[Dive #98] The AX Framework (Announcement Experience)
📣 Announcements have a framework now!
Announcements. They come in many shapes and sizes. They get your attention. They have an air of importance. Some even have a bright red number next to them!
I would argue that every news headline is actually an announcement. Look at PR Newswire’s homepage. At its core, these are announcements.
So we have an influx of news, information, and announcements getting shoved down our throats and Web3 industry moving at lightspeed. There are even tools that are attempting to filter out some of the noise!
What do announcements look like today?
Few things first:
This will likely be an evolving framework and mental model, feedback is appreciated. And feel free to build upon this!
I’m not a PR or announcement expert. Can you imagine if that was a niche skill set? Announcement experience designer 😂 Actually, that role probably exists today for large corporations.
IMO, there are no NEW strategies and tactics, or even channels for that matter. Announcements are an additional use case for certain channels. And I would argue that Gated and Pfpedia above are tools, not channels.
However, the weighting of focus and the approach to refine the strategies and tactics are evolving.
Discord might be a new channel for an established brand to manage community, but there are likely previous channels (moderated or spun up by the community as a grassroots effort) that already took on that role like Facebook Groups or Instagram fan accounts.
Let’s look at customer service. I’ll pick on Bank of America because they keep sending me stupid e-mails like this:
How did customer service work for BOA 30 years ago?
In-person at the local bank branch
Call their customer service
What does customer service look like today?
In-person at the local bank branch
Call their customer service (BTW GetHuman is a nice tool to speak to customer service quicker)
E-mail
Online chat
Scheduled appointments
Twitter (@BofA_Help)
On a separate note, BOA customer service Twitter is brutal.
Though the art of customer service is more reactive, there are similar themes with announcements and proactively communicating with your consumers and user base.
How did announcements work 30 years ago?
PR - News articles
Ads (TV, print, billboards, etc.)
Conferences or investor meetings if you’re a public company
What do announcements look like today?
PR - News articles
Ads
Conferences or investor meetings if you’re a public company
Digital PR - PRNewswire, Techcrunch, Forbes, WSJ, etc.
E-mail
Online communities - Facebook page/Facebook groups, Instagram, Twitter, Discord, Youtube, Twitch, Product Hunt, etc.
So what’s going on?
More announcement channels: Gone are the simple days of conveying a message or news related to your company or product. You need an announcement strategy (or at least a framework if you’re smaller). That’s why PR teams exist.
More resources needed for effective announcements: On top of PR teams, there needs to be a strategy, crisis response, cross-functional internal comms, etc.
More equity in the fight for attention: An individual can create a platform that has the same if not greater impact
Also, individual brands have a secret weapon that most companies don’t: Personality
For the third point, Mr. Beast opened up his first Beast Burger location in Minnesota and this is what happened.
If your company or product can do this, you don’t need to read the rest of this piece. You figured it out, congrats!
TLDR:
Companies and brands are in a war on attention.
Specifically, the war on attention is an Infinity War.
You can never ‘win’ the war on attention because it continues forever. You can win battles, but never the war.
More bluntly, this is what it looks like even if you do it well:
Unless you’re Mr. Beast of course.
Continuing the analogy, announcements are a weapon that we can use. To be effective, it’s important to know:
How to use it
When to use it
Who your enemy is (in that moment, attention evolves and is dynamic)
So what are the top brands in Web3 doing to win some of the battles in the infinity war on attention?
What good AX looks like
For the purposes of not turning this into a 20 page case study, I’ll be focusing on consumer NFT brands and Twitter. However, these examples apply across different channels, highlight the shift in consumer preferences, and challenge what the traditional ‘announcement’ strategy should and could look like.
BAYC (Bored Ape Yacht Club)
There’s a lot of reasons why BAYC has risen and stayed at the top. An underappreciated factor is how they approach announcements.
If I were to sum up BAYC’s AX in one tweet it’s this one:
(note that BAYC was much smaller a year ago. This volume of engagement was considered massive back then)
As a consumer, I don’t think I’ve seen a public announcement like this before. And I would argue that on a per word basis, this is probably one of the most successful announcements made in the world of NFTs in 2021.
The phrase lives on and embodies the culture of not only BAYC but the space, as we approach the one-year anniversary of this tweet and the MAYC collection.
The list goes on.
Why does this work for BAYC?
This fits the BAYC voice and story. These apes are bored (because as the story goes, they got filthy rich from crypto and bought a shack in the swamps of Florida). And this is the type of announcement bored people would do.
It’s a surprise and delight moment. Like Pavlov and his dogs, the BAYC community is trained to understand that BAYC rarely tweets (they retweet a lot of posts from the community though). But when they do, it’s big.
It’s defensible because of the brand-AX fit. Few projects operate this way.
Can you imagine if Mcdonald’s tweeted: “Fuck it. McRib is back Saturday.”
Actually that would probably be the most viral announcement of 2022. They should do it, with the swearing.
Other examples of the BAYC “F it” AX:
This was on a Friday night, arguably the worst time to make a public announcement.
On a Thursday night in a bear market.
The BAYC Discord (173k members) has a similar vibe.
One sentence with a link. 1-2 of these per month.
Doodles
Doodles has a similar approach with focusing on quality of announcements vs. quantity. In fact their Twitter account (376k followers) has literally had 0 Tweets since July 24th. They’ve had one reply tweet on August 10th and their last retweet was July 28th.
If this were the Twitter account of any other NFT project, many would think the project was a scam. But this is Doodles.
The NFT community have made the lack of Doodles activity the butt of their jokes.
I’m not sure how I’d categorize this, maybe the ‘anti-announcement’ strategy? Barring the possibility of bad developments internally, there will probably be a big announcement sooner or later.
Silence aside, I bring up Doodles because of their unique experience for Doodle holders at NFT NYC.
The event had two parts:
Apple-esque keynote from the CEO and founders. There were some big announcements.
Chainsmokers performance and afterparty
Doodles transformed what a Keynote and Investor Meeting experience could look like for IRL announcements, and it was refreshing!
Another variation: Azuki had a memorable take on IRL announcements as well during NFT LA, combining a live digital component to it.
RTFKT
I’ve been writing about RTFKT a lot lately, but they’re hard to ignore when it comes to AX.
What RTFKT does really well is they lean into their strengths of creating beautiful visuals to compliment the announcements. Also, maybe it’s because I’m a Nike fan 🤷♂️
The additional bonus for me is I can let these announcements do the talking instead of my words 😉
I get goosebumps even when I pull up these tweets to paste lol.
Exhibit A
Exhibit B
Exhibit C
Exhibit D
Exhibit E (this is a sneak peek, not even an announcement)
Like…WTF. This is unfair.
BONUS: Tiffany + Pudgy Penguins
Timing - Tiffany made this announcement on a Sunday. Maybe I’m reading into it too much, but IMO this was a strategic move.
Momentum - This is a strategy that I’m noticing NFT brands are employing as of late. They know that the space moves too quickly and they can’t win the war. Instead, they bunch announcements together over a 1-2 week timeframe to dominate the conversation. Pudgy Penguins did this last month:
Azuki has done this as well recently.
How do we put this all together
I have a lot more thoughts about AX, but let’s shut TPan up put a bow on this.
In this unwinnable war on attention, how can a good AX strategy help a company win some of the battles on attention?
📣 See you tomorrow 📣