Like most, if not all, car owners I had to buy a set of winter tires. Like most CFO’s would do, I did some price comparision only to find out how incredibly price fluctuates from a vendor to another. Not only price but price/quality. You see, I read a lot of tire reviews from all type of sources, read consumer reports and so on. I set my mind on a specific brand and looked around.  While I won’t say the names of the stores I visited, let’s say that the first one is a Canadian store and they sell tires. They didn’t have my brand but offered me “a comparable quality”. So I got my first quote, and my first shock. I then decided that there’s a better way to get quotes: let’s go back home and surf. 

Now buying tires online in Canada is not quite there yet. You’d think that with the law forcing Quebecois to buy tires that there would be a tires-r-us.qc.ca but there’s no such thing. Disappointed I was. I finally managed to find tires and rims for my car. Close to 1000 dollars for 4 pieces of metal and 4 blobs of soft rubber. Ouch! I took a closer look and estimated that the technology behind the rims is probably 75 years old (basic metal molding) and the tires, well that’s hard to tell as we can’t see inside the tire. Still, it’s pretty hard to tell that each tire is worth over 150$ a piece.

About the same time, I bought a new SLR camera. Unlike the snow tires, I’ve been wanting to get one for quite some time and managed to get a “good deal”. I also paid about 1000$ for the camera and I felt so much better buying a 1000$ camera than 1000$ worth of tires and rims. 

Why?

Because “I can see what I’m buying”. I can see the value and the technology behind the camera. I know that the camera maker invested millions in research and development, that they worked hard on optics, making the body as small as possible without compromising image quality and so on.

Did I get the same feeling with my tires? Hell no. In fact, I felt insulted that I had to pay 1000$ for basic, almost raw, material. Even though I opted for top quality tires, I feel that they look no better than cheaper tires from that Canadian store.

So with this in mind. When you try to sell a product, make sure you sell not only quality but a feeling of recomfort. Make sure your customers are getting the same value and feeling than when I bought my new camera.

Here is the email along with my comments (or what I was actually thinking while reading it)

Today, we’re excited to announce the public beta of Amazon CloudFront (cool!), a new web service for content delivery (hmm..? You mean S3 version 2.0?). With CloudFront, you can distribute content using a worldwide network of edge locations that provide low latency and high data transfer speeds (is this distributed S3..?). CloudFront works seamlessly with other AWS services such as Amazon S3 (Ah so it must be different than S3..?), and like all AWS services, is self-service with no up-front commitments, no long-term contracts and pay-as-you-go pricing. (Sounds good, but what is it exactly?) You can sign up for CloudFront – and begin using it today – at aws.amazon.com/cloudfront. (Yes, but what is it??)

The initial release lets developers and businesses deliver popular, publicly readable content worldwide. (like my web server..?)  CloudFront has a number of exciting features (Exciting yes, but what is it exactly?) that differ from many traditional (woah, is this http ng?) methods of content delivery. It:

• lets you get started easily there’s no need to contact a sales person or negotiate a contract. Anyone can get started in just minutes with only a credit card. (Wow! but what is it again?)
• works seamlessly with Amazon S3 – you can start delivering your files stored in Amazon S3 through CloudFront edge locations in a matter of minutes. (Cool! So it’s really not S3 then?)
• is simple and easy to use – a single API call is all that’s needed to get started delivering your content.
• lets you pay only for what you use there are no minimum fees and no long-term commitments. (So I don’t need S3 anymore then, or do I?)
• To Use Amazon CloudFront, all you need to do is store your objects in Amazon S3 (make sure they are publicly readable), then, make a simple API call to register your bucket with CloudFront. This API call will return a new domain name for you to include in your web pages or application. When clients request an object using this domain name, they will be automatically routed to the nearest edge location used by Amazon CloudFront for fast delivery of your content. No negotiations, no upfront fees, and no volume commitments. It’s that simple. (Oh, looks like I still need S3 after all…)

You can learn more about Amazon CloudFront and get started using the service at aws.amazon.com/cloudfront. (I don’t want to click there to find out more. I should know everything by now!)

Sincerely,

The Amazon CloudFront Team (oh well…! [deleting email])

The big question is why on Earth was Cuil labeled as a Google killer? I don’t know but here’s what went wrong. We all know about the David & Goliath story. In my version of this story, Goliath is Cuil and David is, well, the user. Where the story went wrong, is instead of having a fearsome, scary Goliath (Cuil), David (us) is faced with a 2 years old toddler. Sure, everyone in Goliath’s village said how big and brave he would eventually become. So Goliath’s ego grew immensely and he went on his quest and met with David.

Here are some mistake that you must not reproduce in your product.

First mistake : don’t let your ego blind you. In "David & Goliath" terms: what you want to do is train until rumors spread outside of your village that you are so good that you can beat anyone. Do not label yourself or let anyone else label you as a warrior when you are not one. In business language, let your product do the talking. In geek terms, let your coding do the talking. This applies to all aspects of life. If you are the best, people will find you. Bragging rarely works in life. Does Tiger Woods brag about how good he is or does Bill Gates brags about his bank account? No. Staying low is cool.

Second mistake : don’t use a name that is not pronounceable or that sounds like a male body part in French. This could be excused as domains are getting harder to find. Or perhaps this is a marketing scheme well implemented by Cuil. Indeed, instead of the famed Google slap, Cuil will be holding you by the balls. I guess this could prevent black hat SEO from happening after all… English is not my native tongue but even some native English speakers are not too sure how to say Cuil. If you’re not sure how to write down the URL, you’ve got major problems.

Third mistake : have a scalable, user friendly interface. Cuil has none. A simple search for the word "test" returned millions of results but only 11 results on the first page. One thing I particularly hate is to scroll lots of pages so I like to have a lot of information on the first page. Cuil forces me to click next many times. Another user interface issue is the "home logo" on the top RIGHT coder. I think this is the first time that I have seen a logo on the top right corner. Very annoying and confusing. It’s ok to make it simple, but please make it correct/logical at least.

Forth mistake : be bold, but don’t be bold, italic and underline at the same time. I’m curious why journalists and even many tech bloggers claimed that Cuil was a Google killer. It takes some guts to write this down without losing all your credibility. Even a non-tech journalist could have quickly concluded that Cuil is obviously not par with Google. Not even Yahoo. Not even MSN search. Now when your product is not as good as Microsoft’s product, you’ve got a big problem (that’s almost an insult actually). Why did people even spread this information? I don’t know. The problem here is that users will not return on Cuil’s website for many months as they know the product doesn’t work well. Had it really been a Google killer then things would’ve been different and the fire would’ve spread by itself. But this is not the case. I, myself, will probably not return for a few months even if I tend to give the runner a second chance. But most won’t give this extra chance. It’s just too late…

Cuil is dead. Long live Google.

I don’t think anyone will be able to compete with Google just now. So what should you do if you are in the search industry? The obvious choice is to partner with them. One thing I can think right away is to outsource the crawling of web sites. Since the Google index is not updated in real time, if you can do something for a few cents cheaper in another country then you might have a case.

I’m not a Google fanboy, I believe that Google will eventually collapse on itself just like other search engines did in the past. It’s life. Webcrawler, Hotbot, Inktomi, Altavista were all good search engines until they were left behind by users. I’m not saying the fight is hopeless but that if you claim to be a Google killer, then how come no one is using your product?

So there you have it. How not to do marketing.

Wikipedia’s definition of “viral marketing” is:

Viral marketing and viral advertising refer to marketing techniques that use pre-existing social networks to produce increases in brand awareness, through self-replicating viral processes, analogous to the spread of pathological and computer viruses. It can be word-of-mouth delivered or enhanced by the network effects of the Internet. Viral marketing is a marketing phenomenon that facilitates and encourages people to pass along a marketing message voluntarily.

In other words, you see something so interesting, so funny or so stupid that you have no choice but to tell others. And this is understandable. People like to “know what’s cool”. Your self esteem gets a boost by communicating these viral videos. Using the power of personal/social networks, the marketing message will spread rapidly and if well done, your company will get high visibility at a very low cost. Try forcing all your friends to stand in front of a billboard for 5 minutes and let me know how it goes. Send them a video of yourself as an elf and let me know how that went instead.

I speak of elf as this was Office Max’s viral attempt. Basically, you go to their site and upload a picture of your face. Almost instantly you have a dancing elf sporting your own face. This is an instant hit for all ages. Kids love it and so do grown ups.

Burger king’s attempt was a humoristic site where people could command a man disguised as a chicken. Various commands were available and people were drawn in guessing how far the chicken would go. Lots of blogs were filled with comments mentioning about various commands.

Dove was bitten in their second attempt at viral marketing. Their first attempt, “Evolution” was a huge success. It showed a video of a normal but pretty girl quickly becoming a beauty queen after going through a make up session and heavy Photoshop “enhancements”. The message Unilever sent is: anyone can be a beauty queen and please buy our products as we think average janes like you are hidden treasures.

Their second attempt, Onslaught, was not a success however. Their message was not clear (talk to your daughter about beauty before the industry does). Some users modified the original video and used Unilever’s own sexist advertisements in an attempt to pressure the company. Final score Dove: 0 – Users: 1.

Moral of the story: be careful about what message you want to spread. Humour works almost all the time. Finally, don’t abuse viral marketing. It may bite back and you don’t want to be seen as a spammer.