Oh Genetec...
The company is so lost in the clouds, they must not see the comedy in their latest press release.
The VSaaS market is tough, no doubt, with incumbents around the world struggling to make it a reality. Even mega manufacturer Axis is getting dumped these days.
In the middle of this, Genetec is rolling out Statocast, their Windows powered cloud surveillance offering. It is PR 101 to get some success stories and to trumpet them.
China Rose Restaurant
In Calgary, the China Rose Restaurant is known for its buffet, mediocre Yelp reviews, and now for being Genetec's flagship Stratocast restaurant customer.
The release touts some astounding advantages of China Rose's migration to Stratocast, like:
- The owner used to have to be at the restaurant to watch his surveillance video, now he can do it from his smartphone.
- He was surprised with the "drastic improvement in the level of detail in the video" in Stratocast over his DVR.
- "His DVR would only allow him to keep about one week of recordings, Stratocast now enables him to retain and quickly access up to four weeks of footage."
You know, the same benefits from buying a ~$1,000 kit from Costco, only for $100+ per month forever (cameras sold separately).
Branding /Signaling
Lest we be silly and actually analyze the specific claims inside the case study, the real marketing value comes from the branding of the party featured in the case study. This is why manufacturers rush to issue case studies about Burger King, McDonald's, Pizza Hut, Taco Bell, etc. Even for people who hate their food, these are big chains which signals to readers that they probably made an informed decision, validating the manufacturer issuing it.
However, an individual, mom an pop restaurant creates no buzz. There's literally millions of them and hardly anyone will care what products Paulie's Pizzeria, Diego's Tacos or Bob's KC BBQ uses.
Worse, picking a small, unknown partner for a case study implies that the marketer could not get anyone more prominent and had to settle for this. This does more to signal that Genetec's VSaaS is doing poorly than well.
And the standards are higher for bigger companies. The last we heard from Genetec's marketing department they were touting / distorting themselves as the world's #1 VMS and now they are issuing a press release with a local buffet?
Who Wins?
Alas, the real winner in all this is likely Interlogix, whose partnership with TV's low rated Cake Boss now looks like gold compared to Genetec's Calgary Chinese restaurant.
In fairness, though, once Security Products runs this case study as the lead article in their next issue, Genetec's marketing department will undoubtedly have the last laugh.