Brand Teardown: eBay — Benjamin Shapiro // I Hear Everything

Quotes

• "I learned a lot about branding from eBay, including consistency and alignment. And it's a fascinating case study of how to build a brand. And then what happens, as your business matures, and maybe some of the failures and how a company doesn't protect that brand." - Benjamin Shapiro

• "From a branding perspective, eBay was able to live its best life because of the power of the eBay brand. And the focus on, you know, traditional Brand Channels, not necessarily internet marketing, which feels counterintuitive for an early tech brand." - Benjamin Shapiro

• "The most exciting part of the eBay brand story is what happened when eBay tried to expand beyond eBay. That's where eBay lost its footing, lost its way, and started to deteriorate as a brand and became a cash cow instead of the company's primary focus." - Benjamin Shapiro

• "There were like three different times that eBay talked to or PayPal tried to sell to eBay, and they wouldn't buy them. And then, the third time, it was this massive exit where it was like 85% or 90% of eBay payments. And that was a great business decision was buying the payments provider and being able to serve the entire transaction." - Benjamin Shapiro

• "Where eBay went off the rails was eBay didn't just buy PayPal, they bought Craigslist, they bought a bunch of other classifieds, or they continued to try to buy their way into E-commerce. They bought StubHub, all e-commerce, ticketing, transactions, auctions, and all sorts of related eBay at some point." - Benjamin Shapiro

• "eBay bought Skype, which took the company off the tracks. They bought Skype and said, okay, we're going to start being a holding company, we're not going to be e-commerce, we're not going to be e-commerce and payments, we're not going to be e-commerce, payments, and classifieds. We're going to be finance, commerce, and communications. And it was a $2 billion acquisition, a total distraction for the executive team. The Skype acquisition was a flop, and they ended up selling into private equity. Microsoft ended up buying Skype. And it took eBay off the focus on the core product. And to me, that's the lesson of the eBay brand." - Benjamin Shapiro

• "eBay's old tagline is whatever it is you can get it on eBay. And that meant whatever old used item in people's minds you could find on eBay. They didn't do a good enough job saying it's not just used items at auction; it is everything you can buy in a simplified format. And Amazon took that and ran with it, like, it's The Everything Store. And that's why Amazon became a bigger deal. They made the transaction process and the search process so much easier. That people defaulted to buying on Amazon instead of thinking of different places to buy on the internet." - Benjamin Shapiro

• "It's the people that will be attracted to your organization. If you lose focus and don't continue to innovate, you'll lose the people most valuable to the company." - Benjamin Shapiro