Dovetail Digital Films’ “Champagne Moment”

What does it mean when your main competitor changes their website to look eerily similar to yours?

That’s a question Carrie Hodgkins of Dovetail Digital Films was forced to ask herself when another company—perhaps the only other company to offer something remotely similar to Dovetail’s product—changed their site’s design and wording to look more like Dovetail’s, overnight.

The fact that this came after Dovetail’s press release, and thus after a search for “crowdsourced wedding videography” could help you find Dovetail’s own site, cast some doubt on whether this change was purely coincidental.

While Hodgkins’ initial reaction was to see the the change in the competitor’s marketing strategy as “disturbing” since it encroached so closely on theirs, by the time weekly standups rolled around, she had started seeing the event as a possible “champagne moment,” a phrase she got from Evan Edwards’ talk on human factors. (The phrase comes from Edwards’ story of finding out his company was being sued and thinking that it was possibly all over for them, when his CEO brought in a bottle of champagne to celebrate.)

We don’t know and can’t say why the other company really changed their design, but either way, Dovetail has something to celebrate. “You are a factor. You exist,” said Hodgkins, referring to the implications of the possibility that the competitor’s marketing strategy was, in a way, stolen from Dovetail’s. And even if not—even if it was sheer coincidence—the fact that someone else’s “better” looks more like what Dovetail is doing would seem to indicate Dovetail is doing something right.