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Got this ad today, and wanted to take a minute to leave a comment.

If you send me an email bashing a product I don’t even use, then you have already failed.

Also, by introducing me to your company with an email that is clearly dogging on another company, you have pretty much lost any interest I might have had in your company because it comes off and unprofessional and spiteful.

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It goes against basic salesmanship techniques as it makes the customer look at the competition more closely. One should extoll the virtues of their own product, not bash the competition.

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Chip - Thanks for your comments. I run marketing for Connected Data which owns both the Drobo and Transporter products (hence the Drobo signature).

We have actually been advertising our Transporter Genesis appliance on Spiceworks since it launched in late October with ads focused to both the storage and cloud community. We have also sent out emails announcing Genesis, although only to a small fraction of the Spiceworks community.

The email you received that highlights some key advantages of Transporter over Box was actually at the recommendation of the Spiceworks folks who said that compete campaigns resonate well with the Spiceheads.

While I’m disappointed this was your introduction to our Transporter product, I would say these advantages are real and most would apply to other public cloud storage services as they are a function of a flawed architecture as opposed to vendor specific.

Either way, thanks for your thoughts. I will certainly take this into consideration for future Spiceworks campaigns.

Regards,

Jim

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Yeah, I definitely agree that is pretty poor marketing there.

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I don’t agree with this, but I am sure they have their metrics.

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As I said Chip, I appreciate you taking the time to post your thoughts and will definitely take this into consideration for future campaigns. The Transporter products shine based on the unique benefits it delivers for a private file sync and share solution.

Regarding the recommendation, I can assure you I am not making this up :wink:

Best,

Jim

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We’ve actually had some great success with compete campaigns in the past. The key is to make factual statements based on actual data. For example, instead of saying we’re better than our competitor, we say that we’re faster. Then, we back our statement with the results of a third party benchmark test showing that we are truly faster.

The Mark Cuban statement quoted in this email is a pretty big bash on Box. Even if he’s right, his comment has a negative tone that starts this email off on the wrong foot. Perhaps a better approach (based on Jim’s comments) would be “Did you know that your data might not be secure with Box?” And then go into explaining the architecture flaw in a more factual way.

The good news, Jim, is that you just got some extra exposure for your new product - free of charge! :wink:

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Heidi - Thanks for your note and agreed that discussion is a good thing, although I do wish it was focused on the advantages detailed in the paper.

For those that do download the paper and read through it, I think you’ll see there is very little FUD and quite a bit of data. The paper essentially consolidates and highlights information on Box that is publicly available, but that you won’t see them talking about in their marketing.

Whether or not you agree with our approach (and most don’t - I know, I know), the paper has a lot of good discussion points to take up with your Box rep if you are using or considering using their service.

Thanks,

Jim

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When you consider that Mark Cuban is about as brash and abrasive as one can get, then I discount most of what he goes on about. I don’t think I’d ever even consider him in an advert. promoting something!

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Jim, maybe it’s just a UK thing but I much prefer when a vendor tells me why I should buy their product rather than why I shouldn’t buy their competitions.

It’s gutter tactics and I find that kind of approach plain unprofessional tbh.

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Not just the UK…

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I would not choose Marc Cuban as a “spokesperson” there is not much positive attributed to him.

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There are a couple of things that I think you’re missing @jim-drobo .

  1. Spiceheads generally don’t like to be told why a product is bad. If you have a better product, state how your product is better, but teardown marketing will lose you potential customers, particularly when you’re targeting a company that many of us are not customers of.
  2. Responding to feedback with statements like, “As I said before…” or the above quotation communicates to us that you’re missing our feedback. You’re so focused on the ad campaign and defending it, that you’re missing the larger message of the many respondents here.

Spiceheads are a fairly patient bunch, but we do not like being talked down to, condescended to, or massive negativity. You can take as much feedback out of this thread as you’d like, but you will be more successful here if you listen to the unified voice of your target market, not other marketers.

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Sosipater - Thanks for the feedback. Sorry if my comments come across as defensive. Yes, the Spiceworks folks told us this would be well received, but at the end of the day I am the one that pulled the trigger.

The feedback is pretty clear: Focus on the advantages detailed in the paper. Got it and will do. Lesson learned.

For those wondering why Mark Cuban, he was the first investor in Box (provided the initial $350K seed capital) and pulled his money out when they decided to focus on growth at all costs. I agree he is brash, but he is also a very smart and successful business person.

Bottom Line: Feedback appreciated. Message received. We can and will do better in future campaigns.

Thanks all,

Jim

@robert762 @georgemcfarlin @kelly

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From my perspective, Sosipater is right on the money here. Spiceworks, it may be worthwhile sending a link to this post to all prospective advertisers within Spiceworks. Especially if you are pushing a particular marketing style to your vendors. Target marketing needs to target the prospective audience, and this clearly did not.

I’m happy to see a comparison chart and a feature list showing why “your” product is better than “x”, but anything that says don’t buy “x” gets deleted immediately.

Rob.

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i dono… i like Box, they gave me 50gb free for life… (yes i can be bought haha) I sorta consider cloud and security to be antonyms really and only consider data that resides on machines i can physically touch to be secure.

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Alequaff - Enjoy it while it lasts. I have no inside information, but if you look at companies like Bitcasa who recently eliminated their unlimited storage offering and Box’s financials (still losing almost $50M per quarter) it simply can’t last.

PS - Our Transporter products are cloud appliances (i.e. machines you own and can physically touch) that can sync between each other in a grid-like fashion. A lot of our privacy/security benefits over Box stem from this different approach.

Cheers,

Jim

@garyadkins4385

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Oh you put the machines in house, or is it just software? Either way then comparing your solution to Box’s isn’t really a fair comparison, sounds like your competition is actually something like OpenStack or perhaps Xen products.

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I for one like Mark Cuban and his brash ways. I also did not find anything wrong with the ad. The idea is to get you to read the white paper and learn more about the product and get the name out there. I think they did that :slight_smile:

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Did they? Did you read the white paper? From the above posts I think it’s fair to say that none of them did.

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