![[objectdesire-logo.png]] The [first main video](https://www.pleasedontpush.com/p/objectdesire) explains in depth what is object:desire starting from the company point of view (what to do to grow / what will not work to grow) Here we will look at the same story, but starting from the user point of view (why we buy what we buy / what can get in the way). This will help you get a wider picture of the dynamics at play and how they connect with each specific part of the framework, so you know what to expect from the rest of the main videos / parts of the codex. #### <span style="color: yellow;">**Desire**</span> We live in a continuous race to achieve our “life goals”, that is going from “who we already became” (present self - current identity) to “who we want to become” (future-self). To get to that future self, there is still plenty left to achieve. Let's call that **Fantasies**. At the same time, we have a lot of things to do to live in society. We have to feed ourselves, clothe ourselves, we have to work, have fun… Let’s call that **Tasks.** We buy products to help us do those tasks, and we use that buying moment as an opportunity to **also** get us closer to our Fantasies in a very specific way: Out of all the products that can do the task, we will not choose the “objectively more efficient option after deep scientific comparison”, instead we will choose the product that tells the world, and to ourselves, who we became and/or who do we want to become. We choose a product category to do a task, we ~~choose~~ Desire a **specific product** within that category because of what it says about us. Every time we buy, we ask ourselves: “Who do I become if I buy this?” and is **through buying products that help us “become something different” that we try to fulfill our Fantasies.** #### <span style="color: yellow;">**Meaning**</span> So the key question a person has when facing the decision of buying a product is “Who do I become if I buy this?” and what answers that question is “Product Meaning”. Product Meaning is not what the product does. It's what the product **is**. HipChat and Slack did the same task, but they were different things. Slack led with the meaning: “the email killer; efficient internal communication)”, while HipChat meant “team chat” in a time when chat for work was frowned upon. HipChat could “kill email” as well as Slack, but it didn’t mean that. HipChat **was not** an “email killer”. A startup founder with a fantasy of “becoming a unicorn” also has tasks, like making sure the team communicates efficiently. He was ok using email for that until Slack became “the cool new product that startups used to have more efficient communications”, then buying Slack stopped being optional. He **had** to tell the world, and himself, that he is at the cutting-edge, that he has an efficient team too. How can he believe his company will become a unicorn, / make others believe he can become a unicorn otherwise! So he buys Slack for the team. Even if HipChat could have done the exact same functional task, and even if Slack ends up being [worse for team efficiency than email](https://www.vox.com/recode/2019/5/1/18511575/productivity-slack-google-microsoft-facebook). As users, we can’t predict the unintended effects of using a new product, neither we have the time or energy to actually use both for quite some time in parallel to see which one is actually the best fit for us. But we know the signal that using Slack radiates to the world and to ourselves, so we decide based on that. #### <span style="color: yellow;">**Spread**</span> We can frame our product in a specific way to fix it to an initial meaning. But Meaning becomes much stronger (and credible) when others amplify it. When the journalist writes it, when the consultant recommends it, when the community praises the product without being asked. So that initial meaning defined by us will morph based on what other people say, and if that is sustained over time, based on who talks about it, what they say, who is seen using it… it can become a symbol of a specific identity. Users, consultants, journalists, VCs… started repeating “use Slack to make your team more efficient” until most startups used it; this is when Slack became a Symbol. It’s in this transition to Symbol when people stopped buying “the fantasy of being more efficient so we can eventually become a Unicorn” and started buying an identity: “We use Slack, therefore we are an efficient and modern startup”. The fact that meaning morphs based on what others say is not a problem, it's a necessary dynamic. What others say will always be more credible than what we say about our product. What we can control is the first signal we put out, and who we get to repeat it first. Here, a borderline "unhinged" initial meaning (email killer!) is a strategic advantage, not a risk. Bold meanings are easier to quote, easier to repeat, and easier to side with. They travel faster. Slack actually didn’t say “email killer” on their homepage, that would have read as just exaggerated marketing. Instead, they contacted big publications and told them “we built the email killer”. That was a really juicy story (known founder got so cocky that he thinks he is going to end email) so they were happy to publish it (for the drama) while inadvertently repeating over and over again [“Slack, the email killer”](https://venturebeat.com/technology/flickr-cofounder-launches-email-killer-slack-to-the-world). What was almost a joke for the journalist, read as a **fact** for their audiences as they expected the journalist to have vetted that claim. That is one example of many of the specific techniques we can use to engineer who says what, and in what sequence, to guide that spread without forcing it. #### <span style="color: yellow;">**Blockers**</span> A product meaning that connects with the user Fantasy will create User Pull (Desire + Conviction), which will translate into users willing to buy the product or at least try it. And because that identification with the Fantasy, they will be more resilient than a skeptic user that just found your product in Google, never heard about it before and just decides to try it out of curiosity. But that resilience has a limit. Slack never had a good onboarding, it was always confusing and had a lot of friction, initially that was not a major problem because the Pull was really strong but they quickly realized that even if they wanted to “kill email”, they had to at least integrate it into their platform or Slack was useless for the use cases that needed some contact with the exterior, like the customer service team, or the sales team. That was a functional blocker, where no matter how much Pull your product has, that user can’t use the product to do the task. So a year after exiting beta, they decided to add the email integration. If they launched the product initially with that feature, they would have created a Symbolic blocker: “How can Slack be the email killer if they integrate it?”, that feature would have undermined their intended meaning and they would have ended up meaning something like “Slack is a new email client + chat”, and what people hated was email… But a year after launch their meaning was not “email killer anymore”, they were “the new cool product to make teams more efficient” so they could solve the functional blocker for the use cases that needed it while they minimized the risk of creating a symbolic blocker. Of course journalist had a field day with the news, [“Slack Decides Not To Kill Email For A Little While Longer”](https://techcrunch.com/2015/08/14/slack-decides-not-to-kill-email-for-a-little-while-longer-integrates-it-instead/), but their new meaning (efficient teams) was strong enough that it didn’t matter and this release just got Slack on the news cycle again. Our goal is to navigate this tension between functional blockers and symbolic blockers so we can keep growing without destroying the meaning we achieve at each stage. #### <span style="color: yellow;">**object:desire**</span> Engineering the right first meaning and then getting the right people to say the right things in the right sequence until the meaning reaches the point where the product becomes a symbol, dealing with functional and symbolic blockers so they don’t interfere with growth is what object:desire is for.