Markathing advice of the day #2

Put your heart on the table. Identify your biggest weakness and turn it into an opportunity and eventually a strength.

I read a little story on Madalin Matica’s blog, the Head of DotCommerce, a story that turned out to be a true brand story worth sharing.

I’m cool is one of the first online store in Romania which sells accessories, from shoes to sunglasses. The main problem with the store has always been their delivery service. Basically it takes aaages for the order to arrive, ages usually means 30 days.

Why so long? Well, they ship the merchandise from the US through regular postal services because of the high commissions of other services as DHL or FedEx.

I’m sure you’re now wondering how can they still be online? Their products don’t have the “Apple effect”, that is a fan base or anything like that, no. They simply confronted their major problem and turned into a branding scheme of differentiation. Check out the beautiful pink bowed medal.

They are number one now. No one delivers slower than they do They are different. You know what to expect from them because they are honest up front. This is how you create the “Apple affect”. If that silly little medal wouldn’t be on the front page of the site I wouldn’t be telling this story and their brand wouldn’t have a story to tell.

I have another great example which I’m sure that you outside Romania are not familiar with: Trilulilu.

Trilulilu is Romania’s number one video sharing website, a local equivalent of YouTube. A few months back, in November 2007 it gave all the wolf bloggers hanging around the corner the opportunity to howl at them and try to trow stones.

The reason: there was a massive increase of traffic on their site that period, partly due to a kinky video of two local clowns celebrities Moni & Iri , and they couldn’t handle it. The traffic exceeded their predictions and expectations and they woke up half naked in the middle of the school, that is their resources (servers etc.) were unfit for the new market conditions. The videos wouldn’t play, the site wouldn’t load etc etc.

After a few days of rocks being thrown at them, they put their heart on the table or in their own words, took the condom off. They admitted Trilulilu is in trouble out in the open, admitted they weren’t prepared and yelled to the whole .ro that they have problems and moreover, it’s gonna take a couple of weeks to solve aaand apologized.

What happened next? They were praised and applauded. They were thanked for their honesty. They were now different from the rest of the romanian online, good different.

Conclusion: Your heart is not that fragile in online business