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!”
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!”
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.
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."
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.
There's a word for that kind of argument, but for the life of me...
Oh sorry, please stop me from being a sanctimonious dick-head.
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.
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 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.)
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...
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.
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
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 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.
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.
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.
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?)
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?
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.