Kranz On Copy: Insights and answers on copywriting and writing copy

The current issue of Business Week Small Biz includes an article on collaboration software, "All Together Now," that compares the relative merits of various competitors.

I don't have a crystal ball that'll tell me which one will ultimately come out on top, but I have a suspicion: it won't be the software that's the "best," but the one that's the simplest -- easiest to use, understand and pay for.

Too often, "best" is irrelevant. In emerging categories, especially, few of us are qualified to know what that is. Or how to find it. The Model T wasn't the best car available in its time, by far. But it successfully reduced the auto to its essentials -- a motor and four wheels -- and sold thousands at a price most people could afford. From this humble beginning, Ford went on to define the market for years to come.

Or take Kodak's Brownie. Compared to other photography options, the Brownie was downright primitive, basically a box with a hole on the outside and film in the inside. But it made a previously complex process ridiculously simple. You took your pictures and mailed the camera to Kodak. Then they returned your Brownie with fresh film and your newly developed pictures. It wasnt' the best photography technology available, but the simplicity of the Kodak process invented a brand new category -- the multi-million dollar consumer snapshot.

Instead of making your next product or service more functional and feature rich, why not make it simpler and less expensive? You might just end up owning the category.

In other news . . .

The next issue of the Kranz On Copy newsletter will be distributed this Friday. In it, I talk about how to get an editor's (favorable) attention and discuss the appropriate amount of links in Web pages.

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