How to Win by Doing Less, in a World Obsessed with More
by Kirstin Piening
In a world of ‘everything’ brands, Light Phone is radically clear on what it doesn’t do
Recently, Airbnb shared its big ambition to fuel its next phase of growth: to become an ‘everything’ app. Not only did a sea of strategists sigh, mournfully taking it off the pedestal of ‘brands that have grown by being radically clear on what they stand for’, but it’s also indicative of a wider trend in the world of tech – the growing desire to do everything and be everything, to everyone.
As any casual fan of Challenger Thinking knows, while this might be tempting there’s real danger in being an ‘everything’ brand. When every brand is trying to be everything for everyone, then how can you expect a consumer to pick between brand A and brand B? You lose any sense of distinctiveness and difference, falling into a sea of sameness and a relentless downward spiral towards commoditisation and tit-for-tat competition. (And it’s also really expensive! Our research into the Cost of Dull shows the financial dangers of getting stuck in the sea of sameness – read more here).
If you are one of these big tech brands with deep pockets, then there’s a simple solution – you can just throw money at the problem! But what if your budget doesn’t reach to fathomless depths? Or you just would rather spend your cash more wisely, not chucking it down the drain simply to try and eke your neck out above the pack?
Well, there’s a lot to learn from a Challenger brand like Light Phone.
Light Phone is part of the growing category of ‘dumb phones’ – simplified phones designed to help you cut down your screen time. The most basic in this category would be your classic Nokia brick. But increasingly, there’s demand for brands like Light Phone, which offer all of the beauty and design of an iPhone, but with none of the ick.
This is a small business, with almost no marketing budget. But during the recent launch of their latest product, the Light Phone III, they received an enormous amount of press – receiving write ups in the NYT and beyond. And CEO and co-founder Kaiwei Tang thinks he knows why. Much of the press comes from the intrigue, curiosity, and sometimes confusion, of paying smartphone prices for something that does much, much less than your typical iPhone or Android.
This reaction is so strong because Light Phone is challenging some of the fundamental assumptions we have about how the category should work. Tang told us, “Using Light Phone, at times, will be inconvenient. This is not a smartphone. This will not fit into your smartphone-centric lifestyle. And that’s a foreign idea. Because you don’t break away from a smartphone. You always have them 24/7, which is why what we do creates so much tension.”
And this is no accident. Light Phone doesn’t try and minimise the perceived shortcomings they have compared with the competition – they amplify them. It will feel different, and that’s the point. Because everything they do is driven by their point of view on what they are challenging about the category, and the alternative vision for how things should be instead. For Light Phone, the entire model of the smartphone category is broken. From Tang’s perspective, it’s a category that – through advertising and the attention economy – has created a model that preys on our vulnerabilities as humans and profits from them: “At big technology companies, their focus is not about us. Their mission is not aligned with us as humans, our human experience.”
Everything that Light Phone does is not only about challenging that model but portraying an alternative vision for what that category should be about instead: “designing technology tools that empower the human versus the company.” Now, the most interesting bit in that sentence (to us!) is the word ‘tools’. This simple word signals clearly the role that Light Phone thinks smartphones should play in consumers’ lives. Because a good tool is very different to a good app: A tool requires a deliberate action, it always has an end point, and the better a tool is designed, the less you need to use it.
“[The tools] were designed so that you could finish a task quickly and then move on and live your life…if you use a tool like a hammer you use it and then put it down. You don’t swipe with a hammer for 5 hours.”
This focus on ‘tools’ also helps to clarify what not to do. Yes, no ads or endless scroll, but another filter for the Light Phone team is ‘could this task be done better by a different tool’? Take the the case of email – it isn’t on the Light Phone, and it isn’t likely to be. Tang describes how, despite the frequent requests to include email, he thinks there’s already a tool out there that does that job really well – your laptop. And no smartphone-sized tool that they could build, could compare with that experience.
“Well sure, all this talk of ‘not doing things is great’” I hear you cry – “but that isn’t why people buy products!?” Very true, astute reader. And that’s why Light Phone are very deliberate in changing the criteria for choice. While the rest of the category tries to cram more and more into their phones, chasing endless features and upgrades, Light Phone is offering consumers something very different. Do you want to feel heavy and weighed down, or do you want to go light?
‘Going light’ describes the feeling that being without your smartphone can bring, even if just for a little while – being less stressed, more productive, more creative (among others, according to the Light Phone team). And by focusing on this feeling, it means Light Phone isn’t selling a phone that does less – it’s selling everything that a life not dependent on a smartphone can bring. It’s this experience of ‘going light’ that turns Light Phone customers into real fans and devotees. But for those that don’t ‘get it’ the experience can be completely baffling. Tang said “There is a group of people that feel like this is going to change their lives and there is a group of people that feel like ‘what’s the point?’…We’ve been doing this for 10 years, and this polarised conversation never stops.”
For a Challenger like Light Phone, a divisive reaction is a clear sign that their strategy is working. It means you are doing something genuinely different to the category; it means the sharpness of your point of view is being translated across everything you do; and it means there is real energy and attention focused on your brand (compared with the complete apathy towards many others).
“I love the reaction because the last thing you want is to create a brand and everyone is like ‘meh’…we’re making a statement”.
So for Light Phone, deciding what not to do has been invaluable. And Tang believes that it will be increasingly important for all brands – especially in the world of tech – in the years to come, too. “We’re in an era where with your smartphone and AI you can do just about anything…the value, now, in my opinion, is not what you can do – because you could do anything. The value is what you choose not to do.”