Dear IBM, when you weren't looking...
Category IHSOS
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I always appreciate link love from my good friend Ed Brill. And I'm very pleased with Ed's post on Doing Things Different(ly). There's some excellent conversation there. But I have to confess that as we got towards the end of the back and forth, I realized something...
He totally missed my point.
That's okay. I'm not sure I got my point. But on the drive home, things crystalized a bit.
I'll pull some telling quotes from Ed's replies:
This is not to single-out Ed. I have no doubt that if we'd been having this discussion with any other IBM executive in the universe, the essence of the response would have been the same. Because Ed's perspective is very normal at IBM: we sell business software.
Here's the problem -- and I didn't get this until I re-read what I wrote yesterday...
No, you don't. At least not out of the Lotus division.
IBM has spent the last 3 years building consumer software. Connections takes its roots from Facebook and Blogger. Sametime from chat clients. Notes just underwent a major overhaul to make it emotionally connect to average users. Widgets are intended for casual, non-technical users. Mashups, Portals, CompApps, Activities, BI Analytics -- they're all intended for typical knowledge workers who are used to a wired world to be able to connect the dots and become empowered -- just like all the consumer web 2.0 tools in the world. Symphony is a free-for-anyone set of productivity tools -- every bit as likely to be used by soccer moms doing team newsletters, dads doing home budget planning, and kids doing a high-school book report on A Separate Peace.
You are a consumer software company now, IBM.
Yeah, I know... you didn't mean to be. Oops. Guess you'll have to change the name to "International Human Software and Other Stuff".
But now that you are a consumer software company, you get compared to other consumer software companies. People look at the Notes PIM experience, and they compare it to Gmail and to Mac Mail just as often as Outlook. They look at Connections and compare it to Facebook and Twitter. They look at Sametime and compare it to AOL or Trillian. They look at Symphony and compare it to Google Apps and iWork -- just as much as to MS Office.
So take a few minutes, IBM, and get used to the fact that you accidentally built a bunch of great consumer software. And now that you have, you'd better figure out how to sell it, or you will have wasted billions of dollars of R&D.
Here's a hint: you sell consumer software to consumers. And consumers are ordinary people like you and me, that watch TV, drive in traffic while listening to the radio, walk to gates in airports, read magazines at the doctor's office and in general respond emotionally rather than analytically to purchasing decisions. We don't read trade press, search the 'net for videos about "collaboration", or take time off work to listen to a timeshare pitch -- unless you're giving away a free plasma screen or something.
There is one thing I'll knock Ed for personally, though. He asked "who watches commercials anymore anyway, other than during live events?" The answer is: I do. I DVR absolutely everything I watch on TV (and there's a lot of shows I watch.) And if I see a Mac vs. PC ad, I will rewind to watch it. And dude... I don't even own a Mac.
Does that tell you anything about how to build an emotionally connecting message?
Bookmark :
I always appreciate link love from my good friend Ed Brill. And I'm very pleased with Ed's post on Doing Things Different(ly). There's some excellent conversation there. But I have to confess that as we got towards the end of the back and forth, I realized something...
He totally missed my point.
That's okay. I'm not sure I got my point. But on the drive home, things crystalized a bit.
I'll pull some telling quotes from Ed's replies:
...we are not oriented enough to supporting individual end-users.
Nobody brings a business-oriented product. Quicken is sold to individuals **as a primary market**...
...it's not effective advertising for the market and decision makers we are trying to reach... you know, those generals you were talking about earlier....
This is not to single-out Ed. I have no doubt that if we'd been having this discussion with any other IBM executive in the universe, the essence of the response would have been the same. Because Ed's perspective is very normal at IBM: we sell business software.
Here's the problem -- and I didn't get this until I re-read what I wrote yesterday...
No, you don't. At least not out of the Lotus division.
IBM has spent the last 3 years building consumer software. Connections takes its roots from Facebook and Blogger. Sametime from chat clients. Notes just underwent a major overhaul to make it emotionally connect to average users. Widgets are intended for casual, non-technical users. Mashups, Portals, CompApps, Activities, BI Analytics -- they're all intended for typical knowledge workers who are used to a wired world to be able to connect the dots and become empowered -- just like all the consumer web 2.0 tools in the world. Symphony is a free-for-anyone set of productivity tools -- every bit as likely to be used by soccer moms doing team newsletters, dads doing home budget planning, and kids doing a high-school book report on A Separate Peace.
You are a consumer software company now, IBM.
Yeah, I know... you didn't mean to be. Oops. Guess you'll have to change the name to "International Human Software and Other Stuff".
But now that you are a consumer software company, you get compared to other consumer software companies. People look at the Notes PIM experience, and they compare it to Gmail and to Mac Mail just as often as Outlook. They look at Connections and compare it to Facebook and Twitter. They look at Sametime and compare it to AOL or Trillian. They look at Symphony and compare it to Google Apps and iWork -- just as much as to MS Office.
So take a few minutes, IBM, and get used to the fact that you accidentally built a bunch of great consumer software. And now that you have, you'd better figure out how to sell it, or you will have wasted billions of dollars of R&D.
Here's a hint: you sell consumer software to consumers. And consumers are ordinary people like you and me, that watch TV, drive in traffic while listening to the radio, walk to gates in airports, read magazines at the doctor's office and in general respond emotionally rather than analytically to purchasing decisions. We don't read trade press, search the 'net for videos about "collaboration", or take time off work to listen to a timeshare pitch -- unless you're giving away a free plasma screen or something.
There is one thing I'll knock Ed for personally, though. He asked "who watches commercials anymore anyway, other than during live events?" The answer is: I do. I DVR absolutely everything I watch on TV (and there's a lot of shows I watch.) And if I see a Mac vs. PC ad, I will rewind to watch it. And dude... I don't even own a Mac.
Does that tell you anything about how to build an emotionally connecting message?
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