| T.R | Title | User | Personal
Name | Date | Lines |
|---|
| 2825.1 | Seems we're making bad situation worse | AKOCOA::BBARRY | Don't breathe balloon air | Thu Dec 23 1993 12:36 | 10 |
| From 1-December VideoTex Worldwide News
...
Andrew Allison of "RISC Management Newsletter" believes Digital's
processors, workstations and servers are second to none, and are going
to be "hard to catch." Allison finds that message is lost: "Digital
buried that good news in a blizzard of software...software, fuzzy
marketing and the fact that the competition no longer even acknowledges
the company's existence" remain overriding problems.
...
|
| 2825.2 | | LABRYS::CONNELLY | If I H(WHAM!!)ad a Hamme(WHAM!!)r | Thu Dec 23 1993 15:03 | 16 |
|
re: .1
This is off the "flexware" subject, but why do we insist on announcing a
bazillion products on the same day? It seems like we mute any impact of
any one product by doing this. It started off when we announced the Rainbow,
DECmate and Pro-350 all at the same time ("gee...so which one do they want me
to buy? guess i'll get an IBM PC instead"). And it's gotten much worse over
time. Somebody in marketing seems to think that announcing large quantities
of products is better than doing one high impact product announcement. It
may impress people at the announcement, but it sure muddies the message in
the press and over the grapevine.
- paul
P.s. on the subject: how about "flaccidware"...not hard, not even firm, but
not quite soft either! ;^)
|
| 2825.3 | | NACAD::SHERMAN | Steve NACAD::Sherman DTN 226-6992, LKG2-A/R05 pole AA2 | Thu Dec 23 1993 17:39 | 15 |
| re: .2
Yup. That's a real problem. I remember the announcement for the LPS20
being buried with a bunch of other product announcements. A botch,
near as I can tell. Basically had to be reintroduced from what I was
told.
The reason? I'm guessing it's a political thing, sort of a least common
denominator approach. That is, high-level folks want to have presence
with product announcements. But, it's not reasonable to have them
involved for one's and two's for announcements because that can be
handled by subordinates. So, there needs to be a raft of products so
that high-level persons can justify their involvement.
Steve
|
| 2825.4 | | SPECXN::WITHERS | Bob Withers | Thu Dec 23 1993 18:36 | 7 |
| The Flex discussion reminds me that Digital almost released a product called
LACluster
Luckilly the name changed at the last moment.
BobW
|
| 2825.5 | Who says that luck has no role in marketing? | PASTIS::MONAHAN | humanity is a trojan horse | Fri Dec 24 1993 10:21 | 3 |
| We did carefuly avoid the PDP-13 (the PDP-14, -15, and -16 were
sold), but that was in the good old days when Marketing by Mythology
was the rule.
|
| 2825.6 | For you Trivia buffs | ICS::DOANE | | Tue Dec 28 1993 12:38 | 4 |
| I was part of the PDP-14 development group.
Ken said something like "we're not superstitious, but let's not take
any chances..." and we just quietly stepped across 13 to 14.
|
| 2825.7 | lightbulb burned out | SWAM1::MEUSE_DA | | Thu Dec 30 1993 18:52 | 8 |
|
flexware= to me some kind of exercise equipment.
duraware= hiking boots or kitchenware
Digital=watchmaker
...yes, I see a pattern here.
|
| 2825.8 | What's in a name? Not much around here! | EPAVAX::CARLOTTI | Rick Carlotti, DTN 440-7229, Sales Support | Mon Jan 03 1994 02:41 | 31 |
| As a field person trying to get a grip on the vast array of stuff we have to
sell, I wouldn't mind a naming scheme which helps to "catagorize" a product so
that I can tell by the name which family of products it is related to
(POLYCENTER, COHESION, DEC DB xxx, DECxxx 90, DECxxx 900, STORAGEWORKS, etc.).
I realize, for example, that the POLYCENTER products are mostly an unrelated
grab bag of products, but at least I know what audience to target those
products at.
If we actually have six software frameworks into which all of our products fit,
I for one, would like to see us come out with six family naming schemes shich
are consistently applied to the product names within those frameworks...and
they don't have to use common bits like flex or dura across the frameworks.
I have always felt that a customer should be able to make a fairly accurate
guess about what a product's function is by just seeing the name. For
instance, ACMS, FMS and TDMS all suck...DECtp and DECforms are more obvious.
"RdbAccess for xxx" isn't awful, but gives you the impression that Rdb is
necessary, while "DEC DB Gateway for xxx" is a little more descriptive and
doesn't imply any dependence on Rdb.
Anyway, having the bits "flex" or "dura" or anything else in EVERY product name
is about as useful as announcing 200 products at a time, every 3 or 4 months.
It blows any chance I or my customers have of keeping all ten bazillion of our
products straight in our minds.
About the only thing I wouldn't mind seeing in every product name is "DEC"...or
should that be "Digital" or maybe "DIGITAL". At least the customers would know
it was from one of those two companies.
Rick C
|