We're a small software company with an incredibly boring product (reporting & document generation software). And we compete against Microsoft, Oracle, & SAP. Yet one week in 2006 – we had over 1 million unique visitors to our web site. And in this process we moved from no brand awareness to over 60% with our target audience.
How? By trying something different. Any company, no matter how small, can find a way to break through all the clutter out there and get noticed. There are a million ways to do it. This is one that worked. Here's the story.
Back in 2006 I saw a video on YouTube named Mother's Day that I thought was very clever. So I emailed Joe & Luke and asked if they would create one for us (for a fee). My only requirements was make it very funny to programmers, and mention our company. They came up with Cubicle Wars (part I).
When I first received it, I was really nervous. I had spent a lot (by our standards) and didn't know what I would get. So very nervous, I played it. And I was laughing so hard that I couldn't breathe. Ok step 1 was good – it was funny. Or at least I thought it was.
So we pushed it up to YouTube. And we crossed our fingers. It was a gigantic hit. It made the front page of Digg and YouTube. It made the opening paragraph of the MSDN newsletter (sent to every Windows developer). It was forwarded and referenced and copied everywhere. Ok step 2 was good – it went viral.
But that still left the question, did it help us. The old Joe Isuzu ads were hilarious, but they didn't sell any more cars. So what did we get? Well over the next couple of year we found:
So earlier this year we asked Joe & Luke to do a sequel. Once again make it funny and mention Windward. And once again they came through. Every bit as funny as the first.
There's a lot more competition for attention today. A lot lot LOT more. We didn't get the front page of Digg (yet), but we did get the front page of FunnyOrDie. We weren't on the front page of YouTube 100% of the time, because nothing gets 100% today – but we were there at times. So we were not front and center everywhere as we were in 2006, but I don't think that is even possible anymore. We are in a lot more places this time, because there are a lot more sites today (there was no HuffPo back then).
Every day getting attention is harder. Every day all kinds of marketing is harder. The trick is to keep trying new things. And when repeating efforts that were previously successful, learn how to use them better. You also need to realize that it's impossible to predict what will resonate best with people, and in what way.
So how did it work out? Our biggest worry when we first did this was would a successful video lead to more sales. That turned out to be an easy yes. If you make developers laugh, it turns out quite a few will look at your product. Our biggest issue this second time has been getting it in front of people – we were spoiled by how easy it was the first time. I think this is just the state of the Internet today – even more sites, even more content, even more competition for attention. So we've had to work a lot hard to get equivilent attention.
This second time we also had Joe & Luke create a 30 second ad. The idea behind it was that people who saw the video would want more, and would then watch the ad (not labeled as an ad). So it would be a mention of Windward Reports followed by a clear sell of Windward Reports. And again, the requirement was the ad had to be funny.
These guys are geniuses. I think it is one of the best ads for any product I have seen. It sells the fundamental concept of our system, and does so in a way that has you laughing. So good in fact that we are putting the ad out on websites as a click ad. It is pulling people in by itself. The combination of the ad along with the video makes up for the more challenging marketing environment of today.
If you are trying to get word out about your product, and you are drowning in the sea of noise that is the Internet, look for a different way to break out. It could be a video (Joe & Luke are available). It could be a free computer game. It could be a free quirky iPhone app. But I think the key point to focus on is you have to create something that gets the widespread attention. You then want it to link back to what you are selling – but that can be a light touch. The key challenge is getting people's attention. Because if 1 million people watch your video, 1% looking at your product is 10,000 potential customers.
Good luck.
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Adds various capabilities such as inequalities,descending sort, joins, and other functions.
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SQL Select Debugger
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Added a Query tab as a field for typing or pasting in a select statement
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All tags using that Data source will be automatically updated with that name.
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New single interface to replace 2 separate dialog boxes
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Displays of all the tags in the template, structured as they are placed in the template. This provides a simple & intuitive way to see the structure of your template. Also provides the capability to go to any tag and/or see the properties of any tag.
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The ability to integrate the Windward Engine into Google’s cloud computing platform for developing and hosting web applications dubbed Google Applications Engine (GAE).
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This new integration will allow for processing of complex scripts and bi-directional text such as Arabic. Your PDF output will be much tighter and more closely match your template, and we’ll be able to respond rapidly to PDF requests and fixes.
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Includes support for new ForEach and slide break handling, table header row repeat across slide breaks, and native Microsoft support for charts and images.
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Tags are color coded in the template by type, making it easy to visually identify them.
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Version 13’s core code has been reworked and optimized to offer a reduced memory footprint, faster PDF generation and full documentation of supported features and limitations in the specifications for DOCX, XLSX and PPTX.
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Documents can include advanced Word image properties such as shadows, borders, and styles.
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Windward has updated HTML output to reflect changing HTML standards.
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Windward now works with a slew of new datasources: MongoDB, JSON, Cassandra, OData, Salesforce.com
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The Generate Code tool in the designer allows you to open an existing template and, with a click of a button, automatically create a window with the code needed to run your current template with all data sources and variables. Simply copy this code and paste into your application's code in the appropriate place. You now have Windward integrated into your application.
You only need to do this once. You do not do this for each template. Instead, where it has explicit files for the template and output, change that to parameters you pass to this code. Same for the parameters passed to Windward. This example uses explicit values to show you what to substitute in where.
Any pivot tables in an XLSX template are carried over to the XLSX output. The ranges in the pivot ranges are adjusted to match the generated output. So your final XLSX will have pivot tables set as expected in the generated file.
This makes creating an XLSX workbook with pivot tables trivial.
In an imported sub-template, if its properties for a style (ex. Normal) differ from the parent template's properties for the style, the use in the sub-template can be set to either use the properties in the sub-template, or the properties in the parent.
You set to retain when you don't want the child template's styling to change when imported. You set to use the parent when you want the styling of the imported template to match the styling in the parent.
Any explicit styling is always retained. This only impacts styling set by styles.
Tags can be placed in text boxes. Including linked text boxes. This gives you the ability to set the text in a textbox from your data.
Tags can be placed in shapes & smart art. This gives you the ability to set the text in a shape from your data.
When generating HTML output, the engine can either write bitmaps as distinct files the generate HTML references, or it can embed the images in the HTML providing a single file for the output.
You can place tags in pretty much any part of a template, including in footnotes & endnotes.
Any parts of a DOCX or XLSX (PowerPoint does not support this) file that are locked in the template, will be locked the same in the output.
If a font used in the template does not exist on the server generating a report, the font to substitute can be specified.
In addition, if a glyph to be rendered does not exist in the font specified, you can specify the replacement font. This can be set distinctly for European, Bi-Directional, and Far East fonts.
If you need this - it's essential. And if you don't need it, it's irrelevant.
Windward enables you to build a document by applying multiple datasources to the template simultaneously. When Windward is merging the data into a template, it processes the template by handling each tag in order, and each tag pulls from different datasources. (As opposed to processing all of one datasource, then processing the next.)
This allows the select tag to use data from another datasource in its select. For example, if you are pulling customer information from one data source, you can then pull data from the sales datasource using the customer ID of the customer presently processing to pull the sales information for that customer. If you're interested in patching together your data from multiple datasources, read this post on our blog.
