Show Stopper - a simple way to attract attention to your product.

One day, I was running a company that was in charge of controlling employees. And now the developers suggested adding new functionality to the system.

From a technical point of view, this functionality did not represent anything - analyzing keystrokes, the system tried to make a conclusion whether the employee’s behavior differs from the standard one or not.
And the program did not give a specific answer - what exactly is happening. Maybe he is tired, maybe another person is sitting in his place, maybe an employee can hammer one key at a time, maybe he drank it ...
Oh, this magic word "drank" ...
')
And then it began!

They wrote newspapers about us, three television channels released stories, called from the radio. And only one question interested them - “how much did you drink while testing the program”
And when, a month later, I met with a large potential client, I was asked - “Does your program have the function DRUNKED HANDLING?”

As a result, a rather simple and not critical for business thing, it was very powerful and promoted the product for quite a long time without investing in marketing.

This is called Show Stopper - functionality that is added to the product not for a real business value (customer benefit), but for actively attracting attention to the product.

One of the classic examples is the wing.

For most cars, this is a completely unnecessary accessory. They just can not (both due to design features and prohibitions of traffic rules) to accelerate to such speed when the use of the wing will begin to influence the behavior of the car on the road.

But not cool without him! So they screwed ...

Now remember all the technological products that you bought for yourself and for the company. Do you use all the cool chips that you liked so much at the moment of choice?

• The new iPhone shoots 4k video. Uuuuuuu, cool! It is a pity they did not say in advance for how many minutes the small and non-expandable memory of the smartphone is clogged.
• The DLP system protects against all threats. Well now let's live. During the implementation process, it turned out that it was almost impossible to set up all the rules, and the staff quickly learned to circumvent the restrictions.
• Employee Control System

So show stopper works and quite well!
The trouble is in another, it is very hard to predict what kind of functionality it will "fire". That is why the market has a huge number of stupid products with "unique features" and "proprietary technologies."
That company, about which I spoke at the very beginning, later (after my departure from there) tried to repeat the success - but to no avail.

What can be done to add a show stopper to your product with a high degree of probability (but by no means guaranteed)?

1. Be a sniper, not a machine gunner. Do not fill the product with opportunities like a general store product. Try to copy expensive boutiques - there one pair of shoes is beautifully standing on a separate shelf.
2. First, implement the new functionality in the form of history. And tell it to your friends and colleagues. See if she brings a smile, an interest, whether they ask you for details. And if so, start developing.
3. Do not do something very difficult. Remember that the criterion of success are sales (in this case also interest). They did the first thing of the functional - if there was interest, then refine further. At the same time there will be something to share with journalists.
4. Do not consider journalists and clients as dupes. If the first time you sold them a dummy, then most likely the second time they are unlikely to interest you.

Successes in business!

Andrey Ignatov