ESCAPE VELOCITY

1 - When I first read the headline on this post, my first reaction was, "yeah, well, if I had some end-users who were aware, that'd be great!"

2 - Prime time tv ads may have a significant (positive) influence on stock performance. People probably do not start to buy Cisco switches but maybe they buy shares. Unfortunately this lowers the chances that there will be brand or product focussed tv advertising.

3 - Henning, I could live with IBM ads not showing brand-specific content as long as they showed actual people using actual IBM technology and getting excited about it.

That's not what IBM ads do. If you go to { Link } and you check out "Our work" there's a major section on IBM. You know what every ad is for? "ebusiness on demand."

This audience is populated almost exclusively with IBM business partners. Any of you ever knowingly bought, sold or implemented "ebusiness on demand?"

4 - Nathan, did you catch the even better product placement? When Lt. Dan was assembling the team, they were having a Cisco Telepresence meeting to discuss the logistics. Think if some of the Lotus brands were able to get into play there...

5 - And did you notice the product placement inside that show? With 3 or 4 screens lit up with the Cisco telepresence logo, they faded to life and our hero Mac standing in front of the screen, he said "this is a secure network - here's our plan"....

And of course they caught the bad lady because of the help from Cisco. Brilliant - totally.

6 - You hit me right in a spot that I bitch about all the time. I have seen this time and again with many companies failing to understand the importance of direct marketing and brand awareness. I always think back to the early '90's (or whenever it was, I haven't researched it) when Intel began their Intel Inside campaign aimed at the end user. No one (except for uber geeks) were running to Fry's and buying Intel processors. But, they would go to Best Buy and pick the machine with the Intel sticker as opposed to the one with the AMD sticker. Why? Because "I have never heard of AMD before." I thought this was brilliant. Marketing to the end user who will never buy your product directly, but will buy indirectly from a manufacturer that they know integrates your product into theirs. Amazing!

I look at it as a form of social engineering. That constant reminder of Product X with flashy, catchy ads tends to morph into this general perception of "Product X is good". Would running these types of ads help IBM acquire more seats? Maybe. But I am quite sure it would help retain seats. CIO's hear the "Notes sucks" complaints endlessly and they do give in. Now, don't get me wrong. I don't want this construed as me saying that people need to be tricked into thinking that Notes is better than Exchange. That is not what I am saying. But I do believe that they would have a more open attitude and compare Notes in a more fair manner than they do when they come into it from the perspective of having never heard of it before which tends to lend itself to an immediate distrust of the product.