Stories to Life Augmented Reality Children's Book - Feedback Needed!
We need all the help we can get for our little AR studio project, Stories to Life. Whether you have kids, or you're a kid yourself, our Stories to Life Augmented Reality Children's Book is a magical combination of the love of children's books, and the innovation of AR and 3D animation, and Fuzzy Logic need help to make our dream a reality so please give us feedback on how we can spread the word and support us now on Kickstarter!
kck.st/2o91E3b
kck.st/2o91E3b
Comments
From what I've seen, the strongest campaigns have been the ones where people who see the content already want to share that content (and therefore the campaign) for whatever reason, whether it's because it tells a great joke, or is some very novel technology, or captures some kind of nostalgia, or does something else that's extraordinary. I know time's super important right now and I don't know what would be the best way of spending the time you have, but I feel like creating content that makes people want to share it with their friends/followers is invaluable (and ideally you'd have had this content ready before the campaign, with new content daily already mapped out). Maybe it's a really great story moment, captured in a short video or gif, that tells a great joke, shows a goofy moment, makes someone feel really good, or whatever, something that's easy to tweet/retweet/share/pin, and ideally in a form you can track.
As it is (with the little I know of the audience), I feel like I'd want to see a lot more about what the companion app does (because this is what differentiates it from the hundreds of thousands of story books out there). Like, if it's just playing animations, that's difficult to pay for when there's so much kids' content that's free on Youtube already. If there's some great advantage to the app being AR, and you show how useful this is (especially an experience you can't already get elsewhere), I think that'd help quite a lot. (Thumb-sucking here, but would it be useful to move around the page, and see the scene unfolding from various different points of view? I mean, I don't see an immediate usefulness to it, but perhaps you could come up with one? Is there some other way to make it more interactive, so that the parent and child can create the story together, rather than being passive viewers?)
Lastly, I have no idea if there are "parent communities" (I'm sure there must be, somewhere, but I have no idea where I'd look. I'm pretty sure parents themselves need support groups of some kind), but perhaps that'd be a good place for showing the product.
Sorry I'm probably not much help at the stage you're currently at.
Like he said, I think the campaign needed to know its audience before it went live. If there were any lessons I've learned from watching crowdfunds, it's the whole "bring your own audience" mantra. If you had a community of people interested in the game already, you should have got at least 1/3 to 2/3 in the first few days. I see you've had some press coverage, how much reaching out to press have you done prior to the campaign? Having a bunch of press coordinated is at least important if you don't have a database of signed-up and interested potential buyers.
So... reaching out to press and communities now is probably too late, but probably your best bet. If nothing else you'll be able to see what their reaction to the effort is. That's important.
Other than that, the presentation *is* top notch, great production values all round, can't fault any of that.
I think there might be a little confusion about what this thing is - is it an app? Is it a book? No, it's both, and that's a confusing sell, and like mentioned above - I think MOST parents are in the camp of not wanting their kid to be around yet another app. Especially not at story time. I've just had a parent tell me that their kid will be technology-free until they go to high school. That's the typical mindset. Whether it's right or wrong is completely regardless, the sentiment is there.
Just read the comments, the lack of iOS is a problem. There's no way around that at crowdfund level, but you could do some kind of structure where you pay people back or something. But that should have been considered right up front, and is too late now. And I doubt it would move the needle by enough at this point.
Best of luck, but I hate to be the bearer of bad news - I think it was a premature launch, from what I see so far. Now you gotta think about how to deal with it - Some creators pull the plug before the funding period ends so that it doesn't look like it's unfunded, some try to make a big push. Do you think you can feasibly muster up enough marketing noise to get people to back something a week in and at less than 10%? Perception matters, and that's why bringing your own audience is important, having that early 60% is SO important. Also given the nature of the content it's difficult to be controversial or jokey about it. So that's an unfortunate misfit against the popular drawcard format of crowdfunding.
And this might be picking bones in an egg, but pounds are harder to sell than dollars. But probably not something you have control over. If you could, dollars will be best.
KS progress doesn't look good, but I do hope you will push this project through in some other manner. It really seems like the future, an interactive physical book, the concept is excellent. Please do post here if/when you publish.