Barking Wife
A 4 Guys Interactive Case Study - Barking Wife
Sending your husbands and teens a series of phone calls to remind them to take out the trash or clean their room could be viewed as either a nuisance or be very much appreciated.
But what if they were fun. What if the types of messages one could send were available for a variety of circumstances. And, they could all be personalized. That would be cool,
not to mention useful.
One morning in June 2009, Holly Donnelly came up with a brilliant idea. She was up in the middle of the night giving her baby a bottle when she noticed that the trash had not
been taken to the road. She thought, "I need a service that does the reminding for me and in a way that my husband will think is fun."
Holly, together with Carolanne Ulrich-Norris, created the concept of Barking Wife out of the need to help women quit nagging their husbands. Their goal: Saving women's sanity
one clever reminder call at a time.
Taking an idea from concept to creation to launch is normally filled with challenges. Unfortunately for Barking Wife, it was one major headache after another. So uphill was
their battle, the business didn't open.
The ladies of Barking Wife hired a developer in September 2009 with the intentions of their site launching in a few months. Scripts were written and voice-overs recorded. But,
once January 2010 rolled around, the site was still not ready to launch.
Nor was it ready to go in April. By then, Barking Wife decided to have 4 Guys Interactive take over, but instead learned that the entire site had to be rebuilt in order for it
to work. Undaunted, they paid the first developer in full, and informed him that 4 Guys would be finishing the project.
Seems that didn't go over too well.
The previous developer screamed copyright infringement and informed Barking Wife that no one other than him would be allowed to work on the website. Because they wanted the
copyright and total ownership of their site, Barking Wife hired an Intellectual Property attorney to clear up this mess. The previous developer then hired his own attorney to
fight them.
No company should have to go through this type of totally messed up Web development process that these ladies had to endure. Missing deadlines is simply unacceptable. Yet, the
developer initially hired missed every deadline and Barking Wife didn't open because of it.
They not only had to wait a year to launch the site, they lost almost a year's worth of income, not to mention 'buzz' in pre and post-launch publicity. Coupled with this are the
attorney fees, voice-over licenses, and the risk that someone else might launch a site with a similar concept before them.
After a few months, however, a settlement was reached clearing the way for 4 Guys Interactive to turn Barking Wife into something viable.
Launch time: November 2010 – BarkingWife.com officially comes into being.
The technology used is the same that schools have started to use when there is a natural disaster or emergency. BarkingWife, though, has taken it to a whole new level by
turning it into something user-friendly for consumers.
It works through user maintained preferences with software like ColdFusion and Microsoft SQL Server. The scheduled tasks are regulated by ColdFusion. Text files are then
generated and sent via FTP (File Transfer Protocol) to the service to generate and send the phone messages. BarkingWife then checks back for completion status.
How's it put to use? One example: A bake sale. The bake sale at school got canceled at the last minute. The mother was in a panic to notify all of the parents and teachers, so
she used BarkingWife.com to send out an instant message to their cell phones. Everyone was made aware of the cancellation just in time.
"People can't stop talking about BarkingWife.com," says Troy Burwell, President and CEO of 4 Guys Interactive. "They are looking for ways to use in it their lives,” he
continues. “One guy told me he was going to have his wife use it to remind him of family activities.
It's nice when technology for one purpose gets repurposed for something fun," Mr. Burwell states. "Holley and Carolanne (Barking Wife) along with the staff here at 4 Guys have
worked really hard to give the BarkingWife.com user an amazing experience."
Barking Wife has been a working site now for several months. What lies ahead? Several things.
…To Be Continued…
