Very interesting. Excellent post

I hated the ads.

The whole concept was in my view wrong from the beginning.

Personally, I cannot see how the business case ever stacked up.

The lack of a payment mechanism at Day One was astounding.

It was a textbook illustration of what I call ‘The Emperor’s New Clothes’ as presumably there was an Executive of Interest championing this at very high level and no one dared to point out the inherent faccies of the proposition.

Rua – that’s pretty amazing. I knew about the advertising agency switch, but not the technology juggling.

Marshall – I’m pretty sure that these were read by at least some of those that could change things.
The head of Marketing at Ferrit even commented back in the day. I’m also sure that a half-decent news clipping service would have brought the articles to the attention of Telecom senior folk. But they were pretty bull-headed about the whole thing, and compounded that by having a not invested here attitude to the lessons of Trade Me.

Are we talking about outsourcing all the way to India and all the associated communication problems or was it to a smaller firm in the ‘naki who just weren’t that good?

Anyone with info please post!

Awesome analysis on the whole situation Lance. You’ve been preaching this stuff about Ferrit from day one, pity nobody at Telecom in a position to do something bothered to read it!

There’s also a tinge of arrogance, or stubbornness involved. The whole industry panned Ferrit from day one, and it wasn’t because it was Telecom – it was because Telecom spent an obscene amount of money to put together a very average site. The NZ industry were very vocal in dissecting the shortcomings of Ferrit. It could be said that Telecom had it easy – they had money to burn and a willing and knowledgeable choir of industry veterans telling them exactly what was wrong with their business model and execution and how to fix it. All Telecom needed to do was remove the lawyers of bloat and get someone in there who knows the ingredients to a successful online operation. But no, Telecom in their arrogance clearly ignored everything anybody was saying and continued on, determined to put away the $3 commissions until one day it added up to $70m. Someone at Telecom was obviously making it a personal vendetta to prove everybody wrong and continue signing off on appalling advertising and keep spending money in the hope that one day New Zealander’s would catch on and realise that Ferrit was in fact a godsend and how silly we have all been for not spending our precious time there. The sad part is that statistics show people were in fact spending some time there, time spent on site was quite high – it’s just a shame that in the $70m spent somebody forgot to commission some A/B testing and work out how to convert some of these visitors into buyers.

But no no, somebody at Telecom read that if you continuously pound people with traditional media advertising that you will implant your awful, dodgy sounding brand into the mind of the consumer. Then said consumer will find themselves subconsciously wandering over to Ferrit, buying lots of stuff and telling all their friends what a fantastic site and wow it was all so easy. Alternatively, you could study and learn from NZ’s best executed (and one of the worlds best might I add) online businesses and take a leaf out of their book on how to build a brand and a business. When the advertising didn’t work Telecom obviously reconvened and came to the conclusion that people just weren’t getting it and understanding what Ferrit was, so out came new TV ads with some weirdo and half a face repeating the point that Ferrit was a shopping mall and had many retailers under one roof. What year is it, 1997? Trust me Telecom – people not knowing what Ferrit was was not the problem. People knew all too well what it was and it was that public indifference to it that cut off your life support – you just simply weren’t to get another chance no matter how many small improvements you made.