The 4 Stages of Gobbledy Grief
And VRBO lrns hw to msg
Hello Gobbledeers,
How was your week off?
I thought we’d kick off today with another classic from SAP. I’ve gone through all the Stages of Gobbledy Grief (tm) with SAP: Confusion, Anger, Acceptance, and Begrudging Appreciation (also tm).
I saw that they’ve put out this, uh, something? Press release? Product release note? Blog post? Free form jazz exploration of the English language?
From what I can gather, they’re announcing that they have a new ecommerce platform product that’s headless (put aside that “headless” is, itself, incomprehensible to nearly everyone in the industry.)
Here’s how they put it:
SAP Commerce Cloud, composable storefront, the solution’s full API-coverage, “headless with-a-head” software, in conjunction with SAP Business Technology Platform (SAP BTP) and Kyma Runtime, enables developers to extend SAP Commerce Cloud functionality with containerized microservices and serverless functions while keeping pace with their customers’ expectations.
Confusion: WTF?
Anger: This is why everyone hates software marketers (ie, me.)
Acceptance: This is why I left software marketing, so maybe this is a good reminder for me of why.
Begrudging Appreciation: Actually I’m kinda jealous of whoever came up with “headless with-a-head.” (And whoever added the hyphens to “with-a-head.”)
There are so many gems in this thing. I should just re-print all several thousand words of it and let it speak for itself (I won’t, and you’re welcome). But please indulge me one more:
At ShopTalk, SAP is pre-announcing its new SAP Commerce Cloud composable offering, a different approach to composability than what has been available in the market thus far.
So if I understand this, this is an announcement that at an event they will be pre-announcing something that will - I assume at a later date - be announced? Isn’t this pre-pre-announcement the announcement? Like by definition, can something be pre-announced?
The Kaseya Timeline
If you’re watching the NBA playoffs, you may notice that the Miami Heat no longer play in the FTX Arena because, y’know, fraud and The Bahamas and stuff, and now play in the Kaseya Center.
And if you’re the curious type, you may have wondered what Kaseya is. And if you’re lazy you never bothered to find out. I understand that, so I’m here to help. Kaseya is (looks at website) “The market leader in IT and security management.”
I’m talking about Kaseya because they have one of the oddest things I’ve seen on a homepage — a timeline going back a few years of what I think are product releases, but might also be acquisitions? Not sure. Also not sure it matters.
Here’s the timeline:
I’m fascinated that they laid this all out in a timeline. I’m so fascinated that I barely noticed that the blurbs are also amazing:
The deep integrations between Unitrends and Kaseya’s other modules of IT Complete have resulted in massive efficiency gains for the overburdened IT professional that simply can’t be attained through tenuous, cosmetic integrations between partners.
Sure.
But why is this in a timeline? Why does it matter that those deep integrations were launched in 2018? And I can’t decide if that suggests that those integrations are old and out-of-date, or if it means “hey, we’re constantly evolving!”
Anyway, I guess what I’m saying is that their name is now on the arena where the Miami Heat play.
VRBO(h My That’s Good Messaging)
I keep torturing my readers with the advice that they should step back from whatever they’re doing and think about positioning. Specifically, step back and think about where your space is in the market, and how you’re different from your competitors.
The key to that is “specifically” - specifically, how are you different?
The push back I often get on this advice is “yeah, but this is a complex product and there are lots of ways we’re different and we need to understand the prospect’s needs and then assess and zzzzzzzzzzzzzz.”
The zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz is me snoring.
It will also be your prospect snoring, as they also don’t want to endure an hour-long meeting to hear why you should buy one product instead of a competitor’s product.
Which is why I loved this VRBO commercial:
And if I know my readers, I know that your lazy asses are not going to click that button and watch that 30 second ad.
I’m OK with that!
Which is why I’m providing the transcript for you ungrateful bunch:
The thing that's different about a vrbo vacation home?
You always have the whole place to yourself.
No stranger at the dinner table making things awkward or in another room taking up space.
It's just you and your people.
Because why would you ever share your vacation home with someone you wouldn't share your vacation with.
VRBO has struggled with what to do about AirBnB for a while now. AirBnB has done a bang-up job of branding, and I’m sure someone will write about it one day, but I am not that someone and today is not that day.
But VRBO has never really had a strong identity. VRBO stands for “Vacation Rentals by Owner” which is what it was called before they mushed together that company with HomeAway and some smaller sites. Then they made a moderate-ish deal of telling people VRBO (which people either called V-R-B-O or ‘vurbo’) should be pronounced ‘vurbo.’
That was kinda the extent of the branding over there.
Which put them at a pretty significant disadvantage to their well-branded competitor, who had built a well-communicated story around building community through homestays.
So if you find yourself as a poorly defined brand competing with a well defined brand, what might you do?
I’d suggest you find one thing you do differently, and then hammer that home.
You might talk to your customers about why they purchased from you and not from the competitor. And you might hear the same reasons. In VRBO’s case, I assume they heard from some people that they didn’t want to meet an AirBnB host. That they wanted to be left alone. That they knew some AirBnB listings are shared spaces.
So they took those insights and crafted a message that focused on their key differentiator - “You always have the whole place to yourself.”
And made it pithy with “why would you ever share your vacation home with someone you wouldn't share your vacation with?”
Strong positioning + clear value differentiator + strong copy = success
The most difficult part of this exercise for you is going to be the people internally who say “but AirBnB does offer whole houses…and also we have more listings than they do and people should know that…and and and and.”
All of that is true. But none of that matters.
Strong positioning + clear value differentiator + strong copy = success
BRVO VRBO
As always, thank you for reading and sharing Gobbledy.
And I love chatting with all of you - If you want to talk about your website or positioning or how to compete with your well-branded competitor, here’s my Calendly link.