Bricks team's stance on Cwicky's sudden end of development

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Best according to who!
Best according to the founder of any product/company.
Best according to the seller of any product/service.

Put yourself in the shoes of a founder/seller of any product/service.
You come out with a new page builder XYZ.
Or, you are selling any product/service.

What would you tell your potential customers?
Why should they buy your Product/Service and not your competitors?
Why should they hand over their hard earned money to you and not to your competitors?
Because what you are selling to them is the ‘Second Best’ or ‘The Best’?
It’s all about the perception of the product/service in the minds of the customers.

Nobody is going to hand over their money to you if you tell them or acknowledge that what you are selling to them is the ‘Second Best’.
The correct question that comes to any customer’s mind is, why should I spend my money on the second best, when instead, for the same dollar amount, I can choose to spend my money on ‘The Best’.

Cwicly’s new pricing was almost the same as Bricks, and the new pricing of Bricks is almost the same as Elementor, Breakdance et all.
So if you are not competing on price, you cannot acknowledge or put an idea in the customers mind that your product is the ‘Second Best’.

Rolls-Royce says it is the best at the price range it competes in, and Honda says it is the best at the price range it competes in.
But if the dollar amount is similar, McDonald’s says that their Burgers are the Best in town, whereas Wendy’s says that their Burgers are the Best in town.

There is a now a video on Cwicly’s YouTube channel, where an outsider came, and labelled Cwicly ‘The Second Best’ page builder behind Bricks.
Not many of Cwicly’s customers, current and potential, would have known about Kevin or his criticism, but now thanks to that video, every one of Cwicly’s current and potential customers do.
Bricks got a free commercial on Cwicly’s YouTube channel as the Best Wordpress page builder.
It was a marketing debacle for Cwicly.

Cheers!

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Nobody believes anyone’s marketing hype about who is “the best”. Even less so does anybody believe the marketing hype about a company labeling their own selves as best. Do you really show up at a website where they say “we are the best! Voted #1 amongst our own employees!” And you just immediately sign up because after all they are the best, it even says so on their own website! Of course not.

You act like nobody can sell a product unless the entire world thinks of them as the best and nobody can say otherwise.

You have very weird ideas that don’t reflect reality.

If I create a product, I don’t have to be the best, or label myself as best, or label myself as second best or compare myself to anybody else. It’s just a product, in a market, serving some particular niche, with a set of features people might find useful, or not.
At the end of the day, some people might love it and think it’s the best, good for them. Some people will hate it because it doesn’t serve their specific niche and use cases. Good for them.
Even if my product was trying to be the best, it could take years to get there and morph into what the market wants and needs. That’s a title you earn after many years of toil, it’s not a marketing slogan you slap on as soon as you register the domain name. The market decides who are the best, not marketing and PR teams.

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It’s a shame people feel the need to write Hero headlines, and a lead paragraph on a website, and spend Dollars on branding, marketing and advertising to differentiate them from their competitors and attract customers to buy their product/service.

Happy go lucky as a marketing and branding strategy might work as well.
Who knows! I certainly don’t.

Cheers.

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The Best or Nothing - The Story behind Mercedes Benz’s advertising campaign

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Yes John, that’s called marketing hype and is utterly meaningless.

“According to ourselves, we are great!”

I think every single realtor in my city puts on their website “Voted #1 realty group!” Isn’t that interesting. Every single realty group is voted the #1 group. Nobody knows who is voting but that’s irrelevant. Makes a good headline though.

Should we start posting examples of a billion products that don’t have hype headlines about how they are the best? Does Amazon.com put how much they are the best store ever on the home page? No, they just have a list of products.
Does Google put on their home page for phones about how they are the best phone ever invented and are 2nd best to no one? Nope, it just shows their newest phone, and yet everyone who carries an iPhone probably would call them second best. For shame!

The problem with all this marketing “best” language is that it fails common sense. It’s like a real humble person does not go around trying to convince everyone how humble they are. A patient person does not have to tell everyone how patient they are. A confident person doesn’t have to make sure everyone knows how confident they are. A capable tough man who can handle himself doesn’t have to go around telling everyone how strong and tough and scary he is and that he can beat you up if he really wanted.

The people who are truly the best, don’t have to pay millions of dollars on ads and marketing engieers to try and convince people through psychological marketing tricks that they really are.

Haven’t humans stopped believing marketing slogans on ads and banners like 20 years ago? If something is the best, the people who actually use it will be the voice of that, not the PR and marketing team.

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@John.R one quick question, in your opinion… Had Geary said, “Cwicly is the #1 builder”, and Cwicly still shutdown would it still be because of Geary?

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@BGdev You are dealing with a hypothetical, so let me deal with a hypothetical too, and pose a counter question.
Can Kevin say that Cwicly is the #1 and the Best Page builder ahead of Bricks on Cwicly’s Youtube Channel?

The answer is he can’t.
I have already mentioned why.
Kevin himself uses Bricks, and promotes it as the Best and #1 page builder, and there is a quote on the Bricks website, by Kevin, that affirms that.

Kevin can’t speak with two mouths i.e. when he is talking to the Cwicly community, he lets them know that they are the Best and #1, and when he speaks to the Generate Blocks community, he lets them know that they are the Best and #1.
Kevin will get labeled as an untrustworthy source if he does that.

Ergo, Kevin, an unofficial brand ambassador for Bricks, is not the right influencer to debate the merits of Cwicly on Cwicly’s YouTube channel in front of Cwicly’s current and potential customers, as Cwicly would get labelled as #2, the Second Best, in front of Cwicly’s current and potential customers, a marketing debacle for any brand, not just Cwicly, and this is exactly what happened.
Louis didn’t have this foresight, and again, as I have mentioned, the fault lies with Louis, not Kevin.

In movies, there is a position of a Casting Director. The job of that person is to find out who amongst the thousands of talents on the market is the most appropriate fit for that role.
Thus when we watch a great movie, with a great cast, and people comment, that that person was born for that role, that outcome was not a coincidence, there is a Casting Director to thank for that outcome.
Similarly, for branding and advertisement campaigns, there is a long list of Influencers on the market, and which influencer to pick and put a spotlight on is the job of the executives of that company.
The job of an executive of any company is to enhance the brand, not tarnish it.
There are some who do a great job, while others sink the brand.

Cheers.

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Cheers!

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Just asked you a really simple question. Sometimes you can say more… by saying less.

Numerous people have tried to convey ONE simple thing, but yet you keep going off into diatribes about other things. Making comparisons that aren’t even debatable… as in we all already know that.

The one single point that’s being made to you is when it comes to THIS situation (not marketing some vehicle, etc.), for Cwicly to even be considered as a #2 is a MAJOR friggin’ deal! That’s ultimately what the previous posters are saying.
Their saying rather you or Cwicly’s devs think being called the #2 BEST builder is an insult, then you have some issues you may need to work-out within yourself.

For ANYONE to call, feel like, label, refer to, rank my builder as… the #2 builder is a major accomplishment. In fact, if I was Cwicly dev / staff, I personally would have thanked Kevin while being live. I would have pointed him and the viewers to our accomplishments for which we were #1 / first thus far, (namely components) WHILE being in trashy (my opinion) Gutenberg.
Why? Because you ranked me #2 amongst Elementor, Bricks, Oxygen, Divi, X, Pinegrow (which technically isn’t a builder but is a WP plugin to do all the builder functions), Beaver, Brizy, Breakdance, VC, and all the others… AND, I’ve just barely been around for 2 years? I’m happy with that… No, I’m ecstatic about that!

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@BGdev
You want a short answer!
I already gave it in my previous replies.

Cheers!

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Irrelevant point. I’m talking about “believing” marketing slogans, not about whether people still runs ads.
You must be the only person who sees a marketing banner claiming “we’re totally #1 according to our own banner here!” and then believe them immediately and think it’s true and nobody else can be #1 and that somehow among all competitors in a single niche, there is a strict heirarchy of ranks. It doesn’t freaking matter!
Kevin thinks Bricks is best, but by no metric. Not #1 in sales. Not #1 in usage. Not #1 usage across a market segment. Not #1 in particular feature/ability. In no way is Bricks #1 in almost anything, except that it happens to be some folk’s #1 personal choice.

Also, given there can be dozens or even hundreds of players in a certain market, there is no such thing as “the best”. It’s a fight for a nonsensical title signifying nothing. The opinions of their favorite customers. Yoast is probably #1 in installs, yet it rarely gets recommended as a top choice by any professionals. Odd.

Kevin’s favorite tool is Bricks, he may even label is as “the best”, according to Kevin. This doesn’t make Bricks actually the best nor Cwicly actually second best.

Frankly you haven’t proven a single point by actual data. There is no evidence any “influencer” affected Cwicly whatsover. Nor that one person, Kevin, complimenting them as his second choice meant anything to anybody anywhere. Kevin’s recommendations have sold Cwicly dozens of licenses at least. That’s positive marketing by referral and word of mouth.

The only evidence any of us has is that Cwicly leadership didn’t want to play ball in the market. That’s about it.

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@vigilante
I recently heard a joke - There is a new CSS and Javascript framework introduced everyday. Haha.

On that note, attached is a screenshot of one of Kevin’s product, ACSS.

Which are the two words that are seen on his website Hero section that are relevant to this discussion!
#1, and Best.

Also attached is a screenshot of the most used CSS frameworks. Kevin’s framework don’t even appear on the list. In fact, over 75% of all websites don’t use any CSS frameworks at all.

The usage of those words on Kevin’s website is a marketing gimmick, no doubt, but that marketing gimmick is necessary, to cast a positive impression of the product to the potential customers.

Replace Cwicly and Bricks with any competitive Product/Service, Brand X and Brand Y.

My observation was about Brand X, letting in an influencer who promotes Brand Y, on the official YouTube channel of Brand X, and labelling Brand X as the Second Best to Brand Y.
It will be a marketing debacle, and it was in this case.

Cheers.

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Nobody believes marketing slogans John. Fluff. Voted by who? Where? When? How many people? How is it authoritative? By what criteria? Compared to who? Nobody knows. Doesn’t matter. Every builder can’t be voted #1 and every builder wouldn’t declare their competitor as #1 either.

You haven’t proven your trojan horse theory or pointed to a single lost sale. And on top of that it defies all common sense and logic, as Divi continues to make money despite them being at the bottom of every influencer’s list. They don’t even make the cut of anyone’s second best, and they are doing fine it would seem.

This is not the smoking gun you think it is. It was just a livestream YouTube interview a handful of people saw only days or weeks before they shut down. Seems entirely irrelevant.

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For context, the last livestream on Cwicly’s YouTube channel before Cwicly shut down was not the only interaction between Kevin and Louis.

There was another live stream around 7 months back, where Louis entertained Kevin’s criticism of Cwicly.
It’s also up on Cwicly’s YouTube channel, another Fact-checking video.

As was evident in the videos, and Kevin’s own review of Cwicly, Kevin was no fan of Cwicly, yet Louis entertained Kevin and put the spotlight on him, time and again, to Cwicly’s own detriment.

Anyhow, I shared an observation, and what I shared is my perspective.

You might have a different perspective, and it’s alright. To each his own.

Cheers.

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If Cwicly spent a bunch of time elevating Kevin (or anyone) as a superstar whose every word should be taken as golden absolute truth, and knowing those people aren’t going to herald Cwicly as the best ever, then I wouldn’t think that is a good tactic.

If Cwicly invites random people to chat so they can answer their questions, concerns, issues, challenges like normal adult humans, then that is a pretty good idea.

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Wow, it’s ironic you have mentioned that and the screenshot… I went back and forth with him about exactly that, at Youtube. i just spent the last half hour trying to find where we went back and forth about him saying, " Voted #1 Framework For WordPress Page Builders"… I was like, “voted on by whom?”, “where?”.

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I am glad that now you know the full story, we are on the same page.

Cheers.

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lol… You’re funny, I wouldn’t say we were on the same page.

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I say it’s alright that we have different perspectives, and you don’t agree to that.

I say we are on the same page, and you don’t agree with that either.

Haha. Can’t win them all.

Cheers.

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My contention is I highly doubt there is a single lost sale due to Kevin specifically. Not enough people watch those videos, and not enough people would care that Kevin really really likes the product but only as his personal 2nd choice.

There is no evidence that “influencers don’t like us” is why Cwicly closed. They already had customers to take care of and they could have pivoted their marketing tactics. Their only real competitor was Kadence or maybe Generate Blocks? I don’t know. They were certainly positioning themselves as becoming the #1 builder on top of Gutenberg. They could have rode that wave out.

In my own personal pet theory, I think they saw the writing on the wall when WordPress full site editing and reusable block templates and all that, it won’t be long before builders on top of GB will have less and less to do, and instead become nothing more than addons to add extra features to GB.

I don’t think I’d want my entire product and business model to be “we make a product that makes someone else’s product a little better, until they don’t need us any more.”

You really need a stand-out tool to make it.

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That part right there!