Powerpoint paralysis - Valleywag Comments

Powerpoint paralysis

Ranunculus — Fri, 20 Apr 2007 18:38:47 PDT

Indeed, it's a shame and quite telling how much time, money, and energy they expended in coming up with "FullView" when they could have chosen a great product name that really communicated "richness, trusted source, accomplishment, and intrigue" (huh?!?) like Wii.

Give no quarter to marketeers!

Ranunculus

Powerpoint paralysis

Iknowyouknow — Sun, 01 Apr 2007 16:40:58 PDT

sad, sad, sad. When was the last time that you actually read about AOL doing something. It's always been an internet company run by people who were proud of the fact that that they didn't know anything about the internet. But man, are they good with the powerpoints.

Iknowyouknow

Powerpoint paralysis

bokononist — Wed, 28 Mar 2007 22:52:04 PDT

and it also can be spelled FoolView -- which could describe what you see when you go to a meeting at AOL.

bokononist

Powerpoint paralysis

WickedSmahtie — Tue, 27 Mar 2007 20:08:22 PDT

Look, there's nothing particularly wrong with the deck. Yes, it's dull as sh*t. Yes, it's corporate pablum. Yes, it's droningly self-congratulatory. That's no big deal; that's how one navigates the shoals of executive ignorance and/or infighting at most big corporations. (Okay, so maybe it's more accurate to say that there is something wrong with the deck, but only inasmuch as it's emblematic of something wronger in modern big-company culture.)

For me -- and likely for anyone at or recently of AOL -- the funny's in the understanding of three realities:

(1) In the time it took to complete the research, the company probably allocated, reduced, reallocated, approved an ex-budget request on, yanked the ex-budget, reapproved the original allocation for and then finally defunded whatever money was going to help make consumers aware of this, ah, wonderful new name for what I'm sure is a FABULOUS search experience. Which name and product the powers that are have now probably completely forgotten ever existed, as they moved on to the new flavors of the month.

(2) The party that Lexicon probably threw when AOL came knocking, cash-in-hand, to "partner" on this research. Because Lexicon probably knew what most consultancies of note know about AOL: that AOL's staggering lack of leadership and skill in the market research arena combines with (1) above to make them a cash cow, always willing to be convinced of the need to spend another $100,000 for additional phases of research, none of which will ever figure into actual consumer experiences, and all of which will therefore carry not a hint of accountability for the agency.

(3) The fact that, no matter how good or awful the name, it's likely in the extreme that AOL's product development team either performed no examination of, or simply and willfully ignored, consumer preferences in designing and implementing the product in the first place.

Don't believe it?

Page-load time is consistently one of the online experience factors that inversely correlates most with consumer satisfaction.

Take a stopwatch to AOL's page-load times, and compare to the competition.

(Actually, time the competition first. You might nod off while waiting for AOL search results or, you know, your e-mail inbox to load.)

WickedSmahtie

Powerpoint paralysis

MrNosuch — Tue, 27 Mar 2007 09:42:56 PDT

Interestingly enough, Fidelity, the investment broker, already offers a "Full View" tool for customers. Fidelity kept it two words, though, but they did trademark it.

So all that research and it's not even particularly original.

MrNosuch

Powerpoint paralysis

JoeG — Tue, 27 Mar 2007 08:05:30 PDT

It looks like the AOL trademark application is about to be approved as well.

But I wonder if Fidelity Investments, who hold the U.S. trademark for Full View for "compiling, organizing, managing and reporting user-specific financial information by means of the Internet" have any opinion about this at all.

JoeG

Powerpoint paralysis

InTheNet — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 20:23:58 PDT

Corporate types always move too slowly but I'm impressed they put that much thought into what seems like a little decision. Maybe they're learning the world doesn't revolve around them anymore and are actually listening to what their consumers want.

InTheNet

Powerpoint paralysis

Airsank — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 16:57:48 PDT

Wait...hold on...AOL still exists?

Airsank

Powerpoint paralysis

michelson — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 16:54:17 PDT

Here's a link to the powerpoint:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/19386/Search-Naming-aol-powerpoi...

michelson

Powerpoint paralysis

schvitzatura — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 16:27:14 PDT

For when you are being flogged with a hose in an Ankara prison and are looking for a search engine that can't be "beat":

Good fortune, winning position - Turkish

Only 16 languages? "FullView" in Finnish could mean some obscene bodily function.

schvitzatura

Powerpoint paralysis

eknirb — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 14:57:55 PDT

PS; 'Fullview" sort of sounds, well, vaguely Seinfeldian..kinda 'Mulva-ish?"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Junior_Mint

eknirb

Powerpoint paralysis

eknirb — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 14:55:14 PDT

how ridiculous. search = google. period. anything else is just a wasted dog and pony show on their part. Oops, wait- they've done that before. I remember....hmmmm...ah yes. Jan of 2000 or so. A merger if I recall...it'll come to me...Case and Levin, right?....

eknirb

Powerpoint paralysis

Scott — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 13:34:59 PDT

of the many things to laugh about here, my favorite is the "analysis" of how "FullView" meets all of the branding requirements - mostly because it seems patently untrue (nothing about "FullView" screams new or different) and because that implies that it's pure corporate brainwashing - convincing themselves that something is true, when any human outside of The Corporation would look at it funny.

Scott

Powerpoint paralysis

ChiefCynic — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 12:13:43 PDT

Content aside, the Powerpoint deck is particularly dreadful. Every slide looks exactly the same. FullSnooze...

ChiefCynic

Powerpoint paralysis

Joe Clark — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 12:07:16 PDT

Because of the velarized Ls in English, "FullView" ends up sounding like "FuwView," i.e., like something Babwa Wawa would utter on a comedy show in the 1980s. There aren't many words that have -l$v- across a syllable boundary ("$") in English ("halva"?), so it will always seem like a funny word.

It uses an intercap and the highly marked letter W (something that, in many languages, always indicates Windows is a foreign product).

It has no chance at all of becoming a verb ("Lemme FullView that... no, no results for 'tits'").

Joe Clark

Powerpoint paralysis

Imakenothing — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 12:04:42 PDT

I dont know, maybe they should have got JC to help them?

Could have called it FubarView.....

Imakenothing

Powerpoint paralysis

ScalaWag — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 11:55:27 PDT

Can you post the original PPT file? Wonder what other names they considered.

ScalaWag