Brand Spanking Marketing

Introduce your business and what you do there.

We’re a distribution company in the CBD space. We’re located in North Hollywood, California.

What challenge were you trying to address with Brand Spanking Marketing?

We engaged them to develop an e-commerce website.

What was the scope of their involvement?

Brand Spanking Marketing agreed to provide e-commerce and marketing services, including web development, maintenance, and integration with our warehouse. They’d provide social media support for marketing purposes, including PPC and content.

What is the team composition?

We worked with Tracey (Founder & CEO), Bruno (Digital Marketing Head), Ndivhuwo (Web Developer), and an office manager.

How did you come to work with Brand Spanking Marketing?

I searched online for web developers and marketing companies.

How much have you invested with them?

We spent $15,000 in nine months.

What is the status of this engagement?

We began working with them in February 2021, and we put the project on hold in September 2021. They still owe us hours for development services, but we don’t know how to ask for our money back because it’d take more energy and time away.

How did your relationship with the vendor evolve?

The original plan was to make an e-commerce site that could connect to the warehouse, do transactions, connect to the bank, receive the money, and have a customer service aspect. This was all included in the base agreement, and each one of those assets had underlying development and marketing implications. However, when they tried to integrate the processor into our website, they couldn’t do it well because they weren’t familiar with WooCommerce. They’d never built a WooCommerce website, and it came up four months into the relationship.

In April, they said they’d have the site up. I was on my way to a conference in Oklahoma City, and I didn’t bring any inventory because I was going to show the website and pictures of the products. It didn’t go right, and after that point, they started to fall into a pattern where they’d make a little progress, and then we’d have a delay. They’d give an excuse or reason why the progress wasn’t functional all the way, and then they’d do it again.

How did Brand Spanking Marketing address the challenges that arose?

It was a combination of redirection, excuses, and apologies. To be fair, there were some serious, unforeseen events because South Africa had a revolt last summer. The power was going out, there were fires, and people were looting everything. For two months, we couldn’t get any work done.

However, there wasn’t any excuse besides that. They told us that it was their fault and they’d make it up to us.

Describe the impact this engagement has had on your business.

Unfortunately, it’s unmeasurable. We didn’t have a website at the time, so we didn’t track sales or anything to compare it to. However, as a startup, we lost an opportunity and missed out on many possible transactions.

Moreover, it shouldn’t have taken them four months to tell us they’d never built the thing we asked them to. Also, it shouldn’t have come to the point where we had to go behind their back and find someone else to do the work. They kept saying they were getting there, but after five more months, there was nothing they could’ve done to make us believe them. It had become a negative, toxic partnership.

The good thing is we didn’t have a bad knock-down. We got to move on, but they haven’t even reached out. We were in the middle of a contract; we’d worked for nine months and spent $15,000. By now, they must know we have another website, and we haven’t received an email or apology from them. In summary, Brand Spanking Marketing didn’t care about us, and they took our money as long as we were willing to give it to them. They were very disrespectful and untrustworthy.

How was project management handled?

Their organization was great; Tracey came from ten years of marketing, so she knew what she was doing. However, the issues were execution, follow-through, and communication.

Is there anything that the vendor did well or that you would consider a strength?

They were great at planning. The team knew all the topics, points, and ways to do things, except for WooCommerce. They didn’t have the bandwidth to do it and weren’t up to the task. I guess they can do some things right, but they couldn’t handle a complex business, and they didn’t work fast.

In what specific areas can they improve?

They were only good at organizing; that was it.

What advice do you have for clients with similar needs to yours?

Read about their portfolio and the projects they’ve done. Also, talk to the people that have worked with them. They’re great people as individuals, but you have to be extremely cautious about what they plan to do and whether they can actually do it. We paid upfront for everything, so maybe it’s better to let them do the job first and then pay based on your satisfaction. Don’t make the same mistake and keep putting in more money because you believe they’re good people.