Archive for the ‘Online marketing’ Category

Recently we received a mail shot from IBM.  It was quite exciting actually, it could have been an offer of £20 million to purchase the Atlas Framework but alas that wasn’t the case.

In fact it was possibly the most dire attempt at direct marketing we’ve ever witnessed by an organisation with absolutely no excuse to produce something so poorly conceived and implemented.  If you’ll permit me I’d like to take you through evidence details up this sorry excuse for marketing.

Exhibit A:  Naff looking brown envelope

If it wasn’t for the fact that it had an IBM stamp in the top left corner and what felt like a CD inside we wouldn’t even have bothered to open what was quite obviously a mailer.  The giveaway is that the letter is addressed to the Chief Technical Officer rather than a person.  Unfortunately it gets worse.

Exhibit B:  A5 letter which looks and reads as though it was written in a school playground somewhere

The letter starts off badly and gets worse.  It’s bad enough that it isn’t addressed to anybody specific (you mean to tell me IBM is unable to afford a high quality mailing list?!).  And so it begins:

“David Norfolk of Bloor Research recently advised ISVs to open their minds to less obvious database technologies.  He specifically recommends Informix Dynmaic Server (IDS).”

Ok who the heck is David Norfolk?  Why would we use database technologies that aren’t obvious, the best ones are out there, tried, tested and accepted?  Why does he recommend IDS?

The letter goes on to say that IDS is hardware efficient compared to the usual commodity databases.  However it fails to provide any real statistics or comparisons with “commodity databases”.  What are commodity databases anyway?  I can only presume they mean Microsoft SQL server.

Next up IBM mention that IDS was a finalist in some award somewhere that nobody cares about.  IDS can be embedded in to an application too, apparently.  Finally the letter signs off by providing a website for us to visit on the assumption that our attention has been grabbed to the extent that we would bother.

Exhibit C:  Tragic looking black and white copy of an article written in IT-director.com in an attempt to back up the contents of the letter

As if this lesson in how not to perform direct marketing could be bettered we’re then treated to a double sided print of a web article about the lesser known IDS database application that software development businesses are missing out on.

The whole experience was very underwhelming.  IBM has got a mammoth task their hands if they think that this kind of half-cocked approach to marketing against the likes of Microsoft, Oracle and Sun Microsystems (to name but a few) is going to achieve any results.

We don’t generally bash Microsoft because

a) We partner with them and use their technologies to create websites and software applications for our customers.

b) We actually like what Microsoft do.  Okay they get lots of things wrong, but would PCs have infiltrated the world in such a big way if there wasn’t one standard operating system (aka Windows) in use?

However when it comes to marketing Microsoft could seriously do with having a chat with Steve Jobs and Co. over at Apple.  Here’s why:

In between working with Atlas, coming up with ideas for outside projects (www.newseveryday.net is the most recent example), working with Universities and Colleges to get students interested in business, and attempting to have some life outside of work, I also sit on the National IT Committee for the Federation of Small Businesses.  The committee doesn’t get its hands dirty actually fixing servers and maintaining networks, but what it does undertake is just as important.  It ensures that the FSB leverages the latest technology in a cost efficient manner throughout the huge organisation of staff and volunteers that are actively involved every day.  It’s not an easy task and the committee works extraordinarily hard to make this happen.

Pete Scargill, the IT Committee Chairman, has been kind enough to recognise my winning the Young Entrepreneur of the Year award on the IT homepage for the FSB.  Many thanks Pete, and let’s hope there is plenty more to shout about in 2008 both for Atlas and the FSB!

Simon