iAcquire have posted a video to celebrate a unique year. After some high profile SEO hires such as Michael King, they got dinged by Google for shady link schemes. It was bad timing in the midst of efforts to raise their profile and the company came under a fair amount of fire from the industry - and Google's penalty was harsh - the company domain was de-indexed from the search results.
iAcquire have posted a video to celebrate a unique year for the company. After some high profile SEO hires such as Michael King, they got dinged by Google for shady link schemes. It was bad timing in the midst of efforts to raise their profile and the company came under a fair amount of fire from the industry – and Google’s penalty was harsh – the company domain was de-indexed from the search results.
However, iAcquire’s response to Google and industry commentators was pretty sanguine by all accounts – there were no apologies, but there was a sense that they were going to have a man in the mirror moment and resolve to “change”. Regarding the video and their experience, iAcquire said on their blog:
“2012 was a year that changed our company for the better. We expanded, we hired, we developed, we changed, we evolved, and we grew. Thank you to all who were involved, and to those that bravely led the way as we look forward to all that 2013 will bring.”
Signs that the company did genuinely go on to “change their ways” is evidenced by their 12 Days of Linkmas campaign, which was truly an end-to-end inbound campaign.
Talking to a representatives of iAcquire at Conductor’s #C3NY in 2012 and privately with King on Twitter, I was impressed by how unfazed the team seemed to be.
Their attitude was to admit to a moment of panic, but flip the crisis into an opportunity and transform that penalty into a learning experience. In our conversation, I got the sense that iAcquire was already in a mode of transition long before the Google slapped them on the wrist anyway, such that the penalty acted as a lever by which the company could pivot the sum of their internal skills into more of a content marketing or inbound marketing company.
Their video succinctly tells this same story. It opens as a parody of the office which to be both candid and funny. The action is sort of deliberately awkward at the beginning, which works as a clever PR device to address the elephant in the room – the penalty – both internally and from other companies looking in.
Gradually the tempo increases and it becomes like a sports film, “zero to hero” type montage. The change in tone totally works – and tells a great story – as we all know, everybody needs a montage.
Other than that, there is not much more to say, except to say that watching the video is a great way to ask yourself, “how would you tell your company story?”
I only hope iAcquire sorted out their copyright licenses on borrowed footage and songs, otherwise they’re gonna get dinged by YouTube too!
But I just say that because someone has to – clearly, they are having too much fun in that office and need to.. Get. Back. To. Work.