Paper launches are hardly an art. 

Sometime in early 2005 Voodoo started to change the way we interacted with our suppliers, our customers, and the media. I also started a blog in order to reveal some of our greatest challenges and assert our thoughts to an ever-growing public audience. For years enthusiast companies have been used by the much larger hardware manufacturers to help sell their product into the mainstream. …ask anyone in the channel and they’ll tell you its absolutely true.

This is how it works: The big guys come up with a new piece of hardware – they work with the enthusiasts to get the hardware in system reviews immediately because they know damn well that wins equate to a profound halo-effect. The enthusiasts bite immediately and do whatever it takes to put out a review machine at any cost, risks aside. The review comes out, and hopefully it’s a good one, leading to the larger mainstream saying “Wow! If XY Enthusiast Company uses this hardware in their machine and they won this review then that must mean that ZZ Hardware Company is the best!”

It makes sense, after all the Halo effect is incredibly powerful guerrilla marketing. We are also big believers in “Halo Effect” as long is it’s constructive. The problem isn’t in the concept, it’s in the execution; it requires manipulation and sometimes deception to the highest degree...

Brace yourselves, and click here for the rest of the article...