How Poor Creative Destroys Great Product.

Today I found out about Knocking Live Video, an app that enables users to "knock" on other phones with the app and share live video in real-time. The first 50,000 downloads are free, so I snapped that bad-boy up before Pointy Heads could impose a payment wall.

How I discovered it: via Twitter and in the news. The message behind the Tweets and articles I saw were "See what I see." The functionality sounds cool; I don't even mind having to wait for other iPhone 3Gs users to get it before I actually try it out.



In idle evangelist mode, I mentioned it in passing to a good friend -- who, it turned out, was in planning mode with Pointy Heads to develop an online video campaign for Knocking Live Video. It didn't work out well; the company was committed to the ideas it had, and certain that it knew what makes a "viral" -- so the friend and his team walked away.

Above is the result. (2.5 weeks in, 78 views strong.) I'm not even knocking them for ripping iPhone's ad style; for a product like this, highlighting functionality is the best way to market.

But then they went other places. And now I'm looking at this app -- for which I have yet to register a user account -- and thinking I kinda wanna delete it.

The desire to try the product out may have overridden that, but that I also have to give these people my data leaves a bad taste in my mouth. I don't want to.

There are so many ways in which live streaming video, shareable between users' phones, can be useful. And what, you guys came up with Vegas threesomes and illicit office fucks?

Fail.