Maeda's SIMPLICITY

The Product is the Message; the Message is the Product

Around three years ago I had lunch with a Motorola executive and we were talking about the future of consumer electronics. At the time, the Apple iPod was gaining momentum and it was becoming clear that the little-device-that-could was going to win. The device didn't do much more compared to its competitors, but its backend software components like Apple iTunes were clearly superior in ease of use for the average consumer.

The Motorolan said to me simply, "Well, in the past software was the accessory -- the freebie or add-on. And hardware was the main reason to purchase. Today there is a reversal in this model. Software is the main, and hardware is now just the accessory." It got me thinking about how the consumer electronics industry was being reborn as the consumer info-tronics industry. Here at the Media Lab we have a research program that speeds society forward in this direction led by Henry Holtzman and his Consumer Electronics 2.0 initiative.

Today, the best model of this general reversal phenomenon in the devaluation of the physical compared to the virtual is the recent success of Webkinz plush toys. Conventional wisdom ascribes that communication media is used to market a product. In the Webkinz case, a website is used to market the sale of a stuffed animal toy. But in reality the reverse is occurring. The toy product itself, with its web-access password tied to the toys' feet, has become the marketing vehicle for the Webkinz site. Since the toy is often discarded like the caramel popcorn in a Crackerjack box (because the hidden toy is more desirable than the popcorn itself), and the website becomes the addictive source of endless hours of play, the physical product is just a communication medium for a website that is the real, but virtual, toy and the primary source of play. Physicality is secondary; virtuality is primary. What does this mean?

Perhaps it means that in the future, ad agencies are likely to end up as effectively product development companies when communication itself becomes the primary core of consumer products; meanwhile conventional product development companies will likely become the ad agencies of the future and take more of a supporting role to the communication industry. We see this already happening of course in the many interactions with our industrial partners here at the Media Lab. This fascinating shift that is transpiring today will determine our future consumption habits in the post-object economy.