Taglines, Elevator Pitches, Product Descriptions and Project Descriptions

In trying to come up with a proposal for an Elevator Pitch and Product Description for the End-user from Pieter's table of working position statements, I came upon the following question:

Aside from length, what is the difference between a Tagline, Elevator Pitch and a Product Description?

Here's a stab at some answers:

Tagline requirements

1. Establish what 'category' of software Chandler falls under. Indeed, it should establish that Chandler is software.
2. Evoke a sense that Chandler is somehow different, innovative; and
3. Get across HOW Chandler is different and innovate...more organic, more natural, less structured, etc; and finally
4. Pinpoint what kind of user we're going after, not necessarily in an explicit way (ie. Soccer mom! Hipster Geek! Slacker! Baby Boomer!) but with idiomatic language and tone that our target users identify with.

Elevator Pitch Requirements

Pieter has a good characterization of what a good elevator pitch accomplishes: first sentence (0 to huh?) pitch (huh? to interesting)

What will make our target user pause for a moment...And then in that pause, what will get them interested to learn more about Chandler?

One approach: Identify the kinds of problems that they have in abundance that traditional task and project managers address poorly...and then claim them as the raison-d'etre for Chandler Project.

Product Description Requirements

Finally, if people get past the elevator pitch and indeed find us interesting enough to keep reading, the product description can drive our point home by giving specific examples of:

1. The problems you have;
2. Exactly how we go about solving them...in a way that you can identify with.

In other words, the product description identifies the specific workflows and use cases Chandler supports.

Other requirements

• Open Source!
• Pro-social
• Scrappy and independent

• Catchy
• Memorable

Open issues

• What tone should we take? Casual? Tongue-in-cheek? Ironic?
  • MimiYin I think a casual, slightly tongue-in-cheek tone can go a long way in 'showing' rather than 'telling' users that Chandler is not your mom's stuffy-old Project Manager.

Recapitulation

From the beginning, it's a tricky game of tug of war. Once we've established a product category for ourselves (Task Manager, Project Manager), to render Chandler concretely in the minds of the audience, we need to immediately change tact and drill home how we break traditional notions of that category to show people how their traditional notions of what it means to be a task manager or a project manager don't apply to Chandler. We're not just a lame checklist! We're not a big behemoth Gantt chart!

In other words, we need to make people reconsider everything they thought they already new about task managers and project managers.

Task managers don't work for you? Project managers take too much work? Perfect, you are exactly the kind of person Chandler was designed for! (Does this sound like a diet ad yet?)

In the end, we're really saying the same thing over and over again. However, each blurb of text: tagline, elevator pitch and product description plays a different role in getting our message across.

1. The tagline appeals to the gut with idiomatic language the user can identify with: Hey, that sounds like my kind of thing...
2. ...Which sets the stage for the elevator pitch to reinforce that idea by pinpointing a problem the user can identify with: Yea, I have that exact problem!
3. ...Which in turn lays the groundwork to zero in on a list of Chandler 'campaign promises': Check, check, check. Those are all things I wish I could do today, but can't.

Tone

I think there's cutesy and then there's witty, tongue-in-cheek, ironic, sarcastic and downright vindictive and mean-spirited humor.

I agree that we don't want to be on either end of this spectrum.

• The little Project Manager that could: Too cutesy.
• The Can't Get Your Act Together Project Manager: Too mean.

But I wonder if tongue-in-cheek is a good balance to the 'corporate' nature of Project Manager? It's a serious and powerful product that does serious things...but it's laid back and doesn't take itself too seriously. (Read between the lines: It helps you manage projects but doesn't have no Gantt charts. Less Process, More Productive!)

Other examples of tongue in cheek:

• Scratch your own itch? (If you think about it too much, this is kinda gross.)
• Miller Lite: Everything you always wanted in a beer. And less.
• Miller High Life: The champagne of bottled beer.
• Pork: The other white meat.
• Clairol: If I’ve only one life, let me live it as a blonde. (My personal favorite.)
• VW: The poor man's BMW. (Ouch, maybe this is inching past ironic towards sarcastic. Depends on the person though.)

This is a pretty fun list: http://www.taglineguru.com/sloganlist.html

Tongue-in-cheek is just one direction though. We could go for something that's more high-flown, inspiring, a la Nike: Just do it. or everyone's favorite tearjerker, AT&T: Reach out and touch someone. Then there's over the top cheesy: Cotton. The fabric of our lives.

Personally however, I found it hard to come up with something concrete and descriptive in this category. Something that would make it clear right off the bat that:

1. What kind of Product are we? Chandler is task/project management software.
2. Product differentiator: Chandler helps you manage David Allen-style lowercase-p projects.
3. Target user profile: Small groups.

Do we have agreement that tone aside, those are the 2 pieces of concrete/descriptive information we're trying get across with the tagline?

A different tact would be to dress-up task manager rather than try and dress-down Project Manager.

• Chandler: Not your mom's task manager?
• Chandler: Task manager on steroids?

(The only downside is that Task Manager doesn't imply group collaboration the way that Project Manager does.)

Proposal for Tagline

I realize we've been avoiding the term 'project manager' in our product descriptions because we don't want to evoke visions of Microsoft Project with its gantt charts and pert charts.

However, I wonder if we should just face this head-on and use that image of Project Managers as overbearing behemoths as a foil to Chandler's lightweight, organic, adaptive approach.

Additionally, Pieter and Caroline have pointed out that because our product name is at best evocative, if not downright whimsical to the uninitiated, our tagline really needs to be descriptive and concrete.

Project Manager as a concrete, descriptive noun is not bad. It describes the end-goal of what Chandler does as opposed to emphasizing the means to that goal, ie. Information Manager.

Project manager also implies sharing and collaboration without having to use either share or collaborate.

What does our Tagline need to communicate?

• What is Chandler? A Project Manager.
• What does Chandler accomplish? Chandler manages projects. Not capital-P projects like Fix Bay Bridge connectors. But lowercase-p projects that are really things we try to manage like tasks, but end up being more complicated that we originally thought and hand around for weeks and months at a time.

• How is Chandler innovative and different? A project manager that is actually organic, flexible, and low-maintenance. A project manager modeled on how projects actually unravel for the modern knowledge worker.

Additional goals We want to be concrete and descriptive, but a tagline is still a tagline and needs to appeal to people's gut-level likes and dislikes.

• Try to show, not tell all of the things described above.
• Avoid overused words like Share, Collaborate, Innovate.
• Convey our underdog, open source status?

• Catchy, not Cliche
• Exhibit a sense of humor ?

The following format really sets up a template for an entire marketing campaign. We could even have the tag-line change dynamically every time you visit the chandlerproject domain. The uniformity of the sentence structure would tie the tag-lines together so that they constitute a single Chandler brand.

EVOCATIVE - CATCHPHRASE

• The make-it-up-as-you-go open source project manager
• The fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants open source project manager

The little engine that could

• The little project manager that could (OK-technically not the same format, but so cute!)
• The lowercase-p project manager
• The glass-half-full project manager
• The never-say-never project manager
• The better-late-than-never project manager

Stay flexible

• The sure-we-can-do-that project manager
• The SURPRISE! project manager
• The I-did-not-know-that project manager
• The I-didn't-see-that-coming project manager
• The mind-like-water project manager
• The go-with-the-flow project manager
• The float-like-a-butterfly-sting-like-a-bee project manager

Stay focused

• The keep-your-eye-on-the-prize project manager
• The get-on-the-same-page project manager

The project manager for the slacker generation

• The low-maintenance project manager
• The light-as-a-feather project manager
• The self-cleaning project manager
• The fewer-calories-more-flavor project manager

Interop / Collaboration

• The works-well-with-others project manager
• The it-takes-a-village project manager
• The I-got-your-back project manager

DESCRIPTIVE

• The open-source-cross-platform project manager
• The it-has-contacts-now-too project manager
• The I-can-interop-with-everything project manager

TONGUE-IN-CHEEK

• The probably-won't-lose-your-data-cuz-it's-on-the-server project manager

Proposal for Elevator Pitch for the End-User

Chandler Preview targets the gap between personal to do lists and large-scale Project Managers to serve small groups working together on stuff-that's-a-bit-more-complicated-than-Take-Out-the-garbage-but-just-shy-of-Build-the-Suez-Canal.

Proposal for What Goes Into Our Product Description, in order of importance

Workflow

• GTD stuff: Centralized Collection, Triage, Process, Organize.
• Breaking down silos between data types, file formats and transport protocols.
• Breaking down barriers between personal, shared and public information.
• Interop and standards.

Collaboration

• Sharing and collaboration to focus a small group that is working together.
• Concrete references to the PIM item types: Notes, Tasks, Calendaring and Communications.

Open Issues

• What about extensibility?

Product Description for the End-User

Collect, Triage and Manage tasks, notes, messages and events from a central location: the Dashboard. Stay focused without losing track of the things you can’t get to or complete right away. Manage calendars that overlay and overlap. Send, Edit and Update messages to iterate and collaborate with others on specific tasks.

Best of all, manage projects together as a group. Share with others right from Chandler Desktop with the Chandler Hub Sharing Service. Then simply point friends and colleagues to a web browser and get started!

Project Descriptions for the Potential Community Member

Project Description for Generic Community Member

Chandler is an open source, lightweight project manager consisting of a cross-platform desktop application and an online sharing service.

Chandler Preview targets the gap between personal to do lists and large-scale Project Managers to serve small groups working together on what we like to call "lowercase-p projects": The stuff of life and work that unravels and breaks simple task lists, yet lacks the girth and structure needed for most task tracking systems. Chandler is built on...

Our near-term goal is to get dogfooders outside of OSAF and attract and nurture a diverse open source community around the project.

Longer term....

Product Design Community Member

Chandler's expanded notion of task management provides a centralized Dashboard for triaging, processing and organizing your information, regardless of type, format or mode of transport (better word for this?). A flexible information model allows users to seamlessly traverse traditionally segregated application areas: Schedule Tasks on the Calendar. Address notes, tasks and events to send them out. Edit and Update messages to iterate and collaborate with others on specific tasks. Integrate personal, shared and public information spaces.

Lastly, attention to how people really work and a commitment to interoperability means you will be able to play well with others through email and standards-based sharing.

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Archives

Taglines:

• Information Commons
• Seamless Shared Information Manager / Management Service
• Chandler: Cat Herder Extraordinaire
• Brings out the wisdom in small groups.
• Share and Collaborate. Communicate and Collaborate.
• (Why beat around the bush?) Chandler is Outlook Exchange for the Rest-of-Us.
• See the Information in your data.
• Have your way with your data.

For whom, is Chandler...for? Whom is Chandler for? Chandler, for, whom? Chandler is, whom for?

• 'Small workgroups' is too vague? Is 3 small? 10? 50? Depends on your points of reference.
• What about a 3 person group in a company of 10,000?

• People who don't want or feel like they need or want and IT infrastructure in order to get things done.
• People who work intensively with other people. Other people could be a spouse, a colleague, a friend, an assistant, etc.
• People who work with information, where the output of their work is more often than not: more information.
• People who are always (re-)figuring out how to work together.

• People who are primarily relying on email to:
  • Disseminate information
  • Conduct discussions
  • Make and Document decisions
  • Keep track of tasks and project status
  • Schedule meetings
• This happens in a household, in a company, in a book club.

Why is Chandler different?

• PROSOCIAL
• Chandler is build upon a carefully crafted social model that is designed for people who have a wide range of unregulated relationships.
• Promotes transparency within the group.
• Promotes active participation on the part of everyone in the group.
• Promotes better communication within and without the group.
• Promotes a stronger, more effective team.

• OPEN SOURCE
• Chandler is Open Source!
• You can participate in building a better product. Use Chandler and give us feedback. Test the app. Log bugs. Help with Documentation. Contribute code. Participate in our Open Design Process.

• USER EXPERIENCE
• Promotes focus
• Discourages distractions
• Provides a sense of the forest as well as easy access to the trees
• Integrated so you no longer need to cobble together email, task lists, spreadsheets, calendars, and various web apps.
• Removes artificial technological walls that get in your way: Walls between data types, data formats, data transport protocols, operating systems, etc. Walls between Email and Sharing. More generally: Walls between personal, shared and public information.
  • As a result, Chandler is able to Adapt and Flows easily around the way you work and make decisions. (Stamping, Triage, Edit/Update)
• Few design concepts to grasp.
• Few design elements to grapple with.

Features we want to highlight:

• SHARING
• Share and Collaborate: View-only and View and Edit sharing.
• Communicate and Collaborate: Edit and Update Email.
• Share, Communicate and Collaborate with the people who matter, not just with the people who happen to be on the same system! Chandler is cross-platform and provides easy web access to shared data.

• GTD
• Collect everything in one place: Notes, Messages, Tasks and Events
• Triage it all to Maintain focus and Minimize distractions: What can you do NOW? What can wait until LATER? What's already DONE?
• Put your data where it belongs: On your Task lists. On your Calendars. On both!
• Organize your information in whatever way you want. Your data can live in as many places as you want.

• TECHNOLOGY
• Interoperate! Across Operating Systems; CalDAV calendaring applications and sharing services; WebDAV sharing applications and servers; Atom/RSS feed readers and servers; IMAP and POP email applications and servers.
• Use cutting edge technology: AJAX, Atom/RSS

• OWNERSHIP
• Really Own Your Data: Download and run your own version of Chandler Server.

• EXTENSIBLE
• Extend Chandler Desktop and Chandler Server to meet your own needs.

-- MimiYin - 17 Apr 2007