3 ms·

i wonder what happened when the stores told the students to pay for the software after / before having it ordered.

by b20000 3y ago

solarkraft 3y ago
Presumably they actually bought it and were reimbursed. It's a tiny price to get yourself on shelves everywhere!
- ninkendo 3y ago
  That’s actually super illegal, at least in America. There’s a lot of very tight restrictions against buying your own product, as it can lead to false sales numbers, etc. Something tells me that if this story were true, it would be very much something he’d want to keep hidden at the time.
  - the-dude 3y ago
    Are you sure about that? Presenting false sales numbers sounds like a regular false statement to me, which may be subject to SEC rules etc if you are listed. But actually buying your own product ... I can't find any sources yet on the web.
    - ElevenLathe 3y ago
      IANAL (though I do read Matt Levine, and I stayed at a Holiday Inn Express last night) but my understanding is that yeah it's securities fraud if you are a public company because you are reporting sales numbers that are essentially fake, thereby defrauding the investing public. Is it just regular fraud if you're not a public company? Or if you are a public company and do juke your sales stats this way, but are open about it in your public filings? Not sure.
      - dragonwriter 3y ago
        > Is it just regular fraud if you're not a public company? I don't think it is regular fraud in and of itself. I think it is likely to become fraud when you use sales figures including undisclosed self-dealing to support any financial transaction or anything else from which you receive something of value from someone else, and where those sales figures are a material factor.
  - b20000 3y ago
    do you think retailers don’t do anything illegal? hahaha
- virtualritz 3y ago
  None of these students hired to call-bomb bought any KPT seats. This was about visibility/getting shelve space. Selling licenses was an effect of the former, afterwards.
  - b20000 3y ago
    again, not credible that retailers would not ask for prepayment for something they don’t stock (yet)
- b20000 3y ago
  that is the more likely story. if you have the money to give all the retailers a bunch of markup more power to you.
virtualritz 3y ago
No one ordered anything. The stores didn't know about KPT. So they couldn't even take orders for it when the calls hit them. The intention of the phone-bombing was that the stores would order a bunch of boxes each, of KPT, so that they hit the shelves. KPT was one of those things that as a Photoshop user, you just had to have in your toolbox at the time. I.e. even if you just did boring graphics design or classic compositing, there was always a moment when some filter from the plugin would come in handy. After that KPT hit a critical installed base. I.e. word of mouth and piracy did the rest as far as marketing goes. Shelve space for software was auctioned-off at the time. Microsoft was number one in buying shelve space ofc. The closer to the entrance of a shop (or the software area of a department store) and the higher up the shelve your boxes would end up, the more you had to pay. Now KPT wasn't on any shelve anywhere at all when Uwe pulled this one off. That changed after.
- b20000 3y ago
  so the retailers simply gave the prime shelf space to KPT because of the phone calls? i have first hand retail experience trying to get a hw product into stores and could never pull that off. i also highly doubt retailers would simply order a bunch of stuff without taking cash from customers first.
  - sulam 3y ago
    These kinds of guerrilla techniques can work, but they only work once or maybe a few times. I'm inclined to believe they worked at that time and in that context but you're right it wouldn't work today. If you want to read about some things that wouldn't ever work today, but that absolutely worked when they were first tried, read about Marc Benioff's guerrilla marketing for Salesforce when they were just getting started. Remember, immigration spam actually worked back in the day!

i wonder what happened when the stores told the students to pay for the software after / before having it ordered.

by b20000 3y ago

i wonder what happened when the stores told the students to pay for the software after / before having it ordered.

solarkraft 3y ago

Presumably they actually bought it and were reimbursed. It's a tiny price to get yourself on shelves everywhere!

ninkendo 3y ago
That’s actually super illegal, at least in America. There’s a lot of very tight restrictions against buying your own product, as it can lead to false sales numbers, etc. Something tells me that if this story were true, it would be very much something he’d want to keep hidden at the time.
- the-dude 3y ago
  Are you sure about that? Presenting false sales numbers sounds like a regular false statement to me, which may be subject to SEC rules etc if you are listed. But actually buying your own product ... I can't find any sources yet on the web.
  - ElevenLathe 3y ago
    IANAL (though I do read Matt Levine, and I stayed at a Holiday Inn Express last night) but my understanding is that yeah it's securities fraud if you are a public company because you are reporting sales numbers that are essentially fake, thereby defrauding the investing public. Is it just regular fraud if you're not a public company? Or if you are a public company and do juke your sales stats this way, but are open about it in your public filings? Not sure.
    - dragonwriter 3y ago
      > Is it just regular fraud if you're not a public company? I don't think it is regular fraud in and of itself. I think it is likely to become fraud when you use sales figures including undisclosed self-dealing to support any financial transaction or anything else from which you receive something of value from someone else, and where those sales figures are a material factor.
- b20000 3y ago
  do you think retailers don’t do anything illegal? hahaha
virtualritz 3y ago
None of these students hired to call-bomb bought any KPT seats. This was about visibility/getting shelve space. Selling licenses was an effect of the former, afterwards.
- b20000 3y ago
  again, not credible that retailers would not ask for prepayment for something they don’t stock (yet)
b20000 3y ago
that is the more likely story. if you have the money to give all the retailers a bunch of markup more power to you.

virtualritz 3y ago

No one ordered anything. The stores didn't know about KPT. So they couldn't even take orders for it when the calls hit them. The intention of the phone-bombing was that the stores would order a bunch of boxes each, of KPT, so that they hit the shelves. KPT was one of those things that as a Photoshop user, you just had to have in your toolbox at the time. I.e. even if you just did boring graphics design or classic compositing, there was always a moment when some filter from the plugin would come in handy. After that KPT hit a critical installed base. I.e. word of mouth and piracy did the rest as far as marketing goes. Shelve space for software was auctioned-off at the time. Microsoft was number one in buying shelve space ofc. The closer to the entrance of a shop (or the software area of a department store) and the higher up the shelve your boxes would end up, the more you had to pay. Now KPT wasn't on any shelve anywhere at all when Uwe pulled this one off. That changed after.

b20000 3y ago
so the retailers simply gave the prime shelf space to KPT because of the phone calls? i have first hand retail experience trying to get a hw product into stores and could never pull that off. i also highly doubt retailers would simply order a bunch of stuff without taking cash from customers first.
- sulam 3y ago
  These kinds of guerrilla techniques can work, but they only work once or maybe a few times. I'm inclined to believe they worked at that time and in that context but you're right it wouldn't work today. If you want to read about some things that wouldn't ever work today, but that absolutely worked when they were first tried, read about Marc Benioff's guerrilla marketing for Salesforce when they were just getting started. Remember, immigration spam actually worked back in the day!