How To Land Any Major Brand For Your Startup | Hacker News Reader

How To Land Any Major Brand For Your Startup

virool.com

112 pointsadebelov65 comments

  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.

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.

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 )

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..

> 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.

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.

Linus is telling other people it's wrong and they shouldn't do it.

There's a word for that kind of argument, but for the life of me...

I prefer referring to it as a "Self-Detonating Statement."

You shouldn't murder someone.

Oh sorry, please stop me from being a sanctimonious dick-head.

Agree. Particularly since you are normally supposed to pay for a seat drop, it seems dishonest to me.

I'm going to have to pick the other side on this one. It's an unfortunate result of capitalism that being what some people call "unethical" usually rewards businesses with success. You'll struggle to find any major successful business that didn't get to the position they're in by doing some unethical (and not always in a balsy but harmless way as was done here) things to their competitors. Look at Newscorp, spying on people to get news. Or Apple using unethical manufacturers. Or Microsoft, stealing software. It happens every day, and when it gets to such a corporate level, it's often labeled corporate greed, but honestly it's not. All it is is intelligent business leaders realizing that it's better for their company to do something unethical and take the heat for it than to do nothing at all.

In some conferences this might have been more harmful to his business. However, he was promoting a viral marketing company using creative marketing tactics to a group of jaded marketers. At the worst they would see it as more spam. Or his highly-targeted audience, having already expressed an interest in his service by attending the session led by a competitor, would respond to his bottom-line appeal. A classic example of differentiation.

His audience was probably more receptive to this than non-marketers would have been. And certainly this appeal wouldn't have been successful if the entire conference was about his competitor. But this was a large and varied marketing conference. As he says, know your audience and market accordingly.

The comment you are replying to stated they find this unethical. That is unrelated to whether or not its a viable or successful technique.

If the whole viral marketing business is unethical then maybe not (not sure if that is the case).

It's tasteless, considering they actually placed the flyers on the seats of attendees at an event of "X company". I think it may even be fair to argue they were directly sabotaging that event, in which case this wasn't only unethical but also legally questionable. Maybe as a European I'm culturally impaired in this regard but that's not what I would call "hustle", at least not in a good way.

It's also illegal: they're using the resources of a competitor for their own promotion. I'm pretty sure it's a case of unfair competition (IANAL).

It's self-destructive in the long term, for two reasons:

You won't attract the best customers (1) and your competitor will not forget (2).

i love the hustle.

i find that people use the word "unethical" very liberally. its not clear to me how there is a moral brightline here.

fortune favors the bold.

(edit: before everybody thinks i'm just an unethical kind of guy... i definitely believe in morals, i just don't think this is a clearly immoral action. also, i generally favor aggressive marketing tactics for early stage startups. I think it's one of the advantages startups have over established players.)

Ethics != Morals [1][2], by the way. Some things that are clearly immoral in one value system or another are clearly NOT unethical in any system of ethics. Something that is ethical/unethical pretty much always refers to a relationship, for instance. Consider any "thought" crime ("coveting" comes to mind); if you're a native English speaker, describing "coveting" to be immoral makes sense (speaking semantically), where calling it "unethical" doesn't click.

In particular, since ethics are about relationships, they are defined by the (sometimes unspoken) rules of that relationship. The ethical framework of a lawyer/client relationship is different than the ethical framework of two guys chatting at a bar, for example. If the lawyer hears a confession to a serious crime, it would be unethical to report it, while a bar buddy would be ethically clear to report the same crime. I would even argue that a lawyer reporting a confession to the authorities could be considered to be a moral (if unethical) decision, at least in some belief systems, though probably not in all.

And in this case...I'm not a marketer, but the fact that the other company was "furious" strongly indicates to me that it probably was an ethical lapse. When you're playing chess and someone makes a really key move, you may be disappointed, but you don't get mad. If they take your queen from the board when you weren't looking, you do get mad. The latter is certainly "outside of the box", but it's against the rules. And yes, there DO exist "sore losers" who will complain even when they have no right to, but I do think it was at least a minor ethical violation here, at least between him and the conference organizers who typically charge to distribute fliers like that.

[1] http://www.argee.net/Thrawn%20Rickle/Thrawn%20Rickle%2046.ht...

[2] http://everyday-ethics.org/2008/11/ethics-vs-morals-not-as-e...

upvoted. i am aware that i used ethics and morals interchangeably in the parent response, and as i was originally writing it, i debated whether that was appropriate (i left it because i didn't thin i'd get called out, obviously wrong).

From one of your links "According to Dictionary.com, ethics is a system of moral principles, while morals are principles of right and wrong conduct."

this is the sort of discussion that can rapidly devolve into something less interesting than the story of virool's hustle. i don't think anyone will dispute that the behavior was aggressive, questionable, possibly unprofessional.

i don't have a strong position on whether it's ethical or not, but i still dig the hustle.

i won't dwell, since i think it detracts from the real story here.

just went back and re-read your paragraph.

I am fine with "Ethics != Morals".

However your explanations seem suspect:

1. I disagree entirely with the comments "ethical/unethical pretty much always refers to a relationship" and "ethics are about relationships"

2. "Some things that are clearly immoral in one value system or another are clearly NOT unethical in any system of ethics." -- This confuses me. Can you give me an example of an act that is CLEARLY IMMORAL in one value system and also CLEARLY NOT UNETHICAL in ANY SYSTEM OF ETHICS

1. Sorry, but that's how I see it used probably 99% of the time. Are you a native English speaker? And does it sound right to you to say "It's unethical to THINK X?" It sounds completely wrong to me, and (typically) when I bring it up to a native English speaker, they almost always think about it and agree.

Maybe you missed that memo, but it IS the typical usage, as I've observed it and confirmed with others. You don't have to believe me, but I've gotten a surprising number of upvotes (here and elsewhere) as a result of posting about this topic, so I think I'm not being crazy here.

2. This actually follows trivially from #1, in that ANY thought crime (looking at porn, coveting, thinking disrespectful thoughts of an elder, etc.) is de facto NOT about a relationship, and therefore can't be "unethical."

You may not believe #1, and if not, well, your loss. Not interested in arguing about it further. But you shouldn't be confused as to how #1 can imply #2.

There's additional confusion from the fact that "Ethics" as a topic of study is often just a synonym for "Morality," (capital letters) which doesn't take into account the colloquial meanings of "ethical" (lowercase 'e') and "moral".

tl;dr: English actually sucks.

I can appreciate their ability to think outside the box, but when you are using your competitor's resources to promote your company you might be crossing a line. It's a subjective line of course, but I personally find it unprofessional and makes me suspicious about the methods used by such a company to obtain those 500,000 views in a weekend. I'm not anti-marketing, on the contrary I'm very much pro marketing. But what they did is not far from the offline equivalent of spamming your competitor email list.

i wouldn't claim that it's not crossing a line of some sort (professional vs non-professional).

i tend to like aggressive moves by startups. i also thought wepay freezing cash i huge ice blocks and dumping it at a paypal meet was pretty clever.

sometimes startups do unprofessional things. they're certainly not always justifiable, and things would become a shitshow really fast if everyone did them all the time, but i can't help but smile when i see occasional transgressions when the person who is hurt is Goliath.

I guess people were kinder to wepay because the hive-mind was pissed-off at ebay at the time (and still kind of is).

It's not immoral that the parent company was invited to the panel because of their hard work or even possibly paid for their slot (excuse my ignorance, I am not a marketer) and someone comes in and before their message is even delivered they have spam on their chairs? It's sort of the equivalent of a salesman on commission from the car dealership next door to the one you were trying to visit coming over and saying they have just the car for you. It's trespassing, it is definitely immoral. Or, if you aren't convinced it is immoral, it is certainly a dick move.

Wearing a T shirt with a message inviting questions is fine; shoving your message down customer's throats at the expense of your competition is over the line.

In the car dealership world , as with many business's, poaching in your competitions territory can get your legs broken, what is the digital equivalent?

Absolutely right. Speak to any of the worlds best sales people and one consistent piece of advice you'll hear over and over again is to never disparage your competition. It makes you look cheap and desperate.

I think the sponsoring company should've been madder at the event manager than Virool. Also, the event manager was none to pleased either, I'm guessing? No advertiser wants to share space with a competitor, but it's generally the fault of the party that owns the space, not the competitor.

If I were the event company I'd just bar Virool from future events. I'd have though making enemies would be more detrimental than gaining a finite number of clients, but equally, I may not be the most informed person to make a judgement in this situation.

Your judgement sounds pretty good to me. In fact this is exactly what I was thinking when reading the OP, mainly because he spent 2 hours printing "hundreds" of fliers and packing them into envelopes only to gain what, 15 emails?

And how many of these emails were unflattering remarks by the competitor or panel manager?

This whole article reads like some spastic marketing douche who is running too hot to consider his own actions and how they reflect on his company. Not to mention fixing typos and poor phrasing in his company blog.

Unprofessional is the word.

I agree. Was it clever? Yes. Would I at least check the website? Yes, I'm curious. Would I do business with him? Probably not.

If I control a the marketing resources of a high profile brand (He mentions Pepsico, so I'm assuming the target is other large companies), I'm not sure I want to be associated with a business that pulls stunts like that.

Part of it would be avoiding guilt by association for being unprofessional. I also wouldn't want backlash if Virools methods turn out to be complete sleaze and something crazy like getting all of my Facebook likes or youtube views reset (viral equivalent of being Panda'd?)

Yeah, but part of me feels bad that my curiosity added to demonstrable traffic for his site. I feel all icky now.

I'd imagine also that company X would want some compensation considering the event company allowed a competitor to advertise at their session (which I'm sure cost them a lot) for free.

Even though its not the event companies fault, why would anybody want to pay to sponsor a session when you can just drop in and pass out literature for free?

This - and if I'm the competitor who paid for the event, I'm asking for money back or a credit on a future event. I've actually seen this done with success. So for them it is definitely a money losing situation caused by Virool.

Can't say I've ever seen someone banned for doing something like this - and events seem to always have someone doing something controversial - so I don't see it happening. More likely a "stern talking to" as my Dad would say. Imagine if Virool got huge and came back the next year wanting to by a 20x20 booth - I doubt anyone is going to stop them.

Ultimately, that's why people do controversial tactics - little downside to doing them.

I definitely don't find it unethical, but it does colour my opinion of them somewhat.

"it does colour my opinion of them somewhat" - because you find it unethical?

No, because I find it slightly unsavoury. Not unethical, but perhaps a company I would briefly reconsider associating with.

it is possible to disagree with an agent's behavior even if you don't believe there has been a breach of ethics

Unethical is way to strong. Though to me it seems overly aggressive and puts a bad taste in my mouth about company X.

I myself was thinking 'parasitical'. Parasites (in any form) might be successful, but they're repulsive.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

> Lesson: Crash your competitor’s panel

A better title:

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

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.

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?

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.

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"!

I think your instincts are spot on. There was nothing wrong with the fist two ideas, it was just the third that may have crossed the line.

Talking to vendors is fine, just realize that they are probably sales oriented people (largely depends on the conference of course), so if you are trying to get them to use your service, you may be barking up the wrong tree.

That is a really good point. The conference is at least game/entertainment oriented so I'm hoping that some of the vendors will be game developer types. I guess we shall see.

Veronica Belmont is speaking, and Billy West, so even if we don't get some folks, we at least get to see cool people :)

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

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 really bad (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.

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

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.

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?

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"

There's also that element of Karma I suppose.

Awesome catch. I think that its the 3rd party reporting that makes the biggest difference.

So did you land anyone?

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

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

Reply on news.ycombinator.com