App made its money back and more, but developer says it has learned from launch mistakes
He's well known as TV's sweariest spin doctor, but how did The Thick Of It's Malcolm Tucker take the App Store by storm?
At the Apps World conference in London, Dave Addey ?�managing director of mobile developer Agant ?�talked about the branded Malcolm Tucker: The Missing Phone app, which his company made for book publisher Faber.
The app adopts the virtual form of Tucker's own iPhone, providing access to his emails, text messages, voicemails and tweets. It was released in December 2010 with a premium price ? �3.99.
"We weren't actually sure this app was going to make it onto the App Store," said Addey. "The language and political satire is pretty close to the knuckle, so throughout the development, we were constantly worrying that it would be rejected by Apple."
And it was, but not for the frequent swearing ?�it was initially rejected because it was called The Missing iPhone. Once the 'i' was dropped, the app sailed through the approvals process.
"The app didn't have any involvement from the BBC at all, even though it's based on a BBC TV show," said Addey. "The partners involved are predominantly the book publisher, the writers of the show and ourselves as app developers."
Addey shared some of the lessons learned from the app. First, the app was never promoted by Apple, apparently because of the language in the app and its 17+ rating. "The people I spoke to [at Apple] had tried it and did like it, so it had caught their attention. They just couldn't promote it? Next time, we'll do it for something less sweary!"
Agant also launched an app for QI, which enjoyed an enormous spike from an Apple promotion, and a "higher baseline" of sales afterwards when it was released. "The Tucker app earned back, and a bit more, but it would have done even better if we'd had that promotion," said Addey.
Another lesson: "At launch we didn't have a way to stop this story, or more importantly to pace it alongside your everyday life," he said. The app works very well if people have time to play the story, but not so well if people go into a three-hour meeting, then come out to find lots of virtual messages waiting for them.
This was solved in an update, with "trigger" messages that had to be listened to in order to drive the story forward.
Addey said that the support of The Thick of It's writer Armando Ianucci was crucial to the project, including getting the other writers and cast on board. Faber also threw its weight behind the project, despite the risks posed by the language, the political satire and the use of Apple's local notifications feature.
"We didn't know if that would be allowed? if it hadn't, that would have been a very expensive experience for us all," said Addey. He admitted that Agant perhaps didn't put as much effort into the launch promotion as it could have done, as a result of the uncertainty over whether it would be approved.
Another mistake: releasing The Missing Phone as an Entertainment app. "The Entertainment category is a depressing hinterland of something-booths, badly written soundboards and other tat that seems to sell," said Addey.
"In retrospect we should have put it into the Books category to give it more chance of staying up in the charts and being found that way," he added, before turning his attention to the timing of the app's launch.
"We launched at Christmas. I wouldn't do that again," he said. Agant thought this would be a good idea, to get the app in front of people opening their new iPhones and iPod touches at Christmas.
However, the company then realised that the App Store closes over Christmas, and the charts are locked over that period. With no promotion from Apple, The Missing Phone was old news by the time those charts opened up again in the new year ?�including for the journalists who'd spent the weeks before Christmas focusing on their app-of-the-year articles.
Addey also rued the fact that Agant didn't put any analytics into the app ?�something it's changed since, using Google's free analytics API ?�meaning it doesn't know how people have been using the Tucker app.
Agant is taking these lessons and applying them to more mainstream apps, starting with something that is literally more universal.
"The plan is to tell the story of the Apollo 11 Moon landing which took place over eight days, in real time," said Addey. "You can live through the story as it would have been experienced by the astronauts, using the fantastic audio that NASA has."
He paused. "Also it's got a lot less swearing in it!"
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/appsblog/2011/nov/29/apps-the-thick-of-it
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