“Don’t Hire Your Nephew to Build Your Small Business Website” says the makers of Intuit
Intuit, the maker of Quicken is hitting the traditional airwaves and social media channels with ads depicting disgruntled small business owners regarding the build out of their websites. The YouTube ad featured below for example entitled, “Don’t Hire Your Nephew to Build Your Small Business Website” hits the point home.
At first glance, I thought to myself that I should cancel my subscription to Quicken in protest for picking on the Web design tribe that we here at the WOW represent. Then again, I’m not a customer of Quicken or any Intuit products that I know of so that won’t work out very well.
After giving this some thought, I think the ad does an effective job at communicating the reasons that small businesses should “hire a Web professional” in the first place. As a result, the ad campaign is kind of growing on me. That’s not to say that all nephews that create websites are bad mind you. I know a few personally and they do very nice work!
As the executive director for the Webprofessionals.org organization, I’ve been getting hundreds of calls over the years from disgruntled small business owners asking if WOW could intervene on their behalf to settle contract disputes. I suppose ads of this nature are inevitable. Ugh, so thanks I guess for that Intuit!?!
The walk away from this ad for Web professionals I suppose is to take it in stride. It comes with the territory. General contractors and those in the construction trade face similar issues every day and have for years. Makes a great case for ethical behavior, a Web professional code of conduct and best practices I’d say. Changing the public’s perception however is a whole another discussion.