I have to admit to a guilty pleasure of LOVING the original Let’s Make a Deal Show. I was a young kid in the 1970’s and we regularly watched Monty Hall, Carol Merril, and Jay Stewart have fun with the audience ( dressed up in outrageous outfits) getting them to trade really decent prizes with the hopes of getting something even better and getting screwed in the process.
If you too watched the show, you know that the “ZONK” was always fun to watch unfold too, when someone would trade a trip to Hawaii for a goat and wagon, or a TV for a giant bicycle or something like that. The ZONK, or rotten prize, was always a surprise and always brought a laugh in the end.
I loved the sponsors of the show too, Jiffy Time Popcorn, Dinty Moore Stew, Hilton’s Oyster Stew or other odd stuff like that. I loved the whole show, but in the end we all knew it was about the sponsor, making them look good, making them money, and promoting the crap out of their products.
Lately we at DCIG have been fighting the battle of being accused of having folks sponsor our market changing Buyer’s Guides. I wanted to take another opportunity to set you all straight and help you understand the difference between Door 1, Door 2, Door 3 (which always had the ZONK). DCIG for this blog post has 3 “Doors” behind which we have products for the contestant.
Door 1: Door 1 is the Sponsored product Door, the “Pay to Play” product line. Here we have Blogs, Executive White Papers, Case Studies, White Papers, Special Reports as well as offerings like podcasts, webinars etc… Door 1 is the door you choose when you need content created by an industry leader that was once an end user and has 30,000 people coming to their web page every month generating hundreds of thousands of page views. If that is what you want, choose door 1.
Door 2: Door 2 is the door behind which DCIG has its Buyer’s Guides stored. There will never be a sponsored product here. No Oyster Stew, Jiffy Time, Spiced Ham, or Timex Watches….we have products that WE have taken all the risk to create and after we create them, we LICENSE them for use to the people who have come out on the top of the heap.
Door 3: Door 3 is still the ZONK door. Door 3 is where many of you think that we are keeping our secrets…DOOR 3 is where DCIG compromises our personal ethics, corporate reputation, and our corporate future. IF YOU CHOOSE DOOR 3 DO IT ON YOUR OWN, YOU WILL NOT FIND JEROME OR MYSELF THERE.
So here is the takeaway for you folks. It is the semantic distinction between “Sponsored” and “Licensed”.
“Sponsored” or Door 1 is indeed paid for by our clients, who engage us like they do other analyst firms mind you, to write content for them to use in selling efforts. Door 1 always has and always will have the sponsored stuff behind it.
“Licensed” or Door 2 is the product line that DCIG has where we do not take any upfront money in exchange for results. We take on all the risk in devoting hundreds of labor hours to creating surveys, reaching out to vendors, compiling, scoring, ranking the results, writing the guide, sending it to artists who lay out the document, and then, then we hope that the company that came out on top chooses to license the document for lead gen. Door 2 makes no pretense of what is behind it, it will always be licensed and indeed companies that come to us looking for an outcome are barking up the wrong tree.
“Zonk” or Door 3 is what many of you have been accusing us of lately and quite wrongly too I may add. Indeed I listened to a podcast recently where we were being roundly criticized by two “experts” WHO HAD NOT EVEN READ THE DOCUMENT!!!!! I was flabbergasted by that and call them out (you know who you are) and ask you to talk to Jerome and me and ask your questions, state your claims, or issue and apology. If we were to choose a winner ahead of time we would be in business for about another year, and then we would be pushing a broom somewhere, we don’t want that so we will not be choosing Door 3 thank you very much.
So as you read this, ask yourself if you are really convinced that we are picking winners ahead of time, or if you are just jealous because we took all the risk when you decided to play it safe and went on vacation while we were here creating products that have made huge impacts in the market.
So call me up, my phone number is 1.844.324.4552 (844.DCIGLLC). I am happy to talk to you about what and how we do things here at DCIG. Make sure you have a nail file, or some paper clips, or a silver dollar in your pocket because I might just give you a prize like Monty Hall did at the end of his show.