SalesGenie: Why big companies suck and startups should beat them
A thirty second Super Bowl commercial this year cost $2.5 million. This is a big investment for a company of any size. Salesgenie.com made the investment this year. I’m not going to comment on the merits of fire hose advertising strategies; I never studied advertising. I’m also not going to discuss the poor production quality of their commercial; I’m not an expert in such things. I’m not even going to comment that their business is based on spam. Wait, I just did.
What I will say is that if you spend $2.5 million on a commercial, for god’s sake spend a few dollars on testing your website for cross browser compatibility!
In Internet Explorer
In Firefox
In contrast, GoDaddy.com made a smarter commercial. Did you catch a glimpse of Kevin Rose in the room with the raging marketing party? At least one person did, and quickly posted a link to the video and a comment to Digg. GoDaddy counted on this. (Kevin Rose is the founder of Digg.com.)
GoDaddy never made it to Digg’s front page based on their boring business. But they are on Digg’s front page now. Brilliant! Oh, and GoDaddy’s website works in Firefox.
February 24th, 2007 at 8:06 pm
You know, it could have been absolutely brilliant of them, in a 20/20 sort of way. They got a lot of free press by sticking out like a sore thumb.
March 22nd, 2007 at 7:37 pm
You’ve gotta be kidding me, did they really biff their website like that for Firefox?
April 8th, 2007 at 4:06 pm
One thing, I can’t understand is, what to hell are they doing in those page code, so that button looks like absolute positioned hehe. It’s crazy! Hell, with simple br tag this can look as same in any browser
April 8th, 2007 at 4:45 pm
Maybe this the ‘Head-On’ strategy. Make a commercial so obnoxious that you get viral publicity by getting mocked for it.
April 8th, 2007 at 8:13 pm
hahaha,
its funny how once a company reaches a certain level of success, its past does not count at all. if a company built on spam or started by spam becomes really successful, they’re no longer even considered spammers, because reality will almost twist itself to the new shape.
we live in a society that measures ethics after the fact, and only focuses on the end goal, not the means people take to get there. entrepreneurs should keep this in mind and adapt.