Thursday, July 06, 2006

Don't you ever get Dell'd !


Reading an article about a day in the life of Michael Dell - I know that kind of curiosity is really not to be outlined in our professional serious world, but hey, this is a blog - I discovered that quote from Michael Dell : "Our business model gives us fresh input from our customers every day, telling us what they like and don't like." Apparently Michael Dell starts his day by first checking queries and gripes from customers to fine tune his perception on how new products and services are working out for them.

Okay, then it should drive Dell's stock up or at least in the good direction. I started then to compare some Internet based business model companies selling physical goods : Amazon and eBay. Here is how the Dell, Amazon and eBay respective stocks are comparing on a one year period. Apparently something happened during the first quarter of 2006, eBay just got pumped up. When you take a look at compared trends for 2006, Dell gets news references volume but eBay gets the search volume.

Well, we all know eBay relies on a business model which is natively Web 2.0, where the sold goods are coming from consumers themselves and trust is building upon consumers rating each other. This is neither Dell nor Amazon core business models. Apparently Dell is not paying attention to some ugly trends highlighted in blogs as this one, though it's aging a bit, to the point where Fast Company coined the term getting Dell'd i.e. not reacting to on-line buzzing complaints about your brand services and products which quickly drives your sales or stock down (or both). Ugly isn't it ? Fellow marketers, you don't want to be marketing a brand that gets hype that way.

Finally, Amazon is struggling with classical financial analysis about their fourth quarter earnings while eBay gets headlines on how they're looking to cash in on on blogs growth - about 75,000 new blogs a day for a total of 35M.

My take on this is : don't you ever get Dell'd. Appoint a Marketing 2.0 executive that you'd call Chief Voice of Customers Officer, with Web 2.0 as the only authorized marketing media.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Excellent! I'll remember this phrase : being Dell'd ! I'm not sure we can explain Dell's whole stock evolution through this story, but might be part of it.

Concerning PC manufacturers - or ISP or, .... - it's true that consumers are generally looking for "not the worst" hotline rather than "the best" ! Class action against Free or Alice in France these last week show the kind of situation we are starting from in our country...