Marketing Logic

Do you ever check on your own products and see what people are saying about them (or you) online? I was able to be on a panel discussion during last week’s eCommExpo where we talked about viral marketing. It was a very good experience and the Q&A portion was a lot of fun. I felt I learned as much as I taught by listening to the other panelists.

Today, I have been pounding away at Microsoft Word, and something that always bugs me about MS Word is the Adobe toolbar that always seems to take up its own space, bumping everything else down. I like to have my viewing area and as much as I try to move that crazy little toolbar (that I never use) it always pops back.

So, I did what any good technophile does, and I go to a search engine to figure out how to get this irritating little problem solved. Lo, and behold I am not alone:

With over 2 million results for “remove PDF toolbar from Word” you’d imagine that someone might get the message. Not only are these results telling of the frustration that people feel, there are also discussion groups with dedicated threads to this topic - some on the adobe forums themselves!

Apparently this is fixed in Adobe 7. Until I upgrade, please don’t tell me that I have to rely on a hack to get this thing off my MS Word. This is the lesson in creating a viral market. Adobe owns the market when it comes to PDF’s. I’ve sung their praises when they did things right, such as better accessibility features. But isn’t this enough of a call from the market that a “feature” is not really a feature, but an irritant - and not the slight irritant that I thought I was alone in feeling.

What “features” might you have in your products that users may not like, or even hate?