FUD and the Art of Rumor Marketing

I read an interesting blog by Martin Glassborow this morning on FUD in between various rumors about EMC and Cisco in joint venture.

Martin contends that those who spread FUD should have their sh*t together and know of which they speak - that they should know the facts before starting their campaign.  I respectfully disagree, or I should say that while people SHOULD know what they speak of, the whole point of FUD is that you don't have to.  Fear, uncertainty, and doubt is the objective, not just the acronym, and as such, the whole point is really to create those thoughts or feelings.  HOW you create them isn't covered in the rule book (the book of life cheats) - thus, creating them with innuendo, misinformation, or just plain lying is part of the game.

"Oooh, I'm not sure you want to do that, I heard rumors that their CEO was a cross-dressing showgirl on the weekends and that he hates girl scouts AND kicked a puppy" is a statement that likely has no factual basis whatsoever, nor any relevance to the issue at hand (namely, should I buy a server from company X) - but it just might create enough fear, uncertainty, or doubt in the decision making process to circumvent company X from winning - or at least slow down the process.

FUD in technology is like thinking about Jerry Springer as educational television.  Facts have little to do with attaining the intended result.  And the result is all that matters.

I completely agree with Martin about what "should" happen - people should behave like actual humans and should NOT flagrantly lie or mislead simply because that is an easier way to get to a desired outcome than to stand on your own merits, or the merits of your product.  However, whenever money is involved, "right" takes a back seat, unfortunately.

Which gets me to the next point: if FUD is how one company/person tries to alter the trajectory of a decision heading the wrong way (according to the FUDer, not necessarily the FUDee), then rumor marketing is how we start a trajectory.  VMworld is all abuzz about "Alpine" (rumors with code names are taken far more seriously), a supposed joint venture between Cisco and EMC.  EMC is irritated at the noise, but let's face it, the noise works for them.  People are talking about EMC and Cisco doing some magical deal - which is causing panic in some circles and wild speculation in others.  The fact that 99.9% of whatever the rumors are will be proven completely false is irrelevant - the buzz meter is off the charts.  At the end of the day, logic tells me that any deal between these two will be far less exciting than the speculation - which is just great marketing.  Isn't' that what we all aspire to in marketing?  We want everyone talking about us.  We want to take all the attention away from anyone else who might be grabbing the spotlight and refocus all the ADD laden lemmings back on what matters - us!!

So, just like FUD isn't based in fact, neither is rumor marketing.  Spinning yourself around and around trying to stop either is an effort in futility.  You are better off starting your own campaign!

P.S. I just heard about "project death star" - Microsoft and the Latvian government are in serious discussions about invading Red Hat.  Microsoft will kill the code, and Latvia will move to North Carolina. Seriously.

Comments

[Kirby]

FUD is like clipping - it only happens when a player is out of position and already beat - sometimes works if the clipper doesn't get caught, but ususally just calls further attention to the loser.

[Neil]

Karl Rove used to say "When you're explaining, you're losing." When a salesmen is addressing FUD, he's not on his message. And he's losing.

[Jeff A.]

As a resident of North Carolina, I for one welcome our new Latvian overlords.

Great article and as an SE at a major storage company, I agree with your point and the sentiments of the other commenters. Moving the message away from FUD is often challenging and must certainly be done quickly to get back to the real business at hand.

[Asim]

So FUD is good marketing when used right. But how does that help an end user cut through the BS and get to the facts? All this creates greater frustration in the user community, who are growing more cynical by the day when it comes to IT vendor claims.

[Josh A]

Oh, this was about technology. I thought you were talking about the new health care bill.

I certainly agree with you. The other issue here is where the FUD is directed. Unfortunately so much FUD gets directly targeted to decision makers it often makes it difficult to convince those individuals that most of this FUD is baseless or unwarranted. The fault isn't necessarily with them since there is no way every technology or claim can be fully investigated by these decision makers, which is where the engineers are supposed to come in. Sadly the bad seed is already planted and taken some root. I think the greatest difficulty is in defending the truth and changing misconceptions since I'm not a marketing executive, I'm an engineer.