CITATION NEEDED

the whole dropbox thing reads to me like a company that’s feeling super threatened by slack

people say shit like “Shifting the conver­sation around work” when, uh, they feel like they’re being pigeonholed as boring cloud storage

i mean. you’re for reliably storing files on the internet clouds. not, like, a 1980s era music video television station

have some goddamn respect for yourself

yeah you’re totally feeling threatened by useful-yet-easy-to-approach slack

“extraordinary things happen when diverse minds come together?” *totally* threatened by that hip upstart realtime collaboration product

“we’ve evolved it from a literal box” i really fucking hate this kind of brand-speak.

take a drink whenever anyone involved in collaboration culture invokes “yes-and”

i mean at least we don’t have to deal with them trying to make “dropping a box” a phrase or something?

i mean really are millennials not buying enough cloud storage or something

i get it. you don’t want to be “just a place to store your files”

like, maybe the way to deal with that is by building more things that are not “just a place to store your files” paper is pretty neat

it’s as if your sanitation co. went “hey, we don’t just deal with your sewerage! we’re all about urban living! rich imagery! cronuts!”

and you’re all: but you are a sewerage company. i do not want to eat your imaginary sewer cronuts.

like, maybe if you made great cronuts first, then i would eat them & i’d be: huh, how surprising, my sewerage co makes excellent pastries

branding is what comes after doing

not before. then you just look silly for saying you’re something that you’re not (yet)

so. *constructively*, speaking as someone who has spent some time in brand advertising & marketing world, what would I do differently?

simple: just show the new identity. it is stronger and more distinctive. talk about that. don’t talk shit about what you’re not doing yet.

no-one gives a shit about your aspirations until you have something that will actually fulfill them. until then, they’re just empty wishes

less of the wanking in public about what you want other people to think your brand means, instead make things that fulfill your vision

look here’s another nerd-love example y’all will instantly get

how many facepalming brand videos & scrolljacking websites did spacex make none* they built a fucking reusable rocket that lands itself

*ok maybe they made, like .5 of one the point stands. they made a fucking reusable rocket that lands itself. doing things beats visoning

people do not give a shit about your vision and how much you attention you give to rounded corners or your “literal box”

they care about things that get things done, that solve problems, that do things in the real world your brand manifesto does not do that

now, the converse argument is this most dropbox users will not see this horrible introspective dismissive writing that’s its saving grace

i mean god forbid dropbox would’ve spent real cash money dollars and embark on a tv brand ad campaign to “communicate this messaging”

if you did, uh, sorry, i guess? maybe find a new cmo who won’t waste as much money?

ok here’s another take this would’ve been fine if it was dropbox internal. to fire up and encourage the team. that’s cool.

but jesus christ don’t let it escape. internal brand talk like this should make you cringe. actually i take it back.

showing the work and some of the rationale would be fine internally.but a lot of the language is problematic and unhelpful regardless of aud

mainly because no-one should ever be this fucking full of themselves

anyway wanna hear something else funny, tangentially related to this thread yours truly is an ixda juror this year so, you know look out

i have opinions and i’m going to wield them alongside explanatory material

ugh i was supposed to write another newsletter today i guess this was it

oh right, you all keep favoriting that “branding comes after doing” tweet want another attempted aphorism? here we go:

don’t brand things that don’t exist doing so is a silly waste of time, effort and value. i mean, where would you put the poker.

you’d be, like, wafting it ineffectually toward some sort of hoity-toity manifesto (i have worked at wieden+kennedy, i know manifestos)

anyway i am clearly running out of steam and should have stopped several tweets ago best to go out on top. fin.

there’s nothing wrong with being just a place to put your files. that actually was useful. that is when I could actually find my files.

Why doesn't @Dropbox just acquire @SlackHQ?

I think your numbers are the wrong way around?

I hope all of your feedback is in some form of dystopian fiction

debating if I should take this tone for this talk on passwords 😂 because all of our interaction designs for passwords are that awful 💩

I’d argue designers don’t need to use words to describe logos. That’s a rebus.

Reminds me of the bizarre bit with town halls and living walls at the last apple event that made them look even cultier.

make things people want / make people want things (h/t @willsh)

By Jove, I think you've nailed it.

it’s not fucking rocket science, is it, john

It certainly isn't. People always forget that product is and always been the first P of marketing and everything else.

Doing is branding.

john where are our highly paid, lucrative consulting gigs where we just write this on a flipchart and underline and circle it

Sacrificed on the altar of proprietary processes.

Yes-and I have diahhrea!

I would like to purchase imaginary sewer cronuts.

That would be AMAZING!! I wish they WOULD!

Sanitation is a fucking marvel and we should all be made to contemplate it.

i totally agree and support any sanitation company attempting to self-actualize

I mean, i guess thats one way to say "rebrand"

maybe they shouldn't have killed off Mailbox, which was fucking excellent

have you looked at dropbox paper tho? it's actually a very pretty thing

This literally made me spit my tea on my screen.

much better

😫😫😫

This is one of my least favorite rebrandings ever.

It’s also basically illiterate.

It’s a drawing of a box, not a literal box, that now looks like a box

the purple - pink is just an abomination of visual intent.

I give it 24 hours until someone re-typesets the entire manifesto in Papyrus and Comic Sans.

it’s awkward when the water and sewage utility feels they need to be more approachable for today’s teens

omg yes “we want to be more than just your sanitation provider”

when you think about Consolidated Drainage, think _collaboration_

I’d go for an ‘80s music television channel about how. 🙂

My thing is like: why deny your core product's utility for an airy declaration? I like Dropbox. Can't I just use it?

oh, I’m getting there!

No Alexis, you have to be excited about being part of a team with extraordinary minds, diverse skills and a yes-and culture.

Which is weird because I have not yet seen a single Slack that uses Slack sharing by preference for anything but pictures and links

Yes, I read this whole thing thinking they were announcing a pivot to slack-like service and it never came.

I was left waiting for the other shoe to drop(box).

IT IS ALIVE!

totally confused me when I saw the confusing new ui. I was like where the hell are my files. I hate it when utilities get religious.

...Pretty sure all I ever use them for is file storage to swap between my desktop and laptop.

ever since I realized my QNAP NAS has a utility that does exactly this but all on machines I own, been wondering why I still have a Dropbox.

LOTS of dumb FoC (fear of change) designerd tweets re @Dropbox today But then there is this wonderful thread by @hondanhon Just👏read👏it!👏

Because nothing says "we are to be trusted with your private and professional data" like a bad acid trip...