Startups
Strategy and tactics for startups, especially in software or other enterprise technology.
Public and analyst relations: An example of epic fail
I post from time to time about stupid PR tricks, but last night I had an experience that was a whole different level of appalling, for reasons of ethics and general incompetence alike. Within hours, the vendor’s CEO had emailed me that the offending PR person would be terminated this morning.*
*By the way, that means an intriguing New England startup needs a new PR firm. By tomorrow it should be obvious who I mean.
It started as an ordinary kind of bad pitch. The PR rep emailed offering a briefing with a mystery company. I immediately deduced that the company was one I was in fact set up to talk with today, and had indeed been writing about since 2009. Besides being annoyed that I’d had to scramble to set up my own last-moment briefing with a company I’d led the way in writing about, I also bristled at the fact that the pitch included quotes from a couple of my competitors, whom I shall unimaginatively refer to as Dave and Merv.* So far, no big deal.
*Both personally and professionally, they’re two of my favorites. Even so, I dislike being told that I should use them as authority figures to be copied in my own view formation.
But then it occurred to me that those quotes probably weren’t approved, but instead were just lifted in an unauthorized manner from conversations, and indeed probably didn’t reflect the analysts’ precise views. So I messaged Dave and Merv. Shortly thereafter, the PR rep emailed me:
Neither David or Merv have authorized the quote for publication. It was sent in error to you, as I had believed you had agreed to the sharing of confidential information.
The bulk of my response to that — and the essence of this post — was: Read more
| Categories: Analyst relations, Ethics, Marketing communications, Public relations, Startups, Technology marketing | 31 Comments |
Note to technology startups
The following was originally part of my post today regarding Groovy Corp, but I decided to post it separately instead.
Getting a favorable mention in a couple of prominent blogs should not be the be-all, end-all of your launch strategy. Rather, you should be laying the groundwork for getting enterprises to place significant bets on your unproven technology. Eliciting the “I’m interested in that if it works” reaction is only a very small part of your overall marketing challenge.
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| Categories: Marketing communications, Startups, Technology marketing | Leave a Comment |