tech-company, marketingI recently asked this question, about fair use of a founding date that doesn’t really apply to a product revival, and that got me curious: how much does “date founded” even matter any more?
It’s not like we visit facebook.com and see a banner that reads “Since 2004!” In fact, you don’t even go to Hotmail and see “Founded 1996,” which, to me at least, seems like a pretty impressive factoid.
Clearly it still matters in many service industries, but is founding date irrelevant in the tech world? When the whole industry is moving forward to really review the past, maybe listing a founding date is actually a bad thing for marketing? Maybe users even associate an old company with old designs and ideas?
To be clear, I’m not talking about companies that have had the same software out for twenty years, where their philosophies might actually be outdated. I’m asking about two otherwise-identical business models and products, one of which is labelled with a founding date and the other is not.
Those claims are certainly not as prominent with your average tech company, there’s no denying that.
So is that because the average tech company isn’t all that old, or because it isn’t relevant anymore? Or both?
I think, as you mentioned in your question, that a lot of it has to do with how quickly the tech industry is moving and evolving. But to leave it there would oversimplify what’s going on and I don’t think it automatically means there’s no value in saying how long you’ve been around (but we might need to say it a bit differently).
There is still room for trusted brands.
That’s what all of this boils into is brand trust. The “established 1979” logo is meant to build trust. But it is just one factor in how brands earn our trust, and how we attribute that trust is evolving.
This seems to be even more true of the software/web development side of the tech industry vs the hardware side. And I think part of that is because it is much easier for a small team to band together, create a nice app, and get some funding to finish developing and market it than it is to bring a cell phone to market for instance. As more and more startups with funding from unknown venture capitalists successfully bring quality products/services to market, people will become more and more accustomed to interacting with brands they’re not familiar with.
You do still see instances of “We were the ORIGINAL X” or “We were the first to X”, but the tendency is more to say, “We’re the new kids on the block and we’re going to rock your world by doing something you’ve never seen before! Forget about that company you’ve been working with since 1996.”
On the hardware side, I watched part of Apple’s live streaming of their big iPhone 6 event and on their website they were plugging the fact that they had invented the computer mouse (as well as several other innovations mostly focused on user input and leading into a special knob on their watch - they call it a “digital crown”). So it was kind of an interesting blend of “Hey we’ve been around forever, but we’ve been innovating the whole time and we’re doing it again!” Trying to get the best of both worlds going there - which I think if you’re in a position to do so is the best way to go about this.
Here’s why they’re in a position for it to work. Apple has not only been around for almost 40 years, they have a history of creating products that have earned people’s trust (whether you like Apple or not, they have earned earned people’s trust). If they had a competitor that had been around for the same period of time but hadn’t done anything noteworthy during that time, it wouldn’t do that competitor much good to say “Established 1976”.
But even if someone had never heard of Apple before, but they see Apple say, “We invented the computer mouse!” that tells them that Apple has been around for quite a while AND they have a history of innovation. It doesn’t necessarily have to be innovation, but it has to be something noteworthy that resonates with the customer or it won’t do much to build trust.
Where it really gets interesting is with some of these mega-corporations that everyone is familiar with but they actually have somewhat negative reputations and because of that they actually do very little to tie some of their assets back to their brand even though the brand has “been around” for some time. Like the example you gave of Facebook. Nobody trusted Instagram anymore when FB bought it. In fact, when Facebook released their Messenger app a couple months ago, the internet was consumed with suspicion over what evil thing they were trying to do and millions of people were talking about how insanely invasive the new app’s permission requests were - few stopped to realize that the permissions were almost identical to the original FB app as well as almost every other app they likely have installed on their phone. And there was a fair amount of discontent among the Kickstarter community when Facebook bought the Occulus Rift. When that gets to market, I doubt you’ll see a “Product of Facebook, Inc. est. 2004” sticker on the box. They’ll be better off keeping the brands separate.
One of my businesses which is somewhat in the tech startup space (sort of a hybrid I guess) now controls another company that has been around for about 14 years. That company isn’t a tech company, so it’s not as directly tied to this issue, but you can bet we’ll keep talking about the fact that the company has been around for a while now. But the company has also been building a quality reputation during that 14 year period, so that makes it worth talking about.
Hopefully that isn’t too un-focused I was trying to cover multiple angles without wandering too much. What it really boils down to is this: Brands need trust. How we as consumers attribute that trust is changing. Which means brands have to change how they earn trust from new customers encountering their brand. The “est. 1904” type claims still carry value, but they too must evolve. Rather than just stating a date, talk about what you’ve done in those years - things the customer will care about.
A couple other quick points:
What market you’re in will definitely make a difference. If you’re building a webapp to help people manage their money, you probably need a higher level of trust than if you’re offering a free email account. If your customers are businesses rather than consumers, you may also have to work harder to earn trust.
If you can’t say, “We’ve been around 20 years and look at all the cool things we’ve done as a company,” there may still be a similar claim you can make. I’ve seen a lot of smaller companies tally up the number of years their employees and owners have in the industry and say, “Together, we’ve got 127 years of experience, and here are some of the cool projects we’ve been a part of throughout the years.” For some reason the Mythbusters are the first people to come to mind, but at the beginning of their show it says, “Together they’ve got X years of experience.” And I think it said that during their first season - to help build trust for their new brand.
There’s so many different facets to this discussion and it’s hard to keep myself from running off in any one direction, and there’s plenty more that could be said but I think this gives a pretty good summary of my view of the state of the relationship between our culture and brand trust as it relates specifically to the type of claim you’re talking about.
All content is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.