Yesterday’s much-hyped launch of Cuil made me nostalgic for the glory days of the late 1990s. We didn’t need beta testers, in fact we didn’t even need a business plan. All our clients needed were breifings with the top tech and consumer publications and the subsequent fawning press on the Day Of Launch.
But as Erick Schonfeld points out in Tech Crunch, it turns out that all was not ready in Cuil-land.
The story quickly turned from Google-killer to Google’s lunch (make that an amuse bouche). The results Cuil returns aren’t particularly great, and sometimes completely off the mark. For instance, a search for “Cuil” doesn’t even bring up a link to itself on the first page of results.
It turns out that agile development begets better products after all. Releasing early and often, opening up the process to as many beta testers as you can, getting input and at the same time developing a community of users who will rise to your support should the subsequent media coverage turn south – is the way to go.
Let’s imagine the past two days had Cuil opened itself up to a public beta testing process in the lead-up to the launch. Not only would they have a stronger product, but they would have a vocal community of users willing to jump to their defense.
If you are working with a client in ’stealth’ mode – insist on looking under the hood and getting a test account before the product goes public. Don’t take your client’s word for it, make sure the darn thing works and works right.
I give a lot of credit to Cuil’s agency for getting them a great deal of coverage yesterday. And I don’t fault them for not asking enough questions – that isn’t the job of the PR agency. But it is in the interest of the agency to at least ask.
I’ve often used the car dealer example as a way of explaining the changes brought about by social media. Do you remember what it was like to go with your Mom and Dad to a car dealer, circa 1975? Do you remember Dad clutching a worn copy of Consumer Reports? Do you remember the wheeling and dealing and offers of undercoating? Do you remember waiting six to eight weeks for delivery?
No more. Now you can go on the Web and right from your local dealer’s web site you can see what they have on the lot and how much it will cost you to drive off in your very own new gas-guzzler. You can even find out how much that dream car cost the dealer. And if you can find a better deal, your local guy might even match it.
The point is that the power relationship between car dealers and car buyers has reversed. Only a decade ago, the dealers held all the cards – they knew the price and you didn’t. Now we have access to all the information we need to make an informed decision.
Now the problem with this analogy is I never thought of it from the perspective of the car dealers. And until recently I never realized that I am a car dealer – of sorts. We PR folks have acted like car dealers for years, often treating our clients like clueless newbs who think we have some secret power to create media opportunites for them. LIke the mythical roledex that can get us the front page of Businessweek with only one phone call.
The problem is our clients are just as smart as we are and many of them are way ahead of us in using Twitter, Facebook and other social media tools. So they have access to the same journalists on Twitter that we do. They can subscribe to the same media email lists we do. And they know (hopefully) almost as much as we do.
So what can we offer them when they can subscribe to the Help A Reporter Out list just as easily as we can?
Sue and I have always talked the talk about going off of the grid. But it’s something that’s a lot easier to talk about than to actually do. It took us a year of soul searching to yank The Boy Genius out of school. And it took us many summers of staring at the empty space in our backyard to put a vegetable garden into it.
Now with our brand spanking new crop (note the owl keeping guard) and a few farmers, we are very close to our goal of only eating food that either came from our garden or came from a source we can vouch for. With very few exceptions (seafood for example) everything we are eating came from within a days drive of our home.
And in the caring for myself department, having seen one too many proverbial “guy my own age” succumb to a health crisis, I’ve decided to take the bull by the horns. I’m two weeks into a cleanse diet – no caffeine, no cheese, no wheat products, only organic foods – and I’m already feeling like I’ve regained ten years.
So don’t be shocked the next time you see me… if I don’t have that usual bottle of diet coke attached to my hand.
Yesterday my MacBook Pro slowed to a grinding halt. Even an emergency visit my friendly neighborhood Genius Bar couldn’t bring her back to life. So after much gritting of teeth and crossing of fingers, I decided to wipe the sucker clean and reinstall from scratch.
After all, it’s amazing how much of your stuff is out there in the cloud.
So now I’m more or less back and intact. A few stray files and emails still to find and for some reason, iTunes doesn’t like talking to the external drive, but we’ll work all of that out soon.
David Parmet is a New York based PR and social media marketing guru who helps businesses and agencies navigate the seas of social media.
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The opinions expressed in this blog are solely my own and do not reflect those of my clients or employers, past, present or future.
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