Generally speaking, if you want to win an award to put on your site, get some press, and make VCs and potential acquirers notice you, you need to treat getting that award as a combination of sales, marketing, and PR, and put some budget behind it.
While people tend not to talk about this in public, every once in a while the truth slips out, usually in inside jokes. For example, take a peek at the 'OnMedia 100' square (in the greens) in this recent 'ADTECHOPOLY' spoof from Luma:
This is fairly shocking. First, for it to happen at all. And second, that it took this long to talk about it. Looks like everyone involved has some explaining to do in order to regain credibility...
Can someone explain how Wonga took the concept of pay day loans (which has a negative connotation in America) and spun so much posititivity out of their brand? I like how they make it easy to pay bills directly but there is something i'm missing here.
My beautiful wife and I were walking past Regents Park (in central London) just before Christmas last year, admiring the houses and wondering aloud what an obscene amount of money it would cost to live or base your office out of any of them. Wonga had two.
It was the first we'd heard of them (having been in London only a month or so), but they got a lot of publicity on the Tube in the lead up to New Year's Eve (where they sponsored free public transport for the evening). But even discussions of that promotion were all tinged with 'how could Transport for London / the Mayor's office associate themselves with a company like this?'.
"Is there any positivity in that brand?"
None that I've seen. And when they're charging interest rates like they do to afford offices like they do, I doubt any will be forthcoming in the near future.
From a business point of view they seized a market very well. They took notice of an advance in UK banking practice - bank transfers that complete immediately rather than in three days or even one - and built a business out of it. Getting a loan into your bank account without leaving your house is a step forward, especially in this day and age where money in your account may be more convenient than cash in hand.
They also have tight control over their credit limits and grant expanding credit based on customers' past performance. I'm not sure to what extent bad customers get financially screwed, but in the end I guess it comes down to firing bad customers, which can be a big positive in some markets.
Their advertising very big on the customer having choice and control over their loan. Fear of escalating charges probably features large in the mind of someone needing to take a payday loan, so it seems having a nice web interface and clear statements of what you have to pay are a plus (even though their actual credit terms are objectively terrible).
So yeah, they're in a business that rightly has a shady reputation. But in terms of building a technology business they seem to be doing some interesting things.
Pay day loans are a scam perpetrated on the poor and uneducated. Lots of money to be made, if you can live with yourself. You can spend a lot of that money to try to look good, but I'm not sure that educated folk would actually buy the message.
For what it's worth, I was recently involved as a judge [1] for a competition the Telegraph ran searching for "Britain's Fittest Director" [2]
At no point did I or any of my team get any indication of pressure, preference or favour from the Telegraph. I was a few steps removed from them, but the impression I got was that they had involved a group of expert judges and were planning to back their judgement, and that that's what they did.
Perhaps this competition wasn't as high profile, or the finalists [3] not as controversial. I obviously can't speak about the Startup100 awards or the Telegraph in general, only share that my experience was different.
[1] My judging was limited to one of the intermediate rounds. They used a pool of similarly trained business experts from Shirlaws to meet with and assess the business fitness of the top contenders. I ran several interviews, and gave my score and some general feedback to the judging coordinator.
As much as I really can't stand Wonga for its concept and largely its advertising; this is pretty shocking. I would imagine that if I were a newspaper editor I would rather been seen to promote a company that wasn't necessarily in line with the attitude of the paper than to be known for falsifying results in a competition.
Generally speaking, if you want to win an award to put on your site, get some press, and make VCs and potential acquirers notice you, you need to treat getting that award as a combination of sales, marketing, and PR, and put some budget behind it.
While people tend not to talk about this in public, every once in a while the truth slips out, usually in inside jokes. For example, take a peek at the 'OnMedia 100' square (in the greens) in this recent 'ADTECHOPOLY' spoof from Luma:
http://www.slideshare.net/tkawaja/adtechopoly-7968692