Brand Failures

Internet and new technology failures 237
shopping. One of the promises of the @Home idea was that you’d have
a national brand, not a different brand in every marketplace. And as
AOL has proven, if you have an e-mail product and a content product
and a telecommunications product and a software product all under
one single point of responsibility, you can build a very big company.
That, I think, was the motive for the Excite merger: to build a company
trying to produce a uniform consumer experience but on broadband
instead of dial-up.
The merger didn’t work though. Disputes between the telecom and media
divisions meant that many management staff walked out. In addition, the
company’s CEO was running the business from Boston, more than 3,000
miles away from the Silicon Valley operation, which inevitably caused
difficulties. It should also be noted that although Excite@Home offered cable
Internet access, it offered this access over another company’s cable lines, those
of AT&T. Indeed, AT&T were the controlling shareholders, a fact which
created further friction and conflicts of interest. For instance, according to
Hearst, AT&T ‘didn’t share the content vision.’ The problem was also one
of timing. The dot.com collapsed once the company started to diversify. ‘By
the time the company decided to look at spinning off Excite, the marketplace
had deteriorated,’ explains Hearst. ‘And meanwhile, the demand for broadband
was growing so rapidly that the capital was needed to sustain the quality
of service of the business.’
Perhaps the biggest problem, however, was marketing. Following the
merger, Excite@Home simply wasn’t able to differentiate itself or provide
Internet users with a valid enough incentive to switch to their service. In
January 2000 Red Herring magazine reflected:
Excite@Home hasn’t exactly lived up to its name. Continual rotation
of its advertising and messaging has sent this portal’s brand identity into
big-time obscurity. The company was on to something with its witty
‘anyone can do it’ TV campaign, but it disappeared in a blink. Yahoo
is our whimsical guide; Infoseek our all-knowing soothsayer. Excite@
Home is more like a politician on the fence.