4 Step Plan for Peach …before it dies
Peach is the latest messaging app (similar to WhatsApp) to be hyperventilated over among marketers. High hopes and bullish predictions ran rampant during its release. Low adoption rates and mediocre reviews quickly put out the fire that the Peach PR team was able to stoke. Marketers shouldn’t give up on it… not yet.
What is Peach exactly?
It’s a reimagined amalgam of the most common social media features with a couple new tricks. You have a timeline. You can post text, photos and video. But the added value proposition comes in the form of “Magic Words.” Type one of these pre-programed sayings and you’ll get the option of adding something a little special. Example:
DRAW: You can do a doodle with your finger
GIF: Let’s you search within the app for GIFs to post
RATE: Add 1-5 stars
HERE: Post your current location by pulling phone data
SONG: Post a song that is playing using song recognition
BATTERY: Show your phone’s current battery charge level
WEATHER: Add the weather where you are
MOVE: Post the number of steps you’ve taken recorded by your device
There are 26 magic words supported in Peach, and you can expect new ones to roll out over time. The real fun is experimenting with mixing and matching these functions. If Peach does eventually become a player, it will be because they stumble on some new function that no one realized we really needed in our life. Knowing human nature, it’ll be something like KITTENFACE which I imagine will transform pictures of your friends so they look like a cast member of CATS.
Is Peach The Next Big Thing?
Nope. Not yet. But that’s not because it couldn’t be. Announcements of Peach’s demise are a symptom of the unrealistic expectations media journalists built up. It has a simple interface and allows for a ton of creativity. It’s also currently hampered by being a social app that can only be accessed on iOS devices. Half the people I asked to help me experiment with Peach couldn’t downloaded it if they wanted to. While that’s annoying for potential users who can’t access the app, it’s smart for a company that’s planning a slow and steady roll out designed to drag itself out of the primordial ooze over the course of a year. Don’t fear, Peach will be ported onto Android the moment Peach’s software engineers decide they’re ready to handle the strain of all those extra users. If it can live that long.
So what should you do with Peach? Here’s what we’ve been telling our clients.
4 Step Plan for Peach
1) Grab your name. Sign up as soon as possible so you don’t have to be YourName1554 or TheRealYourName. If you don’t have an iOS device, grab a friend’s phone. Given Peach’s adoption rate, they won’t mind because they’re probably not using Peach.
2) Explore. See if you know anyone on the platform. If not, convince someone else (with an iPhone) to jump on and help you take it for a test drive. Check and make sure that your competitors aren’t already there and active. If they are, take notes.
3) Experiment. See what all the hullabaloo is over these “Magic Words.” Make a couple posts. Delete a couple posts and consider yourself informed
NOTE: For those who aren’t marketers, you’re done. Go on with your day. If Peach eventually finds a huge following, you can always pick it back up and you’ll have your username reserved.
4) For my marketer friends, it’s time to set your calendar reminders, Google Alerts or automated hashtag searches. At minimum you’ll want to check in with Peach once a month to see where things are going. Are people talking about Peach on other platforms? Has Peach added a that coveted KITTENFACE magic word?
The most advantageous time to be on a social media platform is the day before it gets hot, but that means you have to constantly be checking in. It’s like watching water boil without knowing whether or not the heat is even on. But it’s worth it. Imagine all those new users desperate to find someone they know on this new platform. And there you are, wielding those magic words with a creative flair that makes people think, “I want to see want to see what they do next.”
But first, Peach has to pull itself out of the death spiral it currently finds itself. So grab your name and sit back and watch. Are we witnessing a fizzle or phoenix?
Nick Cotton is a project manager based out of Los Angeles, California. He’s got a background in the entertainment industry, and uses his talent at online messaging to extol the virtues of content marketing, interactive fiction and sentences measuring 280 characters or less.
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