Startup Whisperer

Did We Launch Big Enough?

Last week, I did a post called, "Launch Big Or Go Home." 

Did we launch big enough?  I think so.  We launched a private beta.  We hit our placement goals and they, included:  Seattle Times, Forbes, Adotas, Xconomy Seattle, TechFlash, IAB SmartBrief, and several analysts.  There will be more placements coming out this week.  The most important aspect of our press coverage was the national coverage (Forbes) because of the broad reach of the product.  In addition, I spoke on a 150-person sized audience at the AdTech AdSpace panel.

We're rolling out our product over many months in order to really listen to customer feedback.  One aspect of the launch that I did not included in my last post was that we talked to over 30 + potential customers and ad industry experts before the launch.  That was VERY helpful and important.  In addition, the press that we generated exceeded our lead goals for our private beta.  In some cases, we received immediate and high quality leads directly from our PR placements. 

AdXpose will be a rolling launch this summer.  Meaning we will be moving from private beta to general availability.  This style of launch is analogous to a marathon.  Meaning we will be rolling out features, business processes, etc over time. 

Why I Fired Washington Mutual (Chase)

We all know how bad the use of tax payer dollars has been by the banks.  We have not seen the easing of lending in the system that is required to start a strong recover.  In addition, we have all heard the stories of new fees charged by banks to consumers.

It pained me to right this post.  I am not a fan of flaming companies or using public forums to highlight personal customer service issues.  I find them self centered but since I write about lots of different types of business issues on the Startup Whisperer^TM, I thought that I would use a personal plight of mine to reflect on how company acquisitions are often botched causing customer defection and negative synergies for the acquirer.

I have been a Washington Mutual customer for many years and they have lost me as a customer.  It pains me to do so.  But, the acquisition by Chase has severely impacted the manner in which customers are valued at the now mega bank.  We've seen a bunch of posts recently about bad acquisition planning and behavior cause major problems for customers and enterprise value for all involved (like this recent post from a Seattle-based company).  There are some obvious things that big and small companies need to remember during phasing in new processes, infrastructure, and communication during an acquisition.  Namely:

• Remember that customers are not robots - Robots are robots.  Customers typically have an emotional connection to a brand or service.  If you try to move too rapidly to change certain behaviors, you (the acquirer) will run into resistance and/or customer defection.  Its easy to make a financial decision but planning for that change needs to be thoughtful and consistent over a well thought out timeline.

• Customers have choices - customer service has to be one of the hardest jobs.  You can win or lose a customer based on the manner in which you deal with a customer service problem.  As customers, we all know that their is a spaghetti landscape of phone systems, call center locations (yes, some are international-based), and customer service levels.  You can tell which company has invested in customer service as a strategic weapon to engender customer loyalty.  A great example is Zappos (here is a post from the SW).  My own proxy was Washington Mutual versus Wells Fargo.  Night and day.  Wells Fargo was far more efficient in dealing with issues and concerns than Washington Mutual.  If you are running a low margin, commoditized business like banking, don't forget where your asset value comes from -- your customers.

• Don't fire your good customers - you read a lot about how its wise to fire your unprofitable customers.  That makes sense to me.  It doesn't make sense to fire your best customers.  Banks are doing this by increasing fees and changing their products on their best customers.  As we all have heard countless times over the intercom when we land on any flight these days, "..we know you have a choice of airlines and we appreciated your business."  Unlike some air routes where you might have 3 really good choices in terms of service and pricing advantage in the airlines for any given route, there are a lot more choices for banks as consumers. 

So, why am I firing Washington Mutual.  Using the template above, here are the mistakes made by WAMU over the last several months:

1. Increase fees without notification to their customers - I am a high valued customer and where in the past fees were low or waived, that is not happening now. 
2. Arbitrary increases in APR without notification
3. Go green and get f@#$*! - Moving to paperless statements means you don't get email alerts when bills are due.  I guess you are a troglodyte if you don't know to setup alerts for paperless bill notification.  Of course, its not automatic.  The attitude (from the bank) is that we as customers should spend a bunch of time in their online credit card system configuring those types of features.  Of course, that’s not automatic. 
4. Changes to the online payment product - you can't do certain types of payment methods (e.g., payment to the same payee 2x month).  There are a bunch of changes to the Washington Mutual online product that have made my life more of a hassle.
5. Fraud?  Don't worry about it. - I caught a fraudulent transaction and the bank didn't think to offer up canceling my debit card.  That floored me.  Of course, it is now going to take me 14 days to get a new one.  It wont matter now since by then I will have ported over to a new bank.

The individuals at the bank are phenomenal (at WAMU).  At one point many of my family and friends have worked at Washington Mutual.  But, as we all know the values of an acquirer set the mood from the back office to the front office.  Chase has certainly set the mood for their entity.  It is not a good one.  Take note if you are an acquirer or acquiree.  Treat acquistions almost like a product launch.  Build a roadmap.  Make it an operational product launch.  Make it operational bulletproof and be careful on not powering consumer defection. 

Speed Dating At AdTech

Check out my post on Seattle 2.0 entitled "Speed Dating at AdTech."

Introducting Billion Dollar Online Advertising Bailout Package

Our launch went live this morning.  We just announced today a new service called AdXpose.  I was eluding to this release in this post.  We are pleased to be joined by some world-class partners, including consumer marketers such as advertisers Jones Soda and Keen Shoes, ad server and exchange operator OpenX, atom.com (a division of MTV Networks Entertainment Group), premium display advertising marketplace TRAFFIQ and community publishing platform Wetpaint. 

We are down here at AdTech right now and the reception is quite good.  We (Mpire) build the AdXpose technology for our own publisher network and had a ton of interest from partners to license it. 

The reason being that ROI and campaign transparency are two of the most significant concerns of brand advertisers and media buyers today.  Up to 80% of online ad space goes unsold through direct buys (IAB/Bain digital pricing research, 8/08), leaving most inventory to be sold and resold through multiple exchanges and ad networks.  Brand marketers and advertisers do not receive the visibility and ROI reporting necessary to track their campaigns today thru third party channels.  PriceWaterHouseCoopers estimates 30% of all online display ads are not seen – this equated to $3 billion dollars wasted per year.  AdXpose tracks campaigns anywhere on the Internet – exchanges, ad networks and direct placements – giving advertisers maximum ROI and unprecedented transparency. 

Its been an interested journey to get our private beta.  Now that we've sprinted to the start line, we're ready to run the race.

Cool WTIA Panel On Next Gen Computer Interfaces Tomorrow

I have always been fascinated with next generation computer interfaces.  Who can forget how Star Trek Next Generations' Jean Luc Picard would order a beverage: "Tea.  Earl Grey. Hot."  Or Tom Cruise in the movie, Minority Report, would interact with his computer via a slick holographic interface.  We all long to have more human-like interfaces with computers. 

If I wasn't going to AdTech this week, then I would be attending the WTIA's Conference this week that is focused on next generation UI. Its entitled, "toward a more human experience: the next generation of user-computer interfaces."  Local Angel investor and Draper Fisher Jurveston
venture partner, Bill Bryant, will be emceeing the panel.

I personally have been interested to get a real-world demo of Swype (which is featured on the panel).  If anyone is attending, I would be super interested in hearing your thoughts about the conference.

Launch Big Or Go Home

I haven't posted for a little over a week.  In between family, coaching my son's tball team, and everything else in life, we (Mpire) are launching a revolutionary new product.  "Revolutionary" does sound somewhat self-serving but I believe that its the right adjective to use.  It (the product) is launching really soon.  I mean really soon.  In fact, many aspects of this product development and subsequent launch planning reminded me of how wonderful startups are. You have an idea, you respond to the market, and you huddle on an action plan, and you get it out the door faster than you ever would have been able to do at a big company.   Also, the technology is extremely disruptive and there is an element of anxiety around launching this type of product.  I wont leak what it is but is a different type of online analytics service designed for advertisers--its a different application of some technology that we built for our publisher network, WidgetBucks.

There are specific aspects of this launch that took me back to my days of being a product manager.  Its been awhile since I've been driving so much of the product management tasks.  Our team is quite busy so like in all startups, you do what is necessary to get the job done.  Some tips from my past helped me squeeze a tremendous amount of work into a short timeframe, like:

• Startup-style positioning - especially when you are either short-handed at a startup or you don't have the luxury of time, getting your best thinking into a proper positioning structure is incredibly valuable.  Here is a previous post on some hints on how to do that.  In addition, use potential partners, analysts, advisors, etc that have applicable experience around your product or service as sounding boards.  You most likely don't have time to collect mounds of primary research so allow yourself to collect market feedback "breadcrumbs."  You will often get close enough to the positioning that is market ready.

• Launch as a leader - early in my career, I learned some valuable lessons about creating the perception of momentum by launching products with prominent partners that support your product positioning.  There is a sea of undifferentiated news and building key relationships with public entities or well-known players gives you a better chance to get coverage.

• Launch with buzz - there is nothing better than having real-life customers using your product.  If you've done the hard work around building your product against your target markets' requirements, then your customers are generally going to want to blog, twitter, and overall sing your praises.  Make sure that you cultivate the relationships of your key customers. 

• Be a task master - treat all of the launch activities as trackable and measurable tasks just like you would launch a product from a engineering perspective.  The devil is in the details on launches.  There is minutia that you'll want to capture across every launch function, including PR planning, web page build out, marketing promotion, partner planning, distribution planning, etc.  I used to manage all of my launches in a simple Excel format list and drive every conceivable task off of the launch list.  I'll get around to posting an example in the near future.

I'll let you know how it goes.  I must say that its been a little while since I've had launch butterflies.   Disruptive technologies tend to do that.  Launching big can have many different types of objectives.  Building a gameplan that supports that objective reduces the risk of having an undifferentiated launch.  Stay tuned.

Can You Explain Your Product To Your Parents?

One of my favorite interview questions for technology product managers and marketers is to ask, "how would you explain <insert technology concept or product> to your parents."  If you can boil down your unique sales proposition down to a concept in simple English (if that is your primary language), then I am convinced that you have a strong enough chops to do the hard work of positioning, launching, and building great technology products. 

I was reminded of the value of getting to the core product proposition by my Dad.  The other weekend he mentioned to me that he was watching my interview with Robert Scoble and he didn't understand a single thing that I was saying.  He didn't know who Robert Scoble was and he didn't understand the point that I was trying to make about my product.  Now we all now that we have to cater our unique marketing and product messages to different audiences, but, I fundamentally believe that the core proposition has to be able to transcend the audience.  The wording may be more or less sophisticated based on the recipient but the core proposition should shine through.  For example, my Dad is not a avid technologist and isn't really interested in gadgets or technology trends.  The conversations went something like this:

"Dad have you ever seen a banner ad."
"Of course."
"Do you ever look at them."
"Rarely."
"Why?"
"Because the ads are not interesting and the product/services have nothing to do with what I am interested in."
"My company builds technology that makes banner ads more targeted and more interesting for the consumer and the advertiser."
"How do you do that"
"We learn what type of ads work for specific Web sites and use that knowledge to better target the ad and we make the ads more animated so that consumers want to look at them."
"Display (banner) advertising has not changed much in the last ten years its many billions of dollars in size.'
"Got it."

I did a post awhile ago that provided a guide to positioning.  Its hard work to boil your message down to something that can distinctively parked into a consumers mind.  Try using the "parent test" to see if your message has found its true point of distinctiveness. 

Startup Whisperer Selected As Seattle 2.0 Finalist

The StartupWhisperer is a finalist for the Seattle 2.0 awards.  Thank you very much for voting.  Also, WidgetBucks' CTO, Greg Harrison, was also selected as a finalist.  We'd appreciate your vote!  Vote here.