28 Sep Is “Shoutlet” Overselling Itself?
UPDATE: After a product demo, I’ve posted an update to this post, focusing on Shoutlet’s product. This post is more about their launch marketing. You can read the update here.
Shoutlet is a new product that was announced at the DEMOfall 2007 conference in San Diego this week. In what seems to me to be more than a little hyperbole, the company has declared it: “the world’s first Web 2.0 marketing tool built for companies to use the latest social media technology to communicate to their core audience.”
Really, the world’s first web 2.0 marketing tool built for companies? That’s news, um, I guess. Not sure it’s true, though. iContact does a lot (but not all) of the same stuff and has 14,000 clients using it. But ok, I work for a social media agency, I’m interested. So I checked out their website and went to the big promo video. You can watch it here, but I warn you, it’s Shakespearean. (Ya know: “Full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”)
(Kudos to Shoutlet for including the video embed code, though…)
15 minutes into the website, I’m still not sure exactly what this revolutionary product does. After a few visits to some independent blog posts, it seems that it’s a way to use existing content distribution tools (RSS, SMS, e-newsletters, widgets) more easily and in a more trackable way. I guess the hype made me come to the website thinking it was more than that. But ok, having that tool could be cool.
So how come this blog says what it does more quickly and compelling than the entire Shoutlet website? I have info I want to send out in multiple formats and track: bam. This does it. Ok, thanks. Didn’t need the hyperbole.
I love what Read/WriteWeb has to say about Shoutlet:
Shoutlet is a front end for widget and feed publishing and management for marketers. Apparently general consensus is that marketers aren’t as smart as other people and need dumbed-down tools to perform basic web 2.0 activities. If that’s true, and it may well be, Shoutlet could be perfect.
Very funny. Is Shoutlet good? I have no idea yet. I’m really just commenting on how they are marketing it. Very Web 1.0. Hyperbole. Marketing buzz language. Just say what it does in two sentences. Then give me details. Save the fancy video with the cheezy voiceover and do a screencast instead. Do that well and if I need what you’re selling, I’m in…
If you’ve tried Shoutlet, let me know what you think. I may yet be their biggest fan and biggest client. Who knows? If you work for Shoutlet (I know you’re reading this), and want to chime in on the old school marketing strategies, that’s cool, too.
