I’ve been meaning to write a post about Monday’s launch of Cuil, the so-called Google-killer search engine.  But then Erick Shonfeld at TechCrunch wrote it for me.

“The hype cycle now lasts less than a day. Take yesterday’s over-hyped launch of stealth search startup Cuil, which was quickly followed by a backlash when everyone realized that it was selling a bill of goods. This was entirely the company’s own fault. It pre-briefed every blogger and tech journalist on the planet, but didn’t allow anyone to actually test the search engine before the launch.”

So I am not gonna join the hordes who have dumped on Cuil and its launch.  I wanna talk about the PR/Agency relationship in launch situations, using Cuil’s launch as a lesson plan.

First off, while Shonfeld is spot-on, it is also true that Cuil garnered some highly favorable traditional media coverage, e.g., in Reuters and Associated Press stories.  Those positive articles will get wide play in mainstream media outlets.  Most of the negative press appeared in blogs, which plenty of mainstream readers are not reading. 

Thus an Old School Marketer could look at the stack of positive and negative clips and decide, on-balance, that this was a successful outcome:

“Sure those wingnuts in the blogs demand perfection and like to get all wound up.  But most people don’t read the blogs.  They still read the newspaper (online and offline), so those AP and Reuters hits alone will outweigh the negative perceptions of those bloggers.” 

I think, however, that we can all agree that that Old School Marketer is off base.  Which leaves us not with the question of “Was this a good launch?” (it wasn’t; unless you’re one of those “all PR is good PR” types) but, “How the heck did this even happen?  Who was in charge?”

Obviously, the client is in charge.  The buck stops there.  Pulling the trigger is their call.

But what is the Agency’s responsibility?

At a high level, it’s essential for the Agency to strategize for the launch and to make honest suggestions and arguments to the client when their suggestions don’t match up to the client’s demands.  The Agency should have seen these troubles on the horizon and advised the Cuil team to snatch the reins.  Maybe they did.

The Agency should have insisted to Cuil’s management that their media contacts get a chance to play with the technology.  Within 2 meetings they’d have known they had a problem and could have re-tooled the approach.

The Agency should have insisted that Cuil slap “BETA” all over the site and any other outbound communication.  I checked lots of different sections of the Cuil site, and never saw any hint from the Company that they might not be ready for prime time.  The messaging is marked by ambition and (in retrospect) arrogance.

The Agency should have enlisted the Search community’s aid.  There are plenty of Search Algorithm experts, SEO experts, Online Marketers, etc., who might be willing to offer free advice for such an ambitious start-up.  Taking on Google is a big, hairy, audacious goal: this community could have gotten excited about collaborating on something so audacious.  This longer-term, inclusive approach could have cushioned the launch with some built-in compassion for the Cuil engine’s lapses.

It’s a complicated process, launching a company.  The entire team must be in-synch and well-coordinated on many fronts.  It doesn’t always work and it is always sad to see the rocket blow up the launching pad.

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