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Most obnoxious vendor at CeBit award
THE PRIZE FOR rude, obnoxious, utterly incompetent PR of the day goes to... [drumroll]... Asus.
The INQ had moseyed over to the Asus booth at tech fair CeBit to take a look at what the Eee makers had on offer only to be shoved from pillar to post by various self-important, name-tagged booth bores with the excuse, "We're too busy, come back some other time", and, "Did you book an appointment? No? Well, you should have".
Fair enough, you can't just expect to 'drop in' on a massive vendor like Asus at a huge tech fair and expect a moment of their time, we told ourselves and decided to just take some snaps of the displayed products on our own. After all, we're good at making up captions and conjecturing our own stories, we reasoned.
As we leaned in to snap a pic of Asus' new prototype dual screen WePC, an uncharacteristically pleasant PR asked us if we wanted an explanation. "Ooh, yes please!" we gasped, delighted. Would it be OK to video the explanation, we asked. "Sure", said Asus' one decent employee.
The video interview was in full swing when we were obnoxiously tapped on the shoulder. Video camera still in hand, we turned around to hear: "Just who exactly are you? Who do you work for?" barked at in our direction by some Asus ape. In vain we tried to shush him as the other poor PR stuttered and spluttered in a vain attempt to finish the interview.
"I asked you who you work for!" boomed the Asus ape again, as we chucked him our press badge and angrily switched the camera off.
"Who is this 'Inquirer'?" he proceeded to sneer, adding "I never heard of this magazine, who reads you?!".
"Er, we happen to get about eight million hits a day and are an internationally-read online tech publication", Sylvie snapped as Ass-us man elbowed her out of the way to make room for a group of Polish bloggers.
"Go find English PR, his English no good anyway," said the slimeball dismissively sneering at his colleague.
Nevermind, we know all we need to know about Asus PR now anyway, thanks. µ
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Sylvie! I would never have treated you that way .. and by the way ! i would have made sure they knew who the Inquirer were before hand!!
so I would like to formally offer my PR services should anyone from Asus be reading this !
shameless plug .. but you gave me the opportunity.. thank you
You Forgot to Tell 'Em DRASHEK Reads theInq, Entire Stadiums have Fallen to Their Kness to Get glimpse or favour from Hallowed One. If Asus Knew, Shirely Would Paid $Millions$ For Favour. STeWie Kills Mom, Mom Kills STeWie, Yet Computing rolls On. Must Go Roll Up....SteWie, Help, Kill Dave....
ed note:above was written by Mike.
80% of the people on the Asus stand did not work for Asus, buit where hired marketeers. The other people that where present are not used to marketing.
This is what happens when you cut cost and hire some marketeers.
I encountered the same problems at Jetway, Gigabyte, AsRock and BioStar
But some did realy good: Point of View, DFI (only not technical knowledge) and MSI had around 20 languages at the booth and did real great (except for end-user days)
LOL ASSus I just made a logo..
[img]http://img5.imageshack.us/img5/1161/assus.jpg[/img]
http://img5.imageshack.us/img5/1161/assus.jpg
Had no problem with Asus.
You were not the only one who had troubles with some of the silly working ASUS staff. I also had some of those strange experiences there, but gladly not such strange. Some of the staff working there think to be king and visitors, but sadly especially journalists, are distrubing them with their attention and questions.
But I won't generalize that to Asus.
I attended CES 2009 as well and had completly different experiences. The PR-people of Asus-USA were nice and friendly, making connection with the relevant people of ASUS/Taiwan. For sure, the PR-people didn't know everything, but they were working really hard on finding out the details you wanted to know or trying to connect you with someone who knows the answers.
That was a complete difference to the ASUS-booth and the (mostly German) PR-and Marketing-people.
Hopefully the ASUS headquarter will recognize this discussion here and the next shows will be better than CeBIT 2009.
I'm sure this will have an impact on SOMEBODY'S choice on whether to buy Asus in the future.
Not mine, though.
8 million hits, doesn't that just about cover Google and Microsoft search rovers?
I know that we have been slipping over the past 4 years, but that's only because we want to save money and survive more than we want to deliver good products and make our customers happy. Please just give it time. As soon as Gigabyte own us in the mainboard market and MSI overtake us in terms of volume shipment and brand awareness, we will become humble again and start to listen to the needs of our customers and not our shareholders. Please give us the 24 months we need to finish putting the Asus business in the toilet, realise it was a mistake and then shove our hands in (up to the elbow) to try and retrieve it. In the meantime, if you find that you have bought a complete Asus lemon - just close your eyes, listen carefully and you can probably hear us laughing at your discomfort from Taipei...
Woohoo! Let's have a Sylvie B vs Ass-us button right next to the Charlie D vs Nvidia one. My money's on Sylvie!
Look up 'Asus RMA' on YouTube and you can hear my thoughts about Asus. They flood the markets with their crap and they not only NOT stand by their products they screw their customers too. There are a lot of Asus-die-hards...well just wait until you spend $300 on an overpriced part to have a used, bent PCB, sperm covered replacement arrive at your door...twice.
Sylvie Barak - booth babes for dummies \(^_^)/
http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/106/1051106/from-booth-babes-dummies
How could Ass-us be so cruel to a babe like Sylvie. hmm.. they where probably gay.
Since the ASUS support division is just as ineffective and arrogant I would not be surprised to know that the marketing division is like this as well.
Looks like they shot themselves in the foot then by potentially loosing up to 8 million customers (okay maybe not 8 million readers would buy an EeePC but this is bound to end up on /. etc).
I say post the video and give em what for. I'll certainly not be buying an EeePC now especially since they're not the only netbook manufacturer on the block anymore.
Oh the irony. In your own words "After all, we're good at making up captions and conjecturing our own stories, we reasoned."
So you admit you're just a tabloid for the tech news, making your own stuff to generate hits and not caring one bit about reporting the truth.
And its any surprise that ASUS didn't want to talk to you? The Inquirer is a joke. You were treated as such. Accept it.
Apparently ASUS have too many customers and are trying to get rid of some of their current ones or blocking new customers.
And no, Sylvie is not a guy.
http://www.linkedin.com/pub/4/b58/604
Wooow she is a babe
http://media.linkedin.com/mpr/mpr/shrink_80_80/p/3/000/005/341/37c19fe.jpg
nuf said
I wrote a nice (and small) letter to ASUS (via their website). You can't actually contact their PR team via their website, so I just started a ticket with a bogus computer serial number (apparently they don't expect you contact them unless you are having computer problems). Here's the body of that message:
"Please forward this on to your PR department. I am one of the 8 million viewers of The Inquirer (http://www.theinquirer.net). I recently read a post on their site as to how some of your PR people treated them (http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/266/1051266/most-obnoxious-vendor-cebit-award) ad the CeBit awards. I'm not certain that I'm willing to spend my money with a company that thinks that they are so perfect that they don't need good PR to get sales. Remember this: The customer is the one with the power, and in this shaky market, it's not good to look dumb in front of your customers."
I had the same expirience with one of those lazy PR people on ASS(us) booth... i believe he was from Poland...
Another hack chiming in here - sounds like you got a particularly raw deal, Sylvie, but I can certainly add my testimony that the Asus PR operation was an embarrassing shambles. Ditto Fujitsu-Siemens - when I was shooting a video at their stand I got some exec coming over barking "Hey, we have customers here!" And I have coverage, or at least I did...
Asus had a reasonably good press conference but at the boot the marketing and pr types were awfull. I'm a journalist myself and covered Cebit (not for English or American media) and they were totally not capable of letting one use the product for more than 2 seconds of answering any questions...
...Jakub W. go, go, go!!!!
Sylvie is a guy????
"as Sylvie chucked him *her* press"
numpty. :) get back to your fantasies.
He obviously has never seen your towel.
I didn't see a link to the video. Why?
Steve.
post the vid on youtube then email the head of PR of Asus europe with a link to it & ask for a comment...
Sounds like the guy in their online tech support got a promotion..
Some of those (Explitive)jockeys are so idiotic that they don't realize how valuable PR is. (Explitive)'em
Asus is getting fat and lazy and one of their competitors will take advantage if they don't wise up.
Sylvie, We appreciate your efforts though, but seriously- WTF asus.
WTF
Asus mall display booths are usually staffed with guards and booth people who looked like they'd rather be elsewhere. The guards were quick to stand behind every customer walking NEAR the booth lest they run off with the already chained netbooks, they even rushed behind me as I stood near a counter that had EMPTY stands. And this was while me, and other folks I was with were holding higher end IBM Thinkpads. Did they think we'd even be interested, when we were just curious? Well, we've bought several netbooks since, but none are Asus. The Asus netbook Keyboards were too small, and the desktops according to the booth staff, were only sold together with unwanted LCDs. Asus may have it it big with the first gen netbooks, but the market for second gen Netbooks belongs to MSI, HP, and Lenovo. And, please, there's no way I'm going to swap my Thinkpad for an cheap Asus.
Pride comes before the fall.
There's an idea, put the video on youtube so the world can see who gave you the boot.
Good for you Sylvie! If that's how they treat the media you can only imagine how us plebs are treated.
Damn, Sylvie is a guy?
There goes all my inquirer initiated sexual fantasies!
I was thinking of a hot chick, who was well versed in computer hardware.....
Every techno-geeks dream! LOL
.. when this comes out.
When does the video interview come out??
Never heard of this award before.
^_^ hahaha. cant stop laughing from beginning to end.
you should ask for their email and gave them this link. serves them right.
obnoxius indeed.
...you should have said in a loud voice, "Get you hand off my ass, buddy."
Even though it wasn't true, it would have caused him a bit of embarrassment in front of his Polish blogger buddies.