You’d think they were political candidates, the way the PR teams went at it this last week from dual feuding companies HasOffers and Cake. It started earlier this month with rumors being sent around the performance marketing industry by unknown but obviously very interested parties that Cake, the popular and current performance tracking SaaS King owned by public Company Acellerize was facing difficult times, as shown by the departure of key players in their company.
These salacious rumors were compounded by a scathing article written by UK-based Publication “PerformanceIn” (not affiliated with PMI) which claimed that the company was “under a shroud of uncertainty.” This story by author Richard Towey, was almost immediately taken down by the publication, but it’s unsubstantiated claims that the company wasn’t doing well was spread from mailbox to mailbox soon after.
Seizing the opportunity, competitor and contender for the Tracking Crown, HasOffers sent out a very unfriendly email to current Cake customers probing the claims that Cake has financial struggles and they “understand and want to help” customers who want to leave the Cake platform.
We spoke briefly with Cake about the criticism and they basically dismissed them completely, instead focusing on several positive developments. Their PR team pointed out that just before the story on PerformanceIn came out, Cake made an announcement of substantial growth over the last year and made it clear that finances are going in a positive direction.
Jill Hara, Senior Director of Marketing at Cake addressed the departures with the statemen that “while some have departed CAKE in the recent months (some for personal reasons, some for professional, others on the own accord, some otherwise), we believe it has strengthened our overall standing. It has also been an opportunity to elevate leaders within our organization, many whom have been with CAKE for a number of years and are industry experts.”
We asked HasOffers about the reasons behind the aggressive PR push, and they informed us through their PR team that Cake’s “customers deserve to know the situation, so they can make informed decisions about their business…we don’t want customers to experience another DirectTrack situation.” Cake of course has assured their clients, and the public in general that their finances are an open book since they are a public company, and they are continuing to move in a positive direction.
HasOffers took advantage similarly of DirectTrack’s technical and support issues in 2012/2013 when the company was crippled with enormous downtime and many of their customers left to go to Cake and HasOffers in 2013. One can only assume that they are hoping that the rumors, whether they are true or not, may be enough for some customers to at least consider other options.
