The Sweet Spot

To hawk cheap-ass merchandise requires a delicate balance. We need to talk up our products just enough to interest our customers, but not enough to raise your expectations beyond what’s reasonable. In other words: if we say too many nice things, people will be disappointed; if we get too mean, people will be disinterested.

We’ll demonstrate with today’s product:

We could say, “with a wide variety of lens options, you can turn your cell phone into a professional-grade camera.” But this just isn’t true. This will not replace DSLR. And the last thing we want is for you to come complaining to us when you bring your iPhone to a gig as a wedding photographer and the pictures come out sorta crummy.

On the other hand, we could say, “How much can you really expect from a supposed ‘tech’ product that shares 98% of its DNA with the Chip Clip?” But this feels maybe a little too harsh, because it is pretty fun to clip on the fisheye or the wide-angle lens and snap a few pics.

Although, even this might be a bit overstated, depending on your definition of “pretty fun.” Is “pretty fun” taking good pictures? Or is “pretty fun” seeing the usual flat images your phone takes rendered wonky by something low-cost and easy to operate? Like, remember when you first got a Mac with Photo Booth on it? And you could do the roller coaster or go to France? Or do the thing that made your face look all big? Nobody’s hanging those photos in a museum or anything, but they were “pretty fun.”

Then again, that was, what? 10 years ago? Perhaps our standards for “pretty fun” pics have changed. Perhaps when we have Snapchat that can turn us into cats, we don’t need some dumb fisheye lens that leaves a weird black border around all our photographs.

And yet still, perhaps you’re not using them for fun at all. Maybe you just need to zoom in on some sign off in the distance. Or maybe you just need to take a wide shot of something, not for the purpose of garnering likes, but to prove a point. It doesn’t always have to be about fun.

But it could be.

Although, these might not be that fun.

It depends, really.

See, this is where we struggle: we want you to buy our stuff, but we also want you to know the truth. Have we done a good enough job? Let us know in the forums.