The Install (exec summary)

"Hi. My name is..."

Most of you thought *Slim Shady*.

You didn't choose to. Your brain finished the line for me.

That's not a memory. That's a file.

Eminem put a .mp3 on enough devices that 27 years later the phrase auto-completes in your head before you've decided whether to.

The .mp3 isn't the song.

The .mp3 is the install.

And the install is what survives everything else.

Not the tour. Not the chart position. The file on the device.

So I stopped thinking about reach as eyes-on-content and started thinking about it as files-on-devices.

The yardstick

Distribution is not marketing. Distribution is legacy.

The PDF won. Not because it was the most elegant document format. It won because it ended up on more devices than anything else. The MP3 did the same. So did the JPEG. The format that earned a life was the format on the most machines. Not the most correct. Not the most beautiful. The most installed.

The work that lasts is the work that travelled.

What an install actually looks like

Three signs you've installed, not just been seen.

1. Re-entry without prompting. Someone opens your thing before they decide to open it. The switching cost has disappeared.

2. Installed before adopted. It became part of a workflow before anyone consciously chose it.

3. Outlives the moment. Years later, the file is still on the device. Not because you maintained the relationship. Because the format earned its keep.

The files I've shipped that travelled were not the files I pushed hardest. They were the files good enough to keep, in a format easy enough to spread.

In a ICM workspace the output folder is the product

I spent a long time charging for the hours.

The client doesn't experience the hours. They experience the file. The deliverable. The thing they put in a folder and reference six months later when the person who commissioned it has moved on.

So I started pricing the folder, not the working. The hours are overhead. The output is the product. The output is what survives the invoice.

The takeaway

Stop chasing reach. Start designing for the install. Make more files. Get them on more devices.

That's the whole game.

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Full essay: https://aris-space.com/documents/thoughts-and-scribbles/the-install

//A<3

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