» uk-netmarketing: roundup: 09-06-2000

Inside dotcoms...
UK-Netmarketing Weekly Round-up - June 9, 2000

The BBC2 series, ‘Inside Dotcoms’ aired last week. For once a TV programme featuring dotcoms wasn’t met with the usual hostility. The fact that the series actually looked behind the scenes rather than falling for tabloid guff, may have had something to do with it.

Lee Rickler wrote, somewhat uncharitably about amplebosom.com, "Great to see an old, frumpy woman driving a .com, (or in this case a .co.uk), company for the sake of making a small living rather than a bunch of middle class, uni-grads with only a 6 month, million dollar exit strategy. I do like this programme though as it is probably the only programme like this that I have seen that doesn't dwell on disaster/ rip-off stories."

Michael Trott responded, "Absolutely agree Lee. It's a good show and I really felt she deserved to do well, especially enjoyed the open mouthed stares of bank managers and business consultant when she described her (lack of) what they would say she be her objectives."

Ian Fenn added, "I am somewhat amazed she managed to persuade Barclays to invest in the first place. My bank says it won't look at funding to Internet-based business as the risk is too great... hey ho..."

Felix Verlade emailed, "great to see people in the new economy flying the flag for old economy standards of sexism, ageism and elitism. not."

The plethora of dotcom advertising on every medium available has raised a few eyebrows, particularly adverts which do nothing to explain the proposition and all to do with ‘groovy’ adverts.

Tim Ireland kicked the comments off, writing, "1. The more the Internet is perceived in a negative/confusing/overblown fashion, the more we are reliant on mainstream media spending to show otherwise. Is this why newspapers, radio & television distribute so much misinformation, or am I just being paranoid? 2. Why is it that commercials for 'dotcoms' are - almost without exception - the most misguided and horrible [TV ads] imaginable?"

Ray Taylor responded, "They are misguiding their clients who in turn are falling for the traditional ad agency bollocks. If only old ad agencies could sell their clients' products as well as they can sell themselves to the unwary and inexperienced. Equally, if all media industry awards included the qualification ‘... and sold lots of the client's products while improving customer perception and service,’ there would be perhaps more effort on results, less on swank (with or without the ‘s’)."

Tim Hayward, noted for his rants on UKNM added, "Ad agencies are designed as a huge, unwieldy system of checks and balances. Ordinarily a marketing director walks in with [£1m+] to advertise a company with a time proven product or proposition. The marketing dept of a dog food know all there is to know about their brand. They have a fair idea about what the ad is meant to say and to whom. When the ad airs, they will expect to see research that shows how effective the ad is. Everyone's job depends on it. This makes the process of writing the brief and producing the ad highly controlled…"

Having the set the scene, he continued on the theme of dotcom ads, "Most dotcoms seem to have started with a meeting between geeks and suits. The geeks spend an hour talking about all the exciting things they can do... The suits don't quite understand what the geeks are on about but they have a six month bail out exit strategy anyway ... The one thing that the suits won't do is shut out anything which might become an opportunity later. As a consequence, by the time they approach the average ad agency (and believe me I've been in a thousand of these meetings) they sound like this.... ‘We've got this .com. It's a portal, with e-commerce and a sort of community slant. It will be the first port of call on the web for a huge and valuable audience if we can just build a brand 12 times the size of God prior to IPO. Although the site is primarily an e-commerce play for lawn-mower spares, our business plan involves rapid expansion into garden care, home maintenance domestic servants, mortgages and alternative medicine - globally. We've got 20M of other people's money, 85% of which has to be spent on marketing. ... At this point the creatives have usually soiled themselves in sheer glee. Another minging pile of faeces that's everything, to everyone everywhere as long as we can get everyone to believe that it's not a minging pile of faeces."

Ouch! Someone got out of bed the wrong side.

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