Flow like water rather than trying to command the tide not to come in

An interesting post appeared in my feed today from a company called M-sense.

Until the post appeared, I had never heard of M-sense. I do get migraine from time to time.. but not with such regularity or intensity that I would seek a special solution or it. On a purely superficial basis, the idea of an ‘app’ somehow solving a killer pain in my head is something I don’t instinctively get, and I’m not motivated enough to dig deeper to find out how it works.

To be honest, it was the pivot to ‘Meta’ that caught my eye, without which, I would have surely cruised past the post.

Excepting those that have been hiding under a rock since before internet existed, there is nobody that hasn’t heard of Facebook.

Even in Nigeria, where less than 1% of the population are ‘sustained’ members of the ‘Connected Community’ people in outlying rural areas with irregular or no access and who have not had the chance of using it themselves have been ‘gisted’. They learn about the ‘Connected Community’  through university students returning on holiday, or their Diaspora (both national and international) returning for ceremonies and cultural events.

About two months ago I saw a short drama video covering a ‘millennial’ being interviewed by a mature leader.

Interviewer: .. Exactly what areas of technology are you proficient?

Candidate: .. Snapchat, Pinterest Instragram, Vine, Twitter…. You know… the big ones!’

Interviewer: I’m surprised you didn’t say Facebook.

Candidate: (laughs) .. That’s for old people… like my parents!

While the overall message of the video is something different, I am focusing on the perception of Facebook here.

There is a mathematical relationship here… as technologies have been shown to ramp up exponentially over time, brand resilience in the space is proving to be inversely proportional to rate of technological change.

Facebook has been the dominant brand in the space for a long time, but new technologies bring new UX that disrupts its market.

Even in Nigeria, where brands often come to dominate, and persist long beyond their shelf life in North America or Europe, that does not always translate to revenue and profit.

‘Yahoo Boy’ is a permanent fixture in the colloquial lexicon for an ‘Advance Fee Fraud’ aka ‘419’ perpetrator, but it’s probably been close to twenty years since any ‘Yahoo Boy’ actually used Yahoo Chat as part of the victim grooming toolbox.

With the longevity of product brands in the space continuing to collapse with time, it makes prefect sense instead of an SM technology group building a brand around its flagship product, to build it around a virtual container in which products with shifting fortunes reside.

It seems to me that ‘Meta’ serves to be such a container.

Oculus VR is probably notionally the closest businesses unit within the new ‘Meta’ to the logo concept.

As  Anne Quito said on Quartz : ‘Many also note its resemblance to virtual reality goggles, which would be a fitting nod to the company’s foray in immersive virtual realms or “metaverse,” as Zuckerberg calls it.’

Facebook web page ‘designing-our-new-company-brand-meta’ says: (The Meta symbol) ‘is designed to be experienced from different perspectives and interacted with. It can resemble an M for “Meta,” and also at times an infinity sign, symbolizing infinite horizons in the metaverse.’

But to me, that seems to be a lot of esoteric twaddle from a bunch of people who slap a few lines and curves together, get a graphics designer to get a bit ‘photoshoppie’ with it and then try to justify their six figure (dollar) salary. My daughter was really good at squiggles when she was 2. Nothing specifically against Meta, because this prevails everywhere right now.

Quito’s article goes on to say: It’s futile to judge a logo’s efficacy at first glance, but early reactions are predictably snarky. Critics are fixated on the infinity symbol, complaining that it’s derivate and unoriginal.

My own take is that the minimalist abstract fad we have in the current logo design ‘moment’ actually heightens the likelihood of unintentional overlap between different design teams who independently come up with the same thing or very similar. There is only a certain number of ways you can put a few lines and curves together.

Until logos go back to actually looking like what they want to represent instead of vaguely implying it, this will continue.

Hats off though to M-sense for how they played this.

We need to be careful about defining things as a ‘tech’ industry. In the original Guinness brewery in Dublin, Ireland, draught horses were used to haul Guinness casks around the city. Technology evolved. In Nigeria, Diageo has a fleet of vehicles of all shapes and sizes that transport Guinness near and far from breweries, one of the biggest ones being at Ikeja.

Up to around 35 years ago, architects plans and drawings were done on a draftsman’s board. Then came the computer program, AUTOCAD. However an AUTOCAD user is still an Architect, not an ‘AUTOCAD Practitioner’.

As tools become normalized and generic across professions and sectors, they fade into the background. The ‘app’ may be considered the modern equivalent of the pencil. The sector and profession isn’t defined by the pencil. It is defined by what is done with it.

As apps become more generic, saying apps development is a tech business may be akin to saying Diageo’s core business is not brewing at all.. it is road haulage! So the concept of app as technology moves on is fluid as we shift away from the development of the app itself taking a back seat to what it is intended to be used for.

Is a ‘migraine app’ currently part of ‘Meta’? – no, but could it conceivably be? On the basis of Zuckerberg ‘s aspirations for Meta – for sure. This creates the basis for Intellectual Property litigation.

Meta obviously has deeper pockets than M-Sense, who has decided to turn this into a free publicity triumph.

The jibe ‘Where they go low, we go high’ followed by hashtag ‘data privacy’ implies M-sense is distinguishing themselves from Meta in the data protection stakes.

The use of green, a colour associated with environmental protection, conservation, integrity, approval and ethics is impactful (though the blue of Meta isn’t necessarily a contrast).

M-sense has decided to Flow like water rather than trying to command the (Meta) tide not to come in.