Killed? No . .

Post #4,330 by Andrew Grygus 8/9/01 12:52:11 AM Reply	Killed? No . . . . they are simply dying because they don't understand marketing, or the importance of marketing - and it's kind of late to start thinking about it now (not that they are). Nobody has to kill them. [link\|http://www.aaxnet.com\|AAx]
Post #4,350 by tjsinclair 8/9/01 10:11:41 AM Reply	So nothing's changed Great tech but can't market their way out of a wet paper bag.
Post #4,361 by addison 8/9/01 11:03:15 AM Reply	Actually... In my experience they're dying because their stuff is too good. It fades into the background, and works. Without many people. Meanwhile, Microsoft is in the front door lying about their products. And once the "migration" begins, the money pit opens up, and its always "cheaper to keep going". (ie, lets not lose face by admitting that there's no reason for us to do this). Couple that with the number of people who don't upgrade (Why? The stuff they have works great, why buy something else?) - something that Microsoft has figured out (don't get all the bugs out of it, and they'll buy the new product with MORE bugs). Novell's marketing is fine, as good as it can be, against the entrenched desktop monopoly, and against the "Nobody got fired for buying Microsoft" mentality.... The only thing they might could do would be to port Groupwise to Linux/Unix (which would kick some major ass).. But even then, that won't stop the tide of people rushing to shoot themselves in the foot with exchange. What else can they realistically do? They spend a lot on promotions now.... what could they do that would be more effective? (People ain't listening to them). Addison
Post #4,371 by Andrew Grygus 8/9/01 11:53:39 AM Reply	All the more reason . . . . to emphasize marketing. If your product is invisible, even to those using it, you've got a marketing problem, not a product problem. I can't recall seeing any Novell marketing in the last year or two, and that's bad because I'm far more aware of such things than most. They used to send me tons of crap, but all too technical to show to customers, and all aimed at businesses so large as to be irrelevent to my clients. They pitched entirely to their resellers, but did absolutely nothing to prepare the field for those resellers to make the product easy to sell. Microsoft made selling their products effortless. They need to find out who IBM is using and get down on their knees and beg them to take the account. The "Peace, Love and Linux" program got a lot of mileage (though part of that was because some dingbat used spray paint instead of chalk). The "Blue Spacesuit" campaign, on the other hand, is pure genius. You can tell how good it is by how many tech columnists have written it up as stupid and pointless. It has total recognition. Even the little 1"x3" ones they run now. You're leafing through a magazine, your eye catches a patch of blue spaceman and your mind says "IBM". Over and over again. Of course advertising is just one aspect of marketing, there are many more, and Novell isn't doing any of it. They've lost me completely - for Y2K all my former Novell customers got a nice new hard disk in their server with a Samba share named SYS. Pick up at closing, deliver back at opening, a half hour to switch clients on the PCs and they're running at a fraction of the cost of a NetWare upgrade - and nobody protested because nobody cares a hoot about Novell any more. I remember when they wouldn't even consider anything else. That's a major failure of marketing. Further, Novell wanted everyone to upgrade to v5 (desgned for large multisite businesses) including a tricky migration from bindary to Directory Services (with or without bidary emulation) and a new computer to support a much fatter product. Yes, they had a Y2K upgrade for v3.x, but guess what? It runs out of OS/2 namespace (used by Windows long filenames) no matter how much memory is in the computer. I had to write a procedure for one company so they could hand start their server by hand enter the params to register additional memory because the product couldn't register memory automatically. Otherwise it was "Upgrade to version 5.x" a few months after upgrading to 3.12 (done by another consultant). This is not taking care of your customers. And the fact that you can only administer a NetWare 5.x server from a Windows 9x workstation - how dumb. How terminally dumb. [link\|http://www.aaxnet.com\|AAx]
Post #4,374 by wharris2 8/9/01 12:01:11 PM Reply	Pure genius? The "Blue Spacesuit" campaign, on the other hand, is pure genius. You can tell how good it is by how many tech columnists have written it up as stupid and pointless. It has total recognition. Even the little 1"x3" ones they run now. You're leafing through a magazine, your eye catches a patch of blue spaceman and your mind says "IBM". Over and over again. Pure genius? Pure stupidity. It's the most stupid ad campaign they've run since the swirly Warp ads. People may remember the swirly ads, but they don't remember IBM. French Zombies are zapping me with lasers!
Post #4,378 by Andrew Grygus 8/9/01 12:16:43 PM Reply	It may seem stupid to technical person . . . . . . but the illogic of the blue spacemen makes it work. It's eye recognition, not content (though I bet you remember some of the content too). IBM, IBM, IBM, IBM, IBM, you eye catches it and your mind repeats it. IBM, IBM. Blue - Big Blue - IBM. You know the blue spaceman ads, and you know they're IBM. I didn't have to explain them to you, did I? They prepare the field for when the sales rep calls. Microsoft's ads are twice the size - two pages, not one - are they memorable? [link\|http://www.aaxnet.com\|AAx]
Post #4,396 by wharris2 8/9/01 1:23:40 PM Reply	You mean the DB2 ads, right? What the spacemen make me think is: This database is so bad you have to wear a spacesuit to even be exposed to it. That's not the message I think IBM is trying to send. French Zombies are zapping me with lasers!
Post #4,393 by cforde 8/9/01 1:02:43 PM Reply	hey, I still have one of those OS/2 shirts.... Have fun, Carl Forde

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