Here Is Why We Do NOT Cover Your Company

JH
John Honovich
Feb 02, 2014
IPVM

Regularly, we get complaints from manufacturers or their agents about why we do not cover their company.

The #1 reason is that very few people care about your company or products. It's a hard truth to swallow, but you have to come to grips with it.

We know this based on years of data collected on IPVM readership - what articles lots of people read and which they ignore. (See more on this in our IPVM For PR / Marketing People report.)

It's simple. If people do not want to read about your company or products, what is the point of us spending time and money forcing it down their throats?

There's no secret agenda of why we do not cover companies. We will cover any company that we believe our members will find interesting (that's why you see so many articles on Axis and Avigilon, because the reads and response support it).

We've tried repeatedly to cover companies who are who laggards in their markets, with little differentiation, and the response is dreadful (80% or 90% less reads than our typical articles). The message we have taken from the membership is that they are not interested in hearing about me-too offerings.

We certainly cover small, weird and niche products but we always look for something different that would be new to our members (e.g. in just the last month - the hairclip security device, a delayed egress maglock, $29 no name Chinese IP camera). None of these are big brand companies but all of them are unlike conventional offerings.

What to Do If Your Company Is Not Covered

Do something of interest to our readers.

  • Release a new product that is unlike existing ones
  • Raise funding
  • Release financials
  • Say something insightful or technologically in-depth
  • Say something really stupid

If you have a question or feedback, feel free to ask below.

U
Undisclosed
Feb 03, 2014

Refreshingly candid!

SP
Sean Patton
Feb 03, 2014

Did you really need to sugar-coat it that much?

JH
John Honovich
Feb 03, 2014
IPVM

For their own good, they need to understand this. Will sugar coating help them better accomplish this? :)

JH
John Honovich
Feb 03, 2014
IPVM

When I tell companies this, the typical response is: "Well can you look into our product in detail and do a test?"

Try to understand: If no one is really asking or recommending you and we cannot find any real differentiators, what is the point of us spending a lot of time and money to examine your company? The probability that we will find something of interest to the general membership is very low.

My recommendation: Try to find something that really differentiates your company and emphasize that to us. "Hey but we have the world's only X or the lowest costing Y or a breakthrough in Z" If you don't have that, go back internally and improve your strategy so you have that - not for us, but for to strengthen your market position.

U
Undisclosed
Feb 03, 2014

Unfortunately there seem to be a lot of crap and/or boring and/or outdated solutions in the physical security marketplace. So the ipvm.com attitude seems perfectly logical to me. P.s. this is not that different from the dialog that goes on in other environments (i.e. Network World) as far as the "why didn't you cover our product?" question.

ipvm.com definitely does have it's share of weirdo niche products so it's not like I think they're all vanilla mainstream about things.

JH
John Honovich
Feb 03, 2014
IPVM

Btw, here's an example of how to get one's company covered. In the recent 10 Reasons NOT To Buy Costco Surveillance Kits discussion, we linked to a blog post from 'Rugged Cams'. They have gotten 250+ click throughs from it and a fair bit of attention - some of it critical but I am sure many who agree with the sentiment.

This is a good example about how taking a stand about a controversial issue (buying from Costco, et al.) and saying something specific can help get you coverage.

JH
John Honovich
Feb 04, 2014
IPVM

A manufacturer who read this just send their test results of their camera, illuminating a very common problem.

I see these regularly and they rarely, if ever, disclose the model of the competitor camera being tested against. While I can understand why they do not want to be seen publicly criticizing a rival. However, we need to know what model so we can a sense of how relevant the test results are and how significant the claims are. In other words, if a manufacturers does a shootout against a known poor camera, we can immediately discount it.

Bonus points to manufacturers who actually read our test results, match their own against top performers in our test and then claim they can beat those products.

[Update: This manufacturer responded by naming the manufacturer but not the model. This does me very little good. It's like saying your computer is better than a Dell. Ok, but which one?]

Avatar
Simone de Titta
Feb 04, 2014

John, TechnoAware is going to be within 2 years the Leader of the market of video analytics worldwide!

Do you think I may compete to raise your attention by this, according to your Point 5 "Say something really stupid"?....;)))

Joking..:) Cheers,

Simone

(TechnoAware)

Avatar
Rob Hammond
Feb 04, 2014
IPVMU Certified

I spent 30 years with a manufacturer, so “I feel their pain”, but now I am a consultant I really appreciate the no punches pulled product evaluations from IPVM and the commenters. Since I am not in the trenches installing equipment, I am somewhat insulated from the good, bad, and the ugly in the market place, I used to only hear about product problems after an integrator on one of my projects ran into a problem or shortcoming. Now that I subscribe to IPVM I can read about the good and the bad before my design hits the street. If I want the sugar coated version of the facts, I can go to the manufacturer’s website.

JS
Jack Sink
Feb 14, 2014
IPVMU Certified

All I ask of IPVM is that it be obsessively objective, detailed and directly relevant to the technology and equipment selection, deployment and performance upon which our reputation often rests. We don't have time to waste sorting fact from marketing excrement on our own for every project or selection. Keep doing it as you are/have been and we all stand to gain.

JH
John Honovich
May 12, 2015
IPVM

Bumping this because this question has come up more recently, e.g., Everfocus Declares IPVM Anti-Everfocus

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