Back in the
late 90´s, when I was still a consultant with PWC, I worked on a project for
BellSouth down in Atlanta, Georgia. It
was the beginning of the e-commerce boom.
The success of online retailers such as Amazon.com had other major corporations
scrambling to adopt internet-based business solutions. We were implementing for BellSouth an
eProcurement platform. BellSouth Online
Buying (or B.O.B as it came affectionately to be known) was an internet
platform that would empower BellSouth employees to buy goods and services
online using point-and-click electronic catalogs containing BellSouth
negotiated pricing. This was cutting
edge stuff (at the time) and the business benefit forecast was dramatic. We talked about BOB in tones of breathless
anticipation – as if he was a childhood friend who had become incredibly famous
and wealthy and we were thrilled just by the association. The
software provider, CommerceOne, was on fire with stock prices going through the
roof and the two C1 consultants in our midst both became on-paper millionaires
in the first month of the project. Those
were heady days. We thought we were
witnessing the second coming of Microsoft and were so busy checking (live!)
stock quotes on our Palm Pilots that there were days when very little project
work got done at all.
If the hype
and buzz at BellSouth HQ was big, it was nothing compared to what was going on
in the industry. It seemed like every other week we were in Las
Vegas to attend a software launch or industry convention. These events were ridiculously lavish and
packed with software engineers riding the wave of their quasi-celebrity. Interspersed with performances by “Blue Man
Group” and “Cirque du Soleil”, key note speakers elucidated on the e-commerce
revolution. Dressed in pleated khaki Dockers and golf
shirts with corporate logo these tech-geeks-turned-billionaire entrepreneurs approached
the speaker’s podium by jogging down the centre isle of the auditorium. Accompanied by loud music (invariably “Eye of
the Tiger” or “I Believe I Can Fly”) and
pivoting laser beams, they would high-five audience members before suddenly appearing
50 times larger than life on giant flat screens behind the stage to begin the benediction.
PWC rode the
wave for all it was worth. Worked up a
brilliant communications package and took it on the road. Sell, sell, sell! Look at what we did for BellSouth!! Only meanwhile
back at BellSouth….. a change in strategic direction (more focus on competitive
strength through core business – imagine that!) resulted in BOB being eighty-sixed
before it was even fully deployed. Very
shortly after that, in the (northern hemisphere) spring of 2000, the so-called
dot-com bubble burst and it was all over.
eCommerce stock prices plummeted, projects were put “on hold” and headhunters
stopped calling. No one wanted to know
about eBusiness portals and the people who built them. It was a depressing and uniquely humiliating
come-down because despite the excessive spending and all that hype, there was
very little in the way of actual results (positive or otherwise). Despite the validity of the concept (which would be proven true about 10 years later) very few of the early implementations got off
the ground (the why’s and wherefores of that make an interesting story for
another time). It was a case of massively
premature self-promotion.
This
morning, sometime around 4am (why is it always
4am?), I woke with the memory of BellSouth and BOB running around in my head
and wondered why. Then I made the
connection my sub-conscious had already prepared for me. Could it be that I am making the same mistake
with LALA? Did I learn nothing from my experiences with CommerceOne and the
mini-disc?! Why am I blogging and
creating logos and creating Facebook pages before LALA even exists?! I haven’t even done anything yet – what if it
FAILS!!! And then I ate some chocolate
and went back to sleep.
Yes I am prematurely
self-promoting and that’s OK with me. Because,
for me, the process of setting up LALA is as important, if not more so, than
the end result. And whether or not LALA
is a success of a failure from a business perspective I want to remember every
step of this process and I want to share it with you (whether you like it or
not!). And that I guess is our communications strategy. So
please, check out our Facebook page at “Latin American Lifestyle and Art – LALA”
and bloody-well “like” it J
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