of the woman physically having her back was a helpful way to show me that you have my back. But is there anyone who can have my back, and then two sentences in a row reinforce that they have my back using the exact some words?
Thanks, Stoneridge! Good to know you’re ready when I need you and are ready when I need you.
And finally (it’s actually not the last one out there, but I figured you got the point), bring us home email something something provider TimetoReply:
And Now I’ve Got Your Back, TimetoReply
I sometimes get questions about whether homepage copy should be short and punchy, or if it’s OK to write long. I think the answer is (of course) the always helpful, “it depends.” Which is a cop-out and I’m sorry, and clearly I absolutely DO NOT have your back here. OK fine - long copy can be great if you break it up visually. There ya go.
And if you do go the long-ish copy route, you may say to me, “But how will I know if it’s TOO long?” And I could give you some BS answer about “oh, go check your analytics” which is definitely a thing people say.
In an attempt to be helpful, I wanted to point out that this block on TimetoReply’s homepage has too much on it. I don’t know what the right amount of copy and visuals is…but it’s not this:
In short, if you’re thinking you need a 4-line headline, followed by 5 lines of text, and then bullets, a photo, a quote, title, button, and screenshot of the product that includes a bunch of text, and graphs (without labels), and its own bunch of buttons…I would suggest that you don’t need all of that (maybe kill the screen shot and move the photo & quote over to the right).
I got yer back, TimetoSend.
For those of you new to the newsletter, welcome!
I’ve been offering to chat with readers for 25 minutes to talk through some of the messaging issues they’re working on. And - maybe this shouldn’t have been a surprise - the conversations have been really fun. So I’ll repeat that offer - if you want to talk about your website or positioning or how to make sure you have someone’s back or whatever, here’s my Calendly link.
As always, thanks for reading. And if you want to share Gobbledy with just two people, we can continue to grow this community.