Dumb, Dumber, Dumbest: Software Vendors, Don’t Make This Mistake

By Rhaheem Johnson on September 13, 2007 -- 5:44pm

Here we have an anonymously-written, gratuitous attack on MadCap Software and MadCap’s Mike Hamilton. Mike will be the first to tell you when Adobe Captivate is appropriate, and when you might consider MadCap’s Mimic product. Is it possible that a Captivate was the better tool for this particular job?

If this incident provides the superiority of Adobe’s products, I would need to seriously question your skills as a consultant. If my company puts a PDF document on its Web site, are we saying that Adobe’s products are superior to ours?

By Mike Hamilton on September 14, 2007 -- 3:07am

*sigh*
The demos you point to were created back in 2005. Now for the simple question, when did we (MadCap Software) release our Mimic product? That would be 2006.
It would have been awfully difficult for me to have used Mimic a full year before it had been released. If you look at the demos and tutorials in the Flare help system they have all been upgraded to the newer (and much more bandwidth friendly) Mimic movie format. The web site demos will also be updated at some point, but it was not a high priority.

By ScottAbel on September 14, 2007 -- 9:23am

It’s always frustrating for companies to have errors on their websites, especially ones that are contrary to their marketing message. It’s embarrassing. We know. We have errors on our sites often and our readers point them out. When this happens, we acknowledge the mistake, correct it, and move on. Lesson learned.

Of course, with MadCap it’s difficult to separate the company from Adobe because their marketing materials are filled with comparisons to Adobe, statements about how their products were built by the same team of folks who built earlier Adobe products, proclamations about how their products work just like Adobe products, etc. It is certainly one of many marketing strategies they could choose to employ, but one that invites humor when such snafus occur.

Rhaheem makes our point when he states, “Is it possible that Captivate was a better tool for this particular job?” If so, Rhaheem, then MadCap’s marketing strategy is a bad one. Consumers—who don’t care, by the way, who used to work at Macromedia or at Adobe—are looking for solutions that meet their business needs. So, if I try to make the business case for using MadCap tools and my clients discover that MadCap uses Adobe tools, then why would my clients believe they should use MadCap products for the same exact type of content?

We realize that this is not what MadCap intended. But, it is what MadCap makes available to us on their public website, which makes it appropriate for us to comment on. When Mike says “it would have been difficult for me [him] to have used Mimic and full year before it was released,” we say, “Hello, it’s 2007 and a full 2 years after you released Mimic. Change your website, already!”

We stand by our statement that this is the “dumbest” thing we’ve seen. Hopefully, MadCap will take this opportunity to replace these files with files that run on their own software and demonstrate that their tools work as well as the tools produced by the competition. Lesson learned.

Technology, you gotta love it!

Scott Abel
TheContentWrangler.com

By Lisa Tinker on September 14, 2007 -- 12:45pm

FYI, Scott.... Mimic wasn’t released 2 years ago—Flare was.  Mimic was released just a few months ago (late 2006).  And in the 2 years since Flare was released, they’ve released something like 6 other products, including Mimic.  I’m sure updating the small details on the website is low on their priority list.

By ScottAbel on September 14, 2007 -- 2:41pm

Lisa:

Math is obviously not a strong skill here (neither is typing if you find the typos we find on this site). LOL

So, to clarify, Mimic was released in 2006 sometime. It’s now nearing the end of 2007. So, MadCap has had a year or so to utilize their own technology. That’s understandable given their release schedule. But, it’s not a good marketing strategy and is fair game for criticism, which was the primary point of my earlier comment.

Scott Abel
TheContentWrangler

By Rhaheem Johnson on September 14, 2007 -- 3:37pm

Criticism? O.K. But “dumbest thing we’ve ever seen”? That sort of hyperbole by a vendor-supported company (TCW) smells of favoritism and possibly a hidden agenda.

Using a competitor’s product, which was (at the time) outside MadCap’s market space, isn’t “dumb.” Dumb would be suddenly dropping development and support for the most popular help authoring tool on the planet.

By the way, I am pleased that Adobe has corrected Macromedia’s short-sighted decision to drop the RoboHelp product. I am also pleased that MadCap offers competing products. Companies get lazy when there is no competition.

I think this incident proves that MadCap is a business, run by humans, who make business decisions in the context of finite resources.

I’m looking at a banner add for a Web Content Management conference in “Novemeber.” Proof that TCW is run by incompetents? Hardly. More like proof that TCW is run by a human being.

By ScottAbel on September 14, 2007 -- 4:21pm

Rhaheem, thanks for spotting that typo. That’s the fifth one today that our readers have spotted. We had our hands full converting over 1000 files and redesigning an entire site’s worth of content. Error spotting is harder to do by yourself, which is why we appreciate your pointing out our error. We’ll get that fixed pronto.

Companies get lazy when no one challenges them. We’re simply chalenging companies to do better—including Adobe. We expect you to challenge us as well—that’s half the fun of being alive.

While we are vendor-supported, we’re certainly not influenced by our sponsors (just ask a few!). When they do dumb things, especially their marketing departments, we’re often the first to point them out in a public manner. The good part about our pointing these errors out is that they are—almost always—fixed immediately (just like the banner ad you mentioned). So, while some folks don’t like our style, others thank us for the effort.

Thanks for sharing your views.

Scott Abel
TheContentWrangler <--- on a mission to correct typos!

By Tom on September 14, 2007 -- 8:07pm

Scott,

Very disappointing post. Let me see if I understand this logic…

MadCap creates Captivate demos years ago for its software tools. MadCap creates Mimic just a year ago, & is in the process of updating all of its demos to the new format.

And because they haven’t finished yet, this is the “dumbest thing you’ve ever seen?!?” Wow, then this is probably the “most melodramatic post I’ve ever seen.”

The quintessential no-evidence-hate-it-anyway software bash post. I didn’t think you’d stoop this low. Sigh… disappointing.

*bloglines… right-click… content wrangler… unsubsribe*

By ScottAbel on September 15, 2007 -- 7:17am

Tom,

Thanks for writing. No, you don’t understand the logic. The dumbest thing is not “because they haven’t finished yet”. The “dumbest thing” is inviting the entire world of potential customers to your front door (buying ads pointing folks to your URL) and yelling out loud that our products are better than those made by the competition and then posting your product demonstrations using products created by the competition.

It’s dumb. It’s really dumb. The only thing dumber is those who actually try to defend this tactic with lame excuses like they are “in the process of updating all their demos to a new format” you big, mean, Content Wrangler dude. Oh, spare us!

Let’s ask Steve Jobs if it would be okay—and logical—if Apple employees could use Microsoft Media Player to display Apple Quick Time marketing materials on the new iPhone. You want to see melodramatic? More likely you’d see pink slips. Why? Because it’s not only dumb, its really dumb. Dumb enough to get your ass in big trouble in most profit-driven environments.

It’s dumb. It’s really dumb. And it is the dumbest marketing mistake we’ve seen in the technical communication space.

But it doesn’t matter whether you think so, nor does it matter if we think so.... it matters whether MadCap thinks so. We checked their website this morning (Sept. 15, 2007) and the previously mentioned files are no longer there. We wager there will be new files there soon and no promotion of the competition on their site.

Any good marketing person will tell you that knowing about this type of snafu—even being embarrassed by it—is a good thing for any company. And those same marketing folks will tell you that this discussion and the attention paid to MadCap as a result of this post is actually good for them as well. I bet their web site is getting a little extra traffic as a result.

As far as bashing software, we said nothing about the software, Tom. We were simply commenting on the content they published for folks like us to consume.

Thanks for sharing your views. We appreciate it.

Scott Abel
TheContentWrangler

By Tom on September 15, 2007 -- 8:20pm

Scott,

>>As far as bashing software, we said nothing about the software, Tom.<<

Fair enough… I guess I meant “company-bash-post,” which is what it really is. I should have been more specific.

>>More likely you’d see pink slips. Why? Because it’s not only dumb, its really dumb. Dumb enough to get your ass in big trouble in most profit-driven environments.<<

FWIW, I am in marketing, with lots of folks under me, and it’s not as big of a deal as you make it.

>>Let’s ask Steve Jobs if it would be okay—and logical—if Apple employees could use Microsoft Media Player to display Apple Quick Time marketing materials on the new iPhone<<

You fail at analogies. You’re not considering the context. This isn’t Microsoft getting caught using Quicktime, or vice versa. The people at MadCap who used Captivate for those dated demos were the freakin’ ones who innovated it in the first place. And did so just a couple of years ago.

Pink slips? Oh, for crying out loud. [sarcasm ON] “Today, Mike Hamilton of MadCap sent out about 50 pink slips to his team because old demos were found on the Internet that used his fired employees’ former tool.” [sarcasm OFF]

It is as simple as “haven’t gotten to it yet.” That sound you hear is the collective eye-rolling of everyone who read this post. Or the sighing.

What’s up with the MadCap backlash, anyway? I got sick of their anti-RH stuff, too; but nobody can deny their products are very competitive in both performance and price. It’s almost like, once Adobe released RH6 (which is a product that DOES suck, btw), the collective proletariat of the Tech-comm community turned on MadCap. This post is a quintessential example of that.

By ScottAbel on September 16, 2007 -- 8:26am

Tom,

As you know, marketing can help or hinder a product sale, regardless of how well it works or what folks who are already customers think about it. In this case, it hindered a big purchase (300+ licenses), which is not the goal of marketing, nor is it Mike Hamilton’s goal, we suspect. Potential customers saw this marketing snafu as one more reason to go with Adobe, and one more reason not to go with MadCap. This is not bashing. It’s a fact. It cost the company a ‘chance’ to get in the door at one of our existing clients. A chance most software firms would never pass up, should they have the opportunity. Money will go to the competition because the company didn’t make time to do it right. If that’s not the dumbest thing in your book, your book is different than ours.

In our view, in order for MadCap to create a substantial user base, they need to “differentiate” themselves from the Adobe. Their current approach does little to show us the differences. In fact, it’s hard to separate MadCap from Adobe even in their press materials. So, when they include an Adobe product on their site, it is really, really, dumb (oversight or not).

Additionally, it’s not possible for anyone in the industry to “turn on” (perhaps you meant “turn against") a software company. That implies they were on one side originally and then moved away to the other side, which is not the case.

That said, many consultants are tired of vendors not practicing what they preach. When they don’t, or when they oversell, or stretch the truth, or make dumb marketing decisions, or say they support a standard that they kinda-sorta-but-not-really-do, expect a few folks to say something. It’s perfectly normal. It helps software companies change things they often didn’t realize were damaging sales (just like MadCap is likely changing their website now). They’re not changing it because we mentioned it. They’re not changing it because the “proletariat” (points for creative vocabulary awarded!) ganged up against them. They’re changing it because they know it’s the right thing to do.

Of course, many folks who use Adobe products like them. Adobe has created evangelists of all flavors by building tools that work and make life easier for those who use them. They earned their street credibility long ago and have been rolling in big profits as a result. Perhaps the same will happen for MadCap. We certainly hope so! It’s big global marketplace and there are more than enough customers to go around.

As our melodramatic style is apparently contagious, we’ll drop out of this conversation and let everyone get back to business.

Enough said.

Scott Abel
TheContentWrangler

By ScottAbel on September 16, 2007 -- 1:08pm

Editor’s Note:

Comments are now closed on this post. Our intent is not to run a listserv type rant and waste bandwidth arguing—there are plenty of other places to hang out online and discuss software marketing issues and our favorite software tools.

Thanks for a lively discussion. Back to the “Lab” where we’re designing some new content that will help answer one of the many, “How’d you do that?” questions we receive.