Secret media relations: how to criticise your competitors
This is the second in a series of posts on the secrets of media relations, drawn from my previous career in PR and the time I’ve spent as a senior exec with web startups. You can find the first post, on how to keep secrets, here. This is new for me, so I need to ask: are you enjoying these? Not enjoying them? Let me know in the comments at the end of this post.
A startup friend emailed me today, to ask: “This Google Wave thing is ambitious and complicated. I doubt it’s going to be popular with consumers. At the same time, some of the things Wave does are similar to of the things my product does. Maybe we’re competitors now. Should I look for opportunities to criticise Google Wave and talk up my own product?”
The answer, as always when you consult a specialist, is “yes, and no.” The fine art of criticism takes lots of practice, and when you engage in a critical battle that is waged in a third-party medium (news, blogs, forums, tweets) one step removed (communicating via employees, customers, partners, investors, journalists, bloggers and consumers) it’s easy for your carefully-aimed arrows to morph into shotgun blasts, or worse, boomerangs.
Here are three simple rules I’ve learned through painful experience. Stick to these three rules to present yourself in the best possible light, while at the same time undermining your competitor.
Rule 1 : never be anything other than constructively critical of someone else’s product.
In other words, don’t say, “Google Wave is too complicated” say “Here’s a way Google Wave could be even better.”
Rule 2: If you can, wait to be asked.
Don’t offer an unsolicited opinion. When you say something (even constructively critical) without being asked, it looks like you need the attention more than the other guy. If you can, engineer the situation so that a third-party (e.g. conference convener, analyst, blogger) you can trust asks for your opinion before you give it.
Rule 3: Don’t position your product as a threat to the behemoths
The behemoths for the moment are Google and Microsoft in software, Cisco, Intel and Apple in hardware.
Behemoths have more fans than you do, and those fans will bury you in rebuttals. The behemoths have detractors too, but aligning them with your point of view is like herding cats. Online debates are always won by the argument with the most supporters, not by the correct point of view.
Then there’s the relationship with the behemoth themselves. While they don’t see you as a threat, or aren’t even aware of your existence, you can thrive. Once there are a few people at Google or Microsoft whose only job is to evaluate you as a potential threat and take you out, business gets a whole lot harder.
This is made worse by journalists and their need to get readers to stop scanning headlines and read a story. To get an interesting angle for a story, journalists will take any tiny hint of potential competition between a behemoth and a startup and blow it way out of proportion. And once you’re perceived as a competitor, it spreads fast.
If you try to deny it the headline just reads “Startup founder denies his product is a threat to Google.” If you’re at Google and you’re reading that, the subtext is, “We are going to kill Google one day, we’re just not ready to announce that yet.” That’s when they press the button on their command chair labelled “launch ninjas”. You don’t want that.
So there you have go: it’s sometimes necessary to compare your product and your company to others. It’s hard to compare without being critical. But being critical comes with risks. Don’t do it lightly and follow these rules.
7 Responses to “Secret media relations: how to criticise your competitors”
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I support your general approach but take a firmer position: “You should almost never criticise your competitors.”
For a start, you almost certainly know a lot about your own product and much less about your competitor's. (Show me the startup that's actually tested Google Wave.) Do you really know what's wrong with them? Do you really want to go on the record saying that?
Beside, it's rarely a case of Our Product = Good; Their Product = Bad. It's more likely a case of Our Product = Good for ABC; Their Product = Good for XYZ. Why focus on Their Product being Bad for XYZ when you could focus on Your Product being Good for ABC?
After all, you'll only get limited airtime. Permanently, changing what the reader thinks about Their Product is impossible. Next week they'll read something else that'll change it again because, as Alan says, they're in the media constantly. However, changing what the reader thinks about Your Product might be viable. At the least, you might prompt a few readers to take you for spin.
Finally, if you try to win arguments about your competitors, you don't look right — you look argumentative. Instead, try to look helpful by using interviews to provide information that your customer/reader will find valuable in the work and lives — not just valuable when it comes to picking between Your Product and Their Product
Great feedback, thx Steven! Your point on “your product being good for ABC” is right on, and yes, looking helpful is way better than appearing argumentative.
Oops, I meant ” take you for A spin”…
(Spin having extra meaning when you discuss PR.)
Ha ha ha… ahem… don't quit your day job
I agree that we should never criticise a competitor. Especially when this competitor is one of the company mentionned above. But I can say that a company is on the right track if somebody like google is going in your direction. One of this example is “Kiko”. This service exists long time before Google Calendar came out. And they never got much traction as the day Google Calendendar went public. See full explanation here http://height1percent.com/2006/08/18/actual-les...
Al, you are the TRUTH
Yes, my son. I am also the LIGHT and the WAY. Follow me, and we shall go persecute some unbelievers…