Tom Keating Asks "What's Wrong With Vonage"

In an absolutely riviting and attack dog like post yesterday Tom Keating rips Vonage from end to end on all things related to PR, Product Management, Product Development, Partner Relations and more.

If he was alone then some might think he's wrong. But he's not. I've received the same reaction or inaction and it seems that the mainstream press, especially in the financial sector seems to be casting a blind eye to all of these continual faux pas.

On the plus side Vonage knows how to attract users by using the equivilant of Cisco style swarm marketing, but where Cisco does that with live bodies, Vonage does it with ever intrusive online and offline media assaults. As a result they are the largest non-cable company VoIP player in North America. They get huge props for that.

But they are without a doubt playing the PR game all wrong and it dates back to before the E911 issues. For as long as I can remember their approach has been "comment on the positive, but spin or avoid the negative."

Tom's post points to what is a huge and growing credibility issue since Vonage is neither good at spining bad news into good and ducking never gets any company into anything but in a heap of hurt eventually.