
Brand building mistakes France’s (and most International) entrepreneurs make - nreece
http://scobleizer.com/2009/12/10/world-brand-building-mistakes-frances-entrepreneurs-make/
======
forensic
Fuck. I had no idea I was so uncool until I read this rant.

Apparently being an entrepreneur means reading the marketing soundbytes of
over 1000 twitter feeds. I guess the media likes twitter because they can just
write headlines and omit the articles.

~~~
Confusion
He has lost sight of the fact that most people, including entrepeneurs and
VC's are not actively using twitter. He makes a large point, also in a comment
here, of there being '500 startups on twitter'. 500 Out of how many? How
active are they on twitter? Has it brought them anything? Do _they_ feel it is
worthwhile? In what phase did they start twittering?

Many people, entrepeneurs, companies, etc. that supposedly are on twitter, are
not in fact using it. They have a presence, that's it. He mentions that many
VC's are on twitter... which means nothing. There is no indication whatsoever
that they are actually actively monitoring it.

The rant is also incoherent: the second point is titled 'lame and anemic
marketing materials' and subsequently mostly talks about the medium through
which the materials are distributed.

Several of his points are based on _one_ case. The robot startup didn't have a
demo... well, perhaps it just wasn't finished yet? Perhaps it just had a
breakdown?

Then the point about the hot new app or news of the day. Because _he_ feels it
is important, it _is_ important? I don't have time to keep track of every new
thing everywhere. Hell, I don't even have an i-phone. Somehow that means I'd
be a lame entrepeneur? What a silly criterion. I keep track of everything
remotely related to my business. Foursquare is not related and I'm not
interested in it. I have looked into augmented reality browsing. Does that
excuse me or would he still get mad?

~~~
RobertScoble
Dell says they make millions of dollars with their Twitter account. I talked
with Zappos' CEO Tony Hsieh and he says Twitter is so invaluable to his
business that they force all their new hires to use it. I could go on, there
are tons of books about how good Twitter is working for businesses. There's a
reason why businesses from CocaCola to CNN are using Twitter. I guess you have
other data, though, and the rest of us are just doing good merlot or
something.

If no one is using Twitter why does my Tweet stream move so fast 24 hours a
day?

And, as for lame and anemic marketing materials, I figure that people got the
point with just those words. I guess I have to post the lame PPT for you to be
happy, but I was trying not to personally embarrass the individual companies.

~~~
Confusion
_Dell says they make millions of dollars with their Twitter account._

Have they explained how? Did that explanation make sense? Could there be a
reason or situation in which the person you spoke would just say this?

 _I talked with Zappos' CEO Tony Hsieh and he says Twitter is so invaluable to
his business that they force all their new hires to use it._

And anyone, including you, can name a dozen companies that are doing very
well, despite not being on Twitter or even considering it.

 _I could go on, there are tons of books about how good Twitter is working for
businesses._

The number of books is not a good indication for the success of a technology.
I'd even say that the more books that need to be written to convince us, the
less likely it is to be true. Smells like an attempted self fulfilling
prophecy.

 _There's a reason why businesses from CocaCola to CNN are using Twitter._

There's a reason why dozens of other succesful business are not using Twitter?

 _If no one is using Twitter ..._ Straw man.

 _I figure that people got the point with just those words._

But in fact people are getting confused, because the words do not describe
what follows. The paragraph hinges on two thoughts, which may leave the casual
reader with 'he didn't actually support that claim'. I was interested in
discovering what you considered 'anemic' and didn't find it. That's bad.

------
yardie
Here we go again with one useless blogger calling other companies failures. As
an American living in France I'd like to point out that most of the "hot" web
apps he speaks of are basically useless to me because they don't work outside
of the valley and big US cities.

The French CEO doesn't hear of foursquare, in fact most Americans don't know
of foursquare, because when you type in Paris you get a fuckin crêpe shop in
Astoria, Queens as the top result.

And so on and so on. Most of the companies listed only have traction in US,
period. Pandora sounds good but I'll stick to Spotify and Deezer because it's
available right now where I'm at.

BTW, Twitter is great, but what happened to sending an email if you have
questions. I have a hard time believing you can ask a good question or get a
reasonable response in 140 characters. Lots of companies are on twitter but
it's not their point of contact, just a tertiary channel.

~~~
RobertScoble
I talk all the time to CEOs via Twitter. I guess they found a way to answer in
140 characters.

As to Paris, it's only been turned on for two weeks and I didn't see a crepe
shop in Astoria, Queens, but I guess I missed that cause I don't like crepes.
The rest of the tips left were freaking awesome, though, and I greatly
appreciated the few people who left them.

Um, the whole post was actually about companies doing it right if you looked
at it the right way. I didn't name a SINGLE company who was doing it wrong.
Glad you are such a careful reader!

------
hristov
Let me summarise this: Mr. Scolbe leaves his home in the Bay Area and goes to
France. He then discovers that the French are very different than the Bay Area
people he interacts with and gets very deeply insulted.

~~~
RobertScoble
Dude, this is my sixth time in France and in the past two years I've traveled
260,000 miles: most of that was to places outside of the US. When I attended a
conference recently in China they had Twitter running on the screen there.
Same at LeWeb (which was in France). It's pretty damn rare and lame that a
company isn't on Twitter.

~~~
hristov
Yes, maybe they have heard about Twitter in other countries. But maybe in
France things have not gotten to the point yet where not being on Twitter is
considered some kind of a grave personal insult that requires an angry rant. I
actually hope things have not gotten that far in America either.

Oh, and by the way, I wonder did the Chinese have an opinion on foursquare?

------
pierrefar
I think this rant boils down to the battle for power: does the entrepreneur
have the power or does the media covering startups have the power?

If you think it's the entrepreneur, then you can ignore everything Scoble says
and be happy it about. You might even disagree completely and call it a rant.

If you think the media has the power, then Scoble's post is a to-do list to be
followed like the gospel truth.

Personally, I think the truth is somewhere in between, and a lot closer to
Scoble's view than not. Regardless of what we the entrepreneurs think, the
media has a limited bandwidth and it's regularly saturated. If you want to
differentiate yourself, you gotta market and feed the media the info _you_
want them to cover in the format _they_ want you to use.

------
paraschopra
Funny, nowhere in the post he mentions that having an amazing product
experience is essential to brand building. Apparently, product doesn't matter
to the brand image but being on Twitter does.

~~~
RobertScoble
That was implicit in the article. Geesh. I don't treat my audience like
preschoolers.

------
markmywords
If you follow these steps you raise awareness in the USA while potentially
neglecting your home country of operations. Scoble should not discount the
local context.

~~~
RobertScoble
French radio was talking incessantly about Twitter this morning. You are
mistaken. You really should get to France and see the local market.

~~~
pqs
Journalist in France and in Spain talk a lot about twitter, but here, in
France and Spain, very few people use it. Only those that think that hype
means building something. Hype is hype. Vapour. Nothing. That's the main view
here.

------
RobertScoble
157 French Startups that are on Twitter: <http://twitter.com/cgiorgi/french-
startups>

I guess they are all hyping and wasting time, at least they are if you listen
to the people typing here.

~~~
sailormoon
_I guess they are all hyping and wasting time_

I know you're trying to be sarcastic but basically ... yep.

------
davidw
Whether you agree with him or not, some people are not following the "would
you say it to his face?" rule. Go ahead, criticize, but do so in a way that's
professional and polite.

------
sailormoon
This annoying post could and should be retitled "list of hoops I personally
demand a company to jump through or I throw a tantrum".

I mean seriously. Have you ever decided against trying out a new web site
because the CEO of the company behind it isn't on Twitter? Scoble is living in
his own little world.

~~~
RobertScoble
How many startups a day do YOU really try? I bet not many.

~~~
sailormoon
You're right. Not many. And it has absolutely nothing to do with Twitter or
any of the other points you mention.

Word of mouth remains the absolutely most powerful marketing force and as far
as I can tell will remain so for a long, long time.

