“One Last Thing”

Some thoughts about Snap’s 2022 Partner Summit

Two years ago, I wrote about Snap’s first virtual “Partner Summit” — that is, their main event and product unveiling for the year. At the time, it was novel. We were a few months into the novel coronavirus pandemic and lockdowns. Snap took what was a bad situation and made something quite lovely to behold. And it made sense, given their focus on AR. I wondered if they hadn’t set the stage to upstage the master of keynotes, Apple, in a few weeks.

Not only did they at the time, I actually think Snap’s events are in many ways better than Apple’s at this point. At least in the virtual realm in which we still unfortunately find ourselves. Look, Apple has also gotten quite good at such virtual events — and they now do several of them a year. But Snap’s event, which I “attended” this morning once again, just feels more natural at this point. As I quipped on Twitter, they’re sort of the younger, hipper version of Apple’s events. And they’re far beyond what Facebook puts on, of course.

Others do things differently. Google’s keynotes (the main one being I/O, which is coming up shortly) tend to be more nerdy, for that audience. Amazon takes a more “throw spaghetti at the wall” approach, which also seems to work for them. But every tech event in some way clearly aspires to be an Apple event and borrows heavily from the tropes of such events.

Of course, I think many would say that Apple itself isn’t quite as good at the events as they once were, which is no fault of their own, but rather because their MC is no longer here. Steve Jobs put the ‘master’ in master of ceremonies. He was so good at heading Apple’s keynotes — dating back decades! — that you could put him in front of an overhead projector and he would dazzle. I mean, back in the 1980s, that’s essentially what he did.

Everyone remembers Jobs as being so polished up on stage. But actually, as someone who went to a number of those keynotes, I don’t think he was particularly polished at all. Instead, it was a mixture of natural charisma and authenticity which made his keynotes work. He would often say things in a very human way, which were clearly not scripted (not fully, at least), because he was obviously in command of the subject matter. And it worked so well because you knew (or at least felt) that he meant what he was saying. “Isn’t that just great?” was one common refrain I recall.

You got excited about what he was talking about because he was clearly excited about what he was talking about. And you knew damn well that anything he wasn’t excited about wasn’t making the stage. So… it worked.

Others tend to focus on the polish of the Apple keynote without realizing this key ingredient. Because, how on Earth can you replicate that ingredient? You can’t. But I do think Snap is now the closest to capturing the mantle of best keynote. Because it’s not exactly like an Apple keynote. There are elements they borrow, sure. But it’s a very natural, digital-native type of presentation. In that regard, I think the pandemic actually helped them, as weird as that is to say. Not only can they showcase and focus on what they do so well with AR technology and the like, but the presenters got the live event weight lifted off their chests.

Captain Obvious: It’s hard to give a keynote. One of the reasons so many presenters come off as wooden is because they simply memorize their talking points and give them in the most robotic way possible so as not to forget anything. Again, Steve Jobs was great because he was natural. Very few people are. But in this new virtual setting, Snap CEO Evan Spiegel feels very natural. Calm, cool, and collected. And actually co-founder Bobby Murphy felt the same today. And the other presenters were all pretty great too. Again, it all just felt so natural. It’s almost as if these people live in AR day to day…

And so by the time we were nearing the end of the nice, svelte hour-long presentation, the call-back to the famous Apple “one more thing” — this time, “one last thing” — didn’t elicit eye rolls. It felt fun. And it was fun, because the product showcased, the Pixy, Snap’s new camera drone, was fun.

Everyone tries to do the “one more thing”. It almost always falls flat. But you’re allowed to do a “one more thing” if your one more thing is a cute little yellow drone camera thing.

Snap nails this angle too. Even when the products turn out to be not as great as hoped — cough Spectacles cough — Snap nails the fun, aspirational elements of product design and marketing. Most tech companies build products that are tech first, human second. Apple is the closest to a good balance here and always has been, which is why their products are generaly great. Snap perhaps is on the other side of the equation. They’re a little more human than tech, and again, that’s what perhaps leads to their hardware not being as great as pieces of tech. But it’s a fascinating attempt to change that equation. And I’d bet on them one day nailing this, even if not with the Pixy (which I ordered immediately).

Anyway, kudos to Snap for both thinking differently and acting differently in these events with these products, even while harkening back in ways to the company and person that originally thought differently.

Disclosure: I own some shares in Snap dating back to when the stock collapsed to single-digits because the market was dumb — though yes, Snap was also dumb for going public when they did.