Some people have way too much money on their hands.
Take Qpass, a Seattle company that offers one-stop registration for shoppers touring the Internet. The company has so much money it staged a phony demonstration of 50 protesters outside the recent Internet World convention in New York. The protesters held up signs that included “Online forms are destroying our suburbs.”
This wasn’t a protest. It was a marketing ploy, a small part of a huge marketing campaign to draw attention to its product.
Competing in the dot-com world is all about creating a buzz, building excitement and becoming the talk of the town. Problem is, buzz like this really amounts to noise.
Everywhere you turn, you’re bombarded with billboards, radio spots, television ads, bus panels and banners all touting a dot-com that’s dot-doing this.
So why so much noise?
In dot-commerce, the first company in a business gains enormous recognition and power, said Bill Miller, a partner of Kirkland, Wash., venture-capital firm Olympic Venture Partners. So competitors need to overcome that barrier. The way they do that is by marketing like crazy. “It is the business strategy,” he said.
Getting your name out there doesn’t come cheap. The going rate for a six-month ad campaign is about $10 million, Miller said. Some companies spend more.
“It doesn’t mean that a lot of money isn’t being wasted,” he acknowledged. And not every campaign works.
“The noise levels are tremendously high, but that just means it takes even more money to break through the noise level,” Miller said. “The wheel just spins faster.”