If Scoble Thinks He Found Bad Startup Marketing, He Ain’t Seen Nothing

Marketing / PR, Startups September 8th, 2008

If Robert Scoble thinks he found examples of poor startup marketing (Startups: your web site sucks) he ain’t seen nothingsmile_eyeroll.  How about picking a name that almost actively drives visitors away?

A few months ago Ben Kepes drew my attention to Viisibility, and I promptly called out their really poor naming:  how can they call their supply chain company Viisibility when there is already an ERP business named Visibility?

Now a friend who’s watching TechCrunch50 on site tells me he likes FairSoftware.  OK, let’s check them out… what is so innovative about Fair / Trade Show management software, and it does not even appear to be a  startup!

Hm… but Crunchbase says:

FairSoftware is the place to start and grow a virtual online business. It only takes a few clicks for software developers and website publishers to incorporate, hire and share revenue with other project members.

…

Bloggers, designers and developers can use FairSoftware to grow their business by working together online, without having to deal with the complexity and limitations of traditional corporations.

What’s wrong here?  They picked a name with only the .net domain available: fairsoftware.net .  Not too good… but perhaps not the end of the world – unless the .com version belongs to another software company.  Now it’s a disastrous choice.  Unless, of course if they already have a deal to acquire that domain.smile_omg

Update: iCharts is another one with the .net domain only, but it’s by far not as bad as FairSoftware.  icharts.com does not appear to be a real business, just a parked domain whose owner is probably holding out for a high price.  Hm… will they buy it?

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The Startup Naming Game

Marketing / PR April 21st, 2008

Ben Kepes drew my attention to Viisibility, which appears to be a very interesting web based supply chain management / data clearing-house / hub type of a business.

At first reading I completely misread the name, thinking it was Visibility.  Wow, what a great choice, I thought – a simple, common word that perfectly describes what the business is all about.  But wait! try to Google it: it’s a bit difficult to find the relevant entries from the 47,100,000 hits Goggle found…   That brings up question number one:

Do common words that describe your business perfectly but are hard to Google make good brands?

Robert Scoble has a simple rule: only pick names that do not come up on the major search engines at all.

But as it turns out I was wrong, just missing that extra “i”: the name is actually Viisibility.  That brings up a whole new issue, which is my question number two:

Can intentionally misspelled common words that in  pronunciation describe the product, but are only available as domains and are only unique on search because of the “typo” actually become Brands?

Last time I asked the question, the majority vote was yes (albeit with few participants).  I used Vyew as an example, which I still think is a good name.   But Viisibility’s case is a bit more complex, as shown by these two homepages:

  • Viisibility: managing supply chains.
  • Visiblity: ERP for Complex Manufacturing.

Oops. Not only there’s another company with a similar name, they are also in the same space, “differentiated” only by a typo.  I’m afraid it’s not much of a differentiation, I can’t help but think Viisibility is a poor choice for a brand.

But forget the extreme case above, I’d like to return to the generic question, and run the poll again, especially as I’ve gained a few marketers as readers since last time.  If you read this in a feed reader, there’s a chance the poll does not work, so please click through the blog title to vote:

 

 

Update (4/22): The Importance of a Good Name @TechCrunch.

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