

How To Land Any Major Brand For Your Startup - adebelov
http://www.virool.com/blog/how-to-land-fortune-100-brand-for-a-startup/

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acangiano

      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!”
    

I find this unethical.

~~~
bruce511
Yes, I agree. The advice about dressing distinctively or doing your homework,
that's all good, but crashing someone else's event, specifically the placing
of rogue advertising in the event itself, that crosses a line.

Like with all ethics it's a somewhat subjective position. For me it crosses a
line, but I bet more than a few others think its brilliant. Especially for a
company in the marketing space. I wouldn't do it myself though, for the
following reasons;

Respect. In business it's important to have a sense of respect, for your
employees or employer, for your customers, for your competitors, and for
yourself. An act like this shows a lack of respect to a competitor, and so I
start to wonder who else gets trampled on on your path to success. Maybe me?

Karma. What goes around comes around. Sure this seems like a good idea when
you're tiny and willing to pretty much do anything to get noticed, but don't
complain when someone does the same thing to you. If some competitor hands out
flyers outside your building one day, to your customers, don't come crying to
me about it.

Reputation. It's one thing to be the new kid on the block. It's another to be
the new kid who breaks the rules on their first day, in full view of everyone
and gets away with it. Stuff like that can land you with a rep you'd rather
not have.

Kudos for the first two parts of the article. Well done. It shows your
creativity. The third though leaves a bit of a bad taste in the mouth. Sorry
mate, but that bit is just uncool.

~~~
vladd
Respect, karma, reputation, breaking the law - these topics can be related to
this incident and discussed in an insightful and rational way.

Ethical? I remember what Linus Torvalds said: "ethics are to me something
private. Whenever you use it as an argument for why _somebody_else_ should do
something, you're no longer being ethical, you're just being a sanctimonious
dick-head."

( <http://linuxfr.org/nodes/85904/comments/1230981> )

~~~
gizzlon
Well, Linus is wrong. We all do this every day, and have written and unwritten
rules to enforce it.

Just because he can code, doesn't mean he has reflected on other things..

~~~
winter_blue
> Just because he can code, doesn't mean he has reflected on other things.

I absolutely agree with that sentiment.

I have seen Linus passing judgement on all sorts of things that have nothing
to do with code in a very "sanctimonious" manner.

~~~
gizzlon
yeah, and he's entitled to his opinion, of course. It's up to us as readers
and listeners to determine if the opinions hold any merit.

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pgroves
This is currently #1 on the frontpage. I have to assume it got there by skeezy
methods like those described in the article.

~~~
zaptheimpaler
Even the testimonials look fake:

>We were WOW’ed with the results we received with Virool! Our video jumped
from 0 to over 500,000 YouTube views in one weekend Mary Smith, Advertising
Agency

>Virool is like a PR company on STEROIDS. Our video ended up on hundreds of
blogs and accumulated millions of youtube views. In short, "Virool is
AWESOME!" Jay Singh, Artist Management

>I love the real time analytics and transparency of Virool campaigns. Our
clients are always happy with knowing exactly who is watching their videos and
seeing the views stack up

Jordan James, Advertising Agency

This isn't definitive proof by any means, but in light of the other things
they're doing, it is suspicious. The names and the content seem rather fake.

~~~
mikescar
Good catch. Yes, this all reads as very fake. Link to real people who said it
if it's real.

All of these names sound like made-up people.

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mikescar
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.

~~~
zacharycohn
It's not consumer tech, he's not selling an app for $.99.

15 interested leads from agencies, each one willing to do six or seven figures
of business, is a huge win.

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scoremotive
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.

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pooriaazimi
> _Lesson: Crash your competitor’s panel_

A better title:

    
    
        How To Land Any Major Brand For Your Startup By Being Dick

~~~
TazeTSchnitzel
Or perhaps even better:

    
    
        How to feel like a god in the short term and lose big in the long term by disrespecting your competitors.

------
gamewisp
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.

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?

~~~
yentseng
I too love the T-shirt idea. Last week my team just had some T-shirts made, so
we could catch some eyeballs on the streets while we hosted our walking-tours.
We designed our T-shirts to have our company name inside a Search Bar and a
mouse cursor pointing at the Search Button, hoping people on the streets will
go home and google us!

I think its fair game to wander around and talk to vendors in the expo, but
putting flyers on the chairs of a competitor's panel is kinda crossing the
line.

~~~
gamewisp
Yeah i agree with you on the last point there.

I really like your t-shirt design! So cool. Gotta add a selection in your
"Where did you hear about us?" form for "T-shirt"!

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whichdan
After getting the 15 followup emails, did any of them convert?

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inthewoods
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.

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Trezoid
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
_really bad_ (and critically all the names dropped in the article have never
really achieved a positive viral success)

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mmvvaa
Thumbs up for the real-time hustlin' at the competitor's panel. You got me
thinking on how to emulate it.

Off topic, you have something funny going on here:
[https://img.skitch.com/20121017-k22xwtq4ckqjattgd7xweyn6e2.j...](https://img.skitch.com/20121017-k22xwtq4ckqjattgd7xweyn6e2.jpg)

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mikescar
This isn't anything revolutionary, much less interesting.

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.

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.

>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.

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mikeknoop
Compare the comments on this story to the ones found here:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1834976>

What's the qualitative difference which elicits a different response?

~~~
jakejake
Interesting point. I suppose with PayPal there's a bit of "David vs Goliath"
to it.

The ice block is also exceptionally more clever than just posting flyers that
say "we're cheaper"

~~~
TazeTSchnitzel
There's also that element of Karma I suppose.

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waratuman
So did you land anyone?

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mbustamante
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

~~~
pooriaazimi
And ethics, professional tactics and being classy be damned...

