<p><pre><code> When people arrived, they sat down, opened an envelope and read,
“Don’t Have $100k to spend on seeding a viral video? Try Virool.
We do the same thing as X company, but better, faster and cheaper!”
</code></pre>
I find this unethical.
I'm just an engineer, but if I spent a ton of money on a marketing campaign and got a little shady with my tactics, I wouldn't write an article to pat myself on the back about getting 15 emails.
I love that this article actually delivered on its title's promise by giving out specific tactics -- as opposed to the trite, generalized advice that most blog posts try to get away with.
> <i>Lesson: Crash your competitor’s panel</i><p>A better title:<p><pre><code> How To Land Any Major Brand For Your Startup By Being Dick</code></pre>
I like the T-shirt idea and really just the attitude of spur of the moment making it happen kind of marketing. Step 3 seems a bit much.<p>We just started marketing a start-up for the first time and this article led me to question an upcoming situation:
If I was unable to secure vendor space at a conference/expo, would it be ethical for me to wear my company t-shirt and have cards/fliers available for people who ask me about it? Would it be appropriate for me to talk to vendors about my company?
My favor part of the article is where he talks about landing Pepsi as a client - granted he hustled a bit, but a major reason for the success was that his neighbor was friends with the CMO on Linkedin. So, his hustle helps, but without the network, he likely wouldn't have gotten anywhere. Nothing wrong with that - that's the way life tends to work, but that's not exactly something that anyone can replicate in trying to land a major brand.
Trying to force a "viral" campaign (and I think it's not really viral if you're putting in a huge marketing budget to spread it) strikes me as putting the cart before the horse. Sure, if it comes off it'll be great for them, but most of "viral" marketing campaigns are huge flops that go viral for being <i>really bad</i> (and critically all the names dropped in the article have never really achieved a positive viral success)
Thumbs up for the real-time hustlin' at the competitor's panel. You got me thinking on how to emulate it.<p>Off topic, you have something funny going on here: <a href="https://img.skitch.com/20121017-k22xwtq4ckqjattgd7xweyn6e2.jpg" rel="nofollow">https://img.skitch.com/20121017-k22xwtq4ckqjattgd7xweyn6e2.j...</a>
This isn't anything revolutionary, much less interesting.<p>A marketing guy dumped a bunch of money at a conference, gave out a bunch of conference garbage, and paid some online businesses for rush delivery.<p>Oops I didn't credit the 15 emails and all the potential clients...try writing this post after you get some new work, not right after pulling some joker PR stunt.<p>>Our competitor was furious, but our potential clients loved the hustle. We got a bunch of agencies interested and I received around 15 e-mails following that panel requesting a meeting.
Compare the comments on this story to the ones found here: <a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1834976" rel="nofollow">http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1834976</a><p>What's the qualitative difference which elicits a different response?
i think that the hustle is OK. They were just 3 people at that time and they had nothing to lose, besides, in the marketing space i find that controversial actions get massive attention quickly if it's done well