You Can’t Be Twenty on Sugar Mountain

It’s like college freshman are running their marketing.

Tivo had a great product. But they’re blowing through money, management, and everyone’s patience trying to move it to another level.

Please, whoever is in charge of Tivo today–clean house

I don’t feel insulted as a blogger or whatever the heck I am in my effort to write about the truth of what is happening at TiVo. This incident is one confirmation of what I say about the company, and it is one that has highlighted things that need to be understood better by more people.

That TiVo did this does not surprise me one bit.

Starting with the CEO, the organization doesn’t have much credibility and not communicating is simply a part of that. They hide because they have nothing useful to say and if they exposed themselves more, more people would realize it. The acts of secrecy and control are both an outgrowth and a cause of failure.

A few months ago a TiVo employee reached out to me regarding some form of relationship the nature of which I am not clear. It included an invitation to express my views and have them passed along in some way. The person is perfectly nice and decent and I welcome the correspondance, but I can’t say today that I am clear what it is about.

One danger of such a relationship could be cooption; the need to say nice things in public because I’d want to keep the relationship intact and potentially expand it further into TiVo. This is not an actual issue at this point, but makes it hard for me to pursue the relationship.

On the other hand, having no contacts disadvantages me by having to observe and analyze everything from a far. But I have managed to succeed at that regardless.

I am proud that I have no business ties, nor personal or professional debts to the company or its people. That allows me to completely say what I believe. The only thing that influences me sometimes is the thought that I might be sued for saying something, especially if I should make a mistake, but even if it is true and they just decide to stick it to me. Maybe I shouldn’t admit that.

On the other hand, exposing the problems TiVo has can be healthy for the company; the reverse of TiVo’s insular dysfunctionality. Unfortunately the Company is so closed minded and wrong headed that little of that benefit (from any source – not me per se) gets through.

Of course, Dave was not serious.

And in reference to your later article, Dave going to work for Sling is vastly different from you going to work for TiVo. The two companies are at opposite poles – For people like you, Sling can be worked for and TiVo cannot without a complete overhaul of the organization, including the CEO.

This kind of bullshit cheapens a brand – and it is, frankly, an insult to everyone who legitimately blogs about TiVo or participates in online TiVo forums.

I’ve been told that some of the executives really dislike the blogs and don’t see the point in trying to establish a relationship with us. Witness the disastrous attempt …

Dave – It wouldn’t be competition

Not just over this, their whole marketing thing is just plain broken. Hell, their marketing staff should qualify for some sort of incompetent-protection-program where they’re shipped of to Eastern Europe, given fake identities, and encourage to try and make a go of it. (They’re likely nearly unemployable locally.)

The inane parties. The abandoned blog experiment (the fella who used to run it disavows any responsibility now, as does apparently everyone else at Tivo HQ, including anybody with authority to just take the mess offline.) The godawful TiVo Shannon (I’m sure she’s a lovely person, but it’s like tuning into local public access cable programming…)

It’s like college freshman are running their marketing. “Hey, let’s try this! No, now lets go with that!” “My Dad’s got a barn, you handle the lights, we’ll do a promo!” “Social networking is hot!” “Videos are viral!” etc.

Correction: It feels like college freshman with Attention Deficient Disorder.

Tivo had a great product. But they’re blowing through money, management, and everyone’s patience trying to move it to another level. Their horribly (bizarrely) inept marketing has gotta be a large part of the problems.

Please, whoever is in charge of Tivo today–clean house. The folks stuck there just aren’t delivering and there have got to be better alternatives.

Ben – Amen! I’ll email the person in marketing I’ve worked with when I’ve done reviews and she’s pretty good at getting back to me. (Whom I won’t name lest people deluge her.) But that isn’t her job, and she’s often on the road. She’s very nice and helpful, but I still feel bad about bugging her whenever I need to check something. TiVo really needs a blog liaison – they just don’t seem to ‘get it’ when it comes to bloggers. I’ve been told that some of the executives really dislike the blogs and don’t see the point in trying to establish a relationship with us. Witness the disastrous attempt to have an official TiVo corporate blog as well as the failed ‘TiVo Ambassador’ contest/program.

Sling Media really got it right when they hired Zatz. I can hit Dave any time and he’ll get right back to me most of the time. Even when he’s on the road he tries to be responsive to bloggers. Sling ‘gets it’ and actively courts bloggers to spread the word about their products. Dave will give a heads up on new announcements – unlike TiVo where we get them when the public does, well after the ‘mainstream press’ gets them. How many times have we seen new announcements posted online from USA Today, etc, well before any press release has gone out.

I know not everyone in TiVo feels that way. Some of the people there really do get it, but it seems like they’re working in an environment where they’re discouraged, if not forbidden, from establishing relationships with bloggers. TiVo really needs a Zatz of their own to be a point of contact for bloggers, someone who can speak to bloggers directly and understands the differences for bloggers compared to mainstream media – someone who knows the audience. I used to think it would be an interesting job, but now I’ve been blogging about TiVo for so long I think it might be too awkward to work there – and I’d have to give up the blogging due to conflict of interest, and I just enjoy it too much.

Alex – Update it or take it down. Really, at this point it is an embarrassment.

Dave – It wouldn’t be competition, there is still plenty of TiVo (and non-TiVo) news a corporate blog wouldn’t touch. But *some* voice would be good.

Do we really need the competition?

If they really wanted to improve their blogger coverage, they’d improve their communications. I’ve been writing about TiVo for almost two years and still don’t have a contact over there that I can rely on.

Or, they could update their own blog which hasn’t been updated in a century…

I’m not fond of this type of advertising, thats for sure.

Hopefully Tivo will see the negative reaction and pull the plug on it.