InfoMedia - Q+A with Joel Comm

FierceDeveloper editor Jason Ankeny spoke with InfoMedia's CEO Joel Comm (the marketing guru and Internet entrepreneur who wrote the New York Times bestseller The AdSense Code) about iFart Mobile's success, the value of application marketing and InfoMedia's plans for an encore.

On the iPhone opportunity: I had an iPhone the second week it came out--I immediately knew it was a force to be reckoned with. It was the first real computer I ever held in my hand. So we called an executive level meeting and whiteboarded out a number of ideas for applications. We knew that people love to give their opinion, so we developed the idea of building a social network around surveys--we felt like that would be big, especially in an election season.

iVote Mobile lets people comment, vote and submit their ideas. It's self-maintaining. Now we want to take it to the next level. The proof of concept is very effective, and we've got people who understand the data we're pulling in. We know users' year of birth and their gender, and we also know their geo-location, so every question answered can be intercorrelated, whether it relates to sports, entertainment, lifestyle or politics. We believe we may have more actual hard data on iPhone users than anyone else in world--so far, we've asked 2,000 questions. And iPhone owners are affluent--they're the consumers that everyone wants to reach.

On iFart Mobile: After iVote, we asked ourselves "What's next?" No one remembers exactly who suggested we do a fart app--the rejection of Pull My Finger [another flatulence app turned down by the App Store in September 2008 for "limited utility"] had not happened yet. We're a bunch of guys, so when the concept came up, we all cracked up and thought it would be hilarious.

Our designers came up with an interface that looks like its own device--iFart looks different from other applications. It has its own functionality. Features like Fart-a-Friend set it apart. The style we chose is superior to any competitors and copiers that have come after us.

The timing for iFart was perfect. You can never overlook timing. It was the right product at the right time. The novelty niche is as old as mankind, and farts are always funny. Even William Shakespeare made a reference to passing gas. We knew: People are gonna enjoy this.

On application marketing: Marketing is essential. I put a lot of time and effort into contacting editors and the media. The smartest thing we did with iFart is that we released our numbers--our sales-to-rank ratios. That did exactly what I hoped it would. Before that, nobody knew what it meant if you were ranked first or 25th or 76th in the App Store. 

Marketing is vital to business in general. Products, services and memberships all fail because of poor marketing. People just don't understand that there's a huge difference between making a better mousetrap and letting the world know you've made a better mousetrap. McDonalds is the perfect example of a company that's huge because of marketing--you can make a great product and it will stay on the shelf because nobody knows it's there, but excellent marketing can convince anyone that even an inferior product is the greatest thing since sliced bread.

On building on iFart's success: There are a lot of different business models for applications--some are one-off models. But when we built the iFart app, we built viral elements into it, and if we wanted to let it go, we could. Instead we have a contest now where we're asking users to make a 30-second commercial promoting iFart and put it up on YouTube. That brings even more awareness. It's already a hit--if we just let it go, we're leaving money on the table.

We're also building new applications. This month we released the Joel Comm app, which offers access to all my content. It's an application with its own turnkey system [Mobile Syndication Service] behind it, and we just submitted an iPhone app for a major celebrity. It's the beginning of a new genre of personal applications--it going to be so big that Apple will have to make a category for it. Everyone's going to want their own iPhone app.

On advice for aspiring developers: The best advice I can offer is that if you have an idea, pursue it--but make sure you do the market research to make sure there's a need and consumer demand. We have whiteboards full of ideas--we've thought of 50 ideas for mobile applications, but we have to be careful picking which ones we'll do. A good spur-of-the-moment idea won't necessarily sell.

Icon attribution to Snap2Objects used under a CC license.