Everybody loves a good
spin on things – don’t they? I mean with the Presidential debates
being on TV recently and each political party trying to tell us how
their candidate won the debate and others in the media spinning a
news story to enhance a companies or individual’s reputation, it
seems everywhere you turn a news story is being spun. And sadly, this
usually means that the source of the spinning is less than
trustworthy.
Engage Symantec and their
recent spin-job on why several major retailers have insisted on
replacing the Norton Secured Seal (which replaced the VeriSign
Checkmark in April thanks to Symantec’s brilliant decision to
replace a highly trustworthy brand logo with a less than trustworthy
product such as Norton).
In the month of August
alone, Symantec posted no less than 14 press releases announcing that
individual retail companies are ‘switching to VeriSign to power
their websites’. Click these links to read the spin job yourself
and I’ll explain what’s wrong about this:
Here is my favorite quote
from these small little spin blog posts.
“Recently QVC chose to
display the VeriSign Secured Seal on its home page. That's cool
because QVC is a top-20 online shopping site, but it's cool for
another reason as well.” – Tim Callan
Well Tim Callan –
first; you’re a dope cause you wrote this post without giving any
details on WHY it’s cool for another reason (like it’s some
inside joke).
Second – we’re not
stupid nor does the Jedi Mind Trick work on people who have half of a
brain who can figure out the real truth behind the reason why they
insisted on switching back to VeriSign.
Third – If you’re
going to engage a PR spin – this is not the way to accomplish this;
trust me as a professional publicist for well over 25 years, I’m a
spin-Jedi Master.
Here is the truth behind
these ‘releases’. These retailers never ‘switched’ to
VeriSign. They’ve all been protected by VeriSign Software and
displayed the checkmark for YEARS! However, in April this year, they
were forced (not of their choosing but Symantec’s) to display the
Norton Seal. This caused online shopping to decrease dramatically and
each retailer knew exactly why the drop of sales occurred.
It was due to the Norton
Seal being placed on their websites and chasing away loyal customers.
It really is that simple folks. So the retailers never ‘switched’
– they just went back to what powered them successfully in the
past.
Now here is the real
issue at hand. How can anybody trust a company who misleads the
public so pathetically? Trying to turn their mistake into a huge
success story is lying – plain and simple. These retail companies
have been using the VeriSign product for years; they never SWITCHED
to VeriSign recently.
So please Symantec –
keep trying to convince the masses that you’re screw up in April
never occurred. We will continue to remind you that the Jedi mind
trick only works on the feeble minded. And last time I checked,
online shoppers are pretty smart folks.
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