Human nature is a fickle thing.
The one guarantee for a successful company is that at some point in the future, people will tire of your success and will turn on you. Of course this transition from hero to zero will often be aided by the fact that successful firms often believe their own hype and lose the run of themselves.
What’s interesting is that in the crazy 24×7 media environment where we now live, these boom-bust cycles are reducing all the time.
Think about this. Microsoft was a poster child for just over twenty years before the wheels started coming off the perfectly manicured profile of innovation, intelligence and great marketing.
Today a company’s honeymoon period will never last twenty years.
Look at Google. They have executed a staggering PR and Marketing campaign. The company joined a “stagnant” product category that was, at the time, saturated with large players. Google not only built a business, they changed how people used the Internet – and generated billions of dollars of cash along the way.
Now with their imminent IPO there’s a growing wave of cynicism surrounding the company. The combination of dutch share auctions, profiles in Playboy, and millions of bloggers is taking some, though not all, of the sheen off the Google logo.
The lesson for PR professionals here is simple. If you are executing brilliant campaigns, achieving your objectives and building a successful business, then you should be aware that at some point in the future things are going to get difficult.
Rather than waiting for that to happen, think about it, understand it and plan for it. It is an inevitable result of success.
“Google has become an embarrassment for the entire tech industry. Google should pull its IPO and come back later. If the company won’t do that, the SEC should stop the IPO for an extended period while the company tries something it can handle–like a traditional IPO. The auction format looks more like a means to separate unsophisticated investors from their money that a means of letting the �little people� in on the riches.” – Dave Coursey, EWeek
On related search matters:
- Yahoo has kick started a weblog on Search
Footnote:
Murphy's Law 