Last week, as the world was working out whether the iPad was good, bad, ugly (or indifferent), NoTosh was busy building a lightning quick strategy with partners Northern Film & Media (NFM) to create, overnight, a £40k ($60k) iPad fund. The reasoning?
- iPad apps will be featured in a new store come the iPad launch in March: getting North East companies in there first helps ensure that North East companies have a better chance of appearing on early adopter's iPads before the marketplace gets too crowded, like its iPhone cousin's store.
- No-one knows if the iPad will be a game-changer or just another iPod Touch - but bigger. The fact is, we have to make apps that push it to its limits to find that out. You also have to think about how neglected the iPod Touch has been in developers' eyes, despite sales apparently being on the verge of outstripping the iPhone. Development for this non-GPS, lo-tech device is underexploited.
- Great companies building great apps speculatively is actually quite rare: when there are more secure income streams from government tenders and corporate clients, most developers prioritise and R&D gets the shove. A fund is essential and a superb use of investment to create commercially viable but risky products.
- Companies always work better with some focus and a prize at the end. The fact is, this money exists already for exciting digital media products, but we needed to make sure that NFM was seen as both a viable, speedy and light-touch organisation who could help startups get their idea to market quickly.
- There was a unique opportunity to reposition Northern Film & Media as one of the most forward-looking, technology focused 'screen' agencies around; not just set up to help fund the snails-pace-production of film and television series, but to turn around investments quickly for nimble startups.
Our strategy worked. Within an hour there were hundreds of Twitter mentions of this exciting new fund throughout the world (maybe stretching to thousands now), helped by our friends at Techcrunch, PaidContent, the readwriteweb and the Wall Street Journal.
Now, we're just waiting for some brilliant ideas to come in - a few have started to trickle and look promising. But as strategies go for engaging a digital community locally on a globally exciting story, we're quite proud of what we've achieved so far.
Pic from GraphicSpirit
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