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April 18, 2008

German Startup Nails Pre-Launch Marketing Gimmick

Michael Arrington

39 comments »

No one knows much about what German startup Popula is building. But German tech blogs can’t stop writing about their pre-launch video marketing gimmick.

The Popula home page says (in German) only “Popula is an event calendar of all for all. Whether party, concert or children’s birthday. Here you will find what you are interested. Register now and test!” People who’ve email them for more information hear nothing back. All visitors can do is enter their email address and wait for more information. Or, they can read the Popula blog, which has just three entries.

Two of those three are the videos linked above, titled The Early Adopter Song! (Part 1) and The Early Adopter Song! (Part 2), featuring songs about early adopters and beta testers, along with images of bloggers, entrepreneurs and other people in the startup community.

German bloggers can’t stop posting the videos and speculating about what the service might be. And all those links are creating enough buzz and driving enough traffic to the unlaunched site that it’s almost as large as some competitive startups (Alexa thinks it has a larger reach than Socializr, for example). And since the company won’t respond to email inquiries, the speculation grows.

Would the same gimmick work in the U.S.? No - people might think it was entertaining but it likely would be drowned out in the noise of startup news (I think it would have worked in 2005 though). But in Germany, a which has a much smaller tech startup community and an odd taste when it comes to entertainment, it seems to have hit a nerve.

Thanks to Jessica Neuhaus for the tip.

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This entry was posted on Friday, April 18th, 2008 at 12:01 am and is filed under Company & Product Profiles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

Trackbacks/Pings (Trackback URL)

  1. WEB-X Blog

    April 18th, 2008 at 3:16 am

  2. Song für und über Early Adopter » henningschuerig.de/blog

    April 18th, 2008 at 4:27 am

  3. falklueke.com » An open word to Mr. Crunchington

    April 18th, 2008 at 4:53 am

  4. “Wir wollen nur veröffentlichen, was andere nicht wollen, dass es publiziert wird” » Beitrag » zweinull.cc

    April 21st, 2008 at 4:00 pm

  5. Super sexy, super coole Early Adopters » digitalpogo.com

    April 24th, 2008 at 3:46 pm

  6. Das neue sevenload Camp at Ibrahim Evsan

    April 25th, 2008 at 1:16 am

  7. YouTube Fridays: A seranade for beta testers everywhere | Shane Schick’s Computerworld

    April 25th, 2008 at 6:06 am

  8. Exklusiv: The Early Adopter Song (A Cappella-Version) - nicozorn.com

    May 11th, 2008 at 3:38 am

Comments

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  1. Rodney Rumford

    April 18th, 2008 at 1:59 am

    Mike ,
    You did notice that you are in the second video at 1:49 right? “I think it’s a clone”.

    Nice Cameo!

  2. David K

    April 18th, 2008 at 2:00 am

    Aber das ist ja Superschön!

  3. Abhijeet from Jeet Blog

    April 18th, 2008 at 2:01 am

    Michael, I don’t think same gimmick would work in the U.S. In fact it might backfire here because U. S is a more mature market for startups with a more active and educated tech crowd and startups rely on positive marketing and interaction here to promote their products.
    But yes, the election gimmicks are same everywhere in the world. ( And they work too :) )

  4. Nicole Simon

    April 18th, 2008 at 2:02 am

    Shall we talk about who has an odd taste? ;) The video is nicely done because it also uses the words of the pictures in the text which probably is not easy to spot for a non german speaker.

    I still would have preferred a version of popular of wicked. ;))

  5. Dominik

    April 18th, 2008 at 2:02 am

    I’m very scared.

  6. Nicole Simon

    April 18th, 2008 at 2:07 am

    @Abhijeet “is a more mature market for startups with a more active and educated tech crowd and startups rely on positive marketing and interaction here to promote their products.”

    Please don’t confuse local cultural preferences with maturity and more education. American style advertisement does work in America, no matter the industry but is less likely to be successful outside of that market. I usually never use adblockers but when I am in the US I do because the ones I get through geotargeting are so annoying to my senses.

    Or how would you like it if I’d say that in a ‘more mature and educated market’ country influenced songs had no chance?

    btw that music is not my style either but it is the music style you choose to make this kind of text aka message to it and have it work with the images. I would assume that most people who blog about it do not really ‘like’ this song.

  7. Rudy

    April 18th, 2008 at 2:07 am

    it is interesting to see startups like this from other countries getting attention. I think it’s good. Using video and being mysterious seems like the way everybody is trying to get attention these days.

  8. Trench

    April 18th, 2008 at 2:09 am

    Was your response to my comment a double entendre?

  9. Robert

    April 18th, 2008 at 2:10 am

    1. it worked:)
    2. Jehova!!!!You said it!!! David Has… omg:) (im from Germany)

  10. Richard

    April 18th, 2008 at 2:11 am

    Uh, yes. Very mysterious indeed. And slagging off your coveted target-group always pays.

    Seriously, if you think this is a great marketing idea, you need to get out more.

  11. Daniel Thomaser

    April 18th, 2008 at 2:16 am

    It’s not half the buzz in Germany as you might think. People have noticed it (and liked it) but either I missed the big discussion or there was none.

    Ah, and Mike: Ok David Hasselhoff was bad, but when I see this guy, your taste doesn’t seem to be that much better!odd taste
    ;-)

  12. Björn

    April 18th, 2008 at 2:19 am

    nice idea, although there´s already a similar service (according to your description) called venteria

  13. Sebastian

    April 18th, 2008 at 2:21 am

    funny if it is so 2005, why is this service generating more Buzz in the US than in Germany?

    Unfortunately viral does not work as well in Germany as in the US, because in Germany the “old media” managed to get onto the web before blogging became successful in GER.

    How ever thanks to Techcrunch it would not surprise me if German old media (speigel.de, focus.de etc) took notice and would report about popula

  14. Martin

    April 18th, 2008 at 2:35 am

    Sebastian, good comment. It is actually very surprising to see TC covering this site. I heard about it once, but didn’t think of this being something worth a closer look. Let’s see how the buzz will continue/kickstart after this posting.

  15. Nils Hitze

    April 18th, 2008 at 2:35 am

    It’s on techcrunch now, how much more buzz do you want? :) Whatever popula might be, venteria is better by the way.

  16. Nico

    April 18th, 2008 at 2:40 am

    this thing hasn’t generated any buzz yet in Germany, but thanks to this article it will now…

  17. addnr

    April 18th, 2008 at 2:41 am

    honor to whom honor is due.
    so far; let´s see…

  18. Christian

    April 18th, 2008 at 2:46 am

    Nobody, truely nobody cared about popula in germany. Well, until now. How much is that service here? I think we need to talk.

  19. addnr

    April 18th, 2008 at 2:52 am

    @christian
    du sagst es! bin gespannt, was der meister dazu meint.
    wir mühen hier uns ab und die stellen zwei videos ins blog. aber wie gesagt; hut ab - so weit.

  20. Sam Mathews

    April 18th, 2008 at 2:58 am

    Haha.. I loved the first video :D Did they produce the soundtrack or is it just a cover?

  21. Trudeau

    April 18th, 2008 at 3:17 am

    They should have used MoDo’s “Super Gut”:

    http://youtube.com/watch?v=7aS8RfgF_-A

    Always very popula and very German.

  22. Andy

    April 18th, 2008 at 3:20 am

    probably it’s a fake to test how buzz can move around the web

  23. U.

    April 18th, 2008 at 3:51 am

    Everybody who has the German blog scene on his screen (e.g. via netvibes :) noticed popula …

  24. Griff

    April 18th, 2008 at 5:41 am

    This type of marketing campaign has worked in the US already. It wasn’t for a start up, but there was a campaign of posters and billboards spread out all over (well I saw them in NYC, DC, and Miami). All they said was “Gump Happens” then whatever the release date was. They had no picture/mention of what it was, who was in it, etc. All you knew is that whatever Gump was, it was happening on day. From what I recall, it didn’t do so shabby in the box offices. True, as the day drew closer, they did expand on the marketing campaign a bit, but I definitely remember there was some hype about “wtf is gump?”

  25. jho2x

    April 18th, 2008 at 6:05 am

    that’s very nice video… i like it…

  26. steve

    April 18th, 2008 at 6:24 am

    >Would the same gimmick work in the U.S.?

    I just did

  27. tundraboy

    April 18th, 2008 at 8:53 am

    I saw a mother lode of copyright violation suits in those videos.

  28. Search - Harry Wang

    April 18th, 2008 at 9:05 am

    No big whoop. A public events/calendaring system with a “similarity” engine embedded. Throw in the social aspects (i.e. friending, chats, forum, walls, etc.) to tie folks together through the similarities of what people did or will do.

    You saw a bunch of Grateful Dead concerts back in the day and you are a XXX meet-up attender, why so am I - friend me.

    What is it about a fairly nice female ass with non-thong panties or bikini bottom on it?

    Harry “fap, fap, fap” Wang

  29. YouYap.com

    April 18th, 2008 at 9:50 am

    I am comming up with something similar…..

  30. Owaz.it

    April 20th, 2008 at 6:57 am

    It seems that the first http://www.owaz.it competitor is up :-)

    Time will show who is going to be the first, the countdown has started!

  31. oliver

    May 9th, 2008 at 3:19 am

    romour has it, they don’t even have a line of code done yet… but who listens to romours?

    another amusing thing for non german speakers: the sing “popular without an r at the end”… sounds funny

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