A fellow agency director recently told me about a company they'd been speaking with, who claimed to sell "the world's strongest fasteners." Nuts, bolts, clamps and fixings — if it holds load-bearing structures together, they probably make it.
This got me thinking.
The world's strongest fasteners might be an accurate claim. But let's be honest, it's a pretty dull one.
While they may be excited about how strong their fasteners are, nobody else is. But what people are excited about are the things that these fasteners fasten:
The satellites that connect billions of people across the planet in an instant.
The fuselages of aeroplanes that carry people safely to their loved ones.
The F1 cars that push the limits of physics at 200mph.
These marvels of engineering are the stories that turn something as mundane as an M6 bolt into something truly wondrous.
But there's a catch.
For products like this, the possibilities are endless. Pitching specific use cases risks limiting their scope. So how do you bring the magic to an otherwise mundane product like our little M6 bolt without them?
Earlier this year I wrote about leaving room for the imagination . It's relevant here — because visitors landing on your website already have a use case in mind. One they're already excited about. One that may be more wondrous than you ever imagined. And that's what you need to tap into.
Give them space to dream big and to place your product inside their big idea.
Your website needs to become a canvas for them to project their own ideas onto. Make your product feel otherworldly, even dreamlike. Make it big, beautiful and exciting. Add playful interactivity to get their creative juices flowing. Give them the space to dream big — to place your product inside their big idea.
And they'll always remember:
yours was the one that made it real.
Here are some examples I've seen recently, plus one we built at Function & Form:
Telkom's precision tools are manufactured to any brief. Rather than limiting their scope with examples, they showcase their technical prowess through interactive 3D models.
Food is a great example of endless possibility. Don Molinico use bold typography, colour and a 3D tin of their Piquillo Peppers to engage the senses — no serving suggestions needed.
For our friends at Advatek — whose LED controllers power everything from factory floor markers to stadium concerts — we brought out the curiosity in their audience with game-like design features and oversized 3D exploding product models that make you just want to play with them.