ESCAPE VELOCITY

1 - More in this topic here: { Link }

2 - I just got off the phone with David Allen - we discussed this thread for some time and once again asked ourselves what's wrong with this picture and what can we do to help make it better. I can share this: Last week Michael Masterson from Ed Brill's office contacted me to start that process. In fact, he tweeted about it on Friday. I have no idea where that will go but I take it as a positive step and while I often rant about what I think are missed opportunities for IBM, I am excited to see that this appears to be moving in a positive direction.

Happy to have this discussion in greater detail over a Skype call.

Eric
{ Link }

3 - Nathan,

Good call - this is something I've been trying to get my head round for the last few weeks and I agree 100%. Interestingly though I can see @7s point as well which he reckons you are wrong. I'm not sure though that what he says though necessarily proves that you are wrong.
Of course he is right when he says that Users don't buy software but the thing is Users don't always stay users. Sometimes like the deluded anonymous IBM'er they go off and start up new businesses. Now at that point if they haven't heard of Notes then they may just make the automatic choice of "Well I used Outlook / Thunderbird (insert your other mail client of choice here) before so that is the thing to use here cos I know it and like it". In this case the User ends up with something for his new business because that is what he knows and isn't aware of another option because it's not been seen. He's an Engineer / Lawyer / Accountant, he could care less about software so he isn't aware of the advantages that Notes and IBM software can give his fledgeling business. As a matter of interest how many of you can name the relevant software for each of those professions? Notes fits amazingly well within all of those occupations in providing competitive advantage but what is the software that they use for the other stuff that is more core for their profession? I can answer the Engineer one cos that's what I am in my day job but the only other ones I can think of are Sage (accounts) and I've no idea about Lawyers.

Advertising to "Users" may not sell a lot of licenses but it may generate the interest for them to find out more if they branch out on their own. At that point hopefully IBM can at least get to the table and have the discussion about supplying the collaboration software. And as we say in Scotland "Monny a meekel macks a muckel" or Many of a small thing makes a big thing.

PS To my fellow Scots I know it's not spelled right but I did it phonetically for those who are not fortunate enough to bide (oops - stay)in the world's finest country.

4 - Excellent example Devin.

5 - @23 - Back then, you weren't designing software that appealed to users. You were designing software that appealed to IT.

Now is not then.

6 - @21 - "there is poetry underneath. the kind of flexibility that allows solutions to constantly emerge."

That's why I still keep an eye on Notes, and what continues to frustrate me so greatly. There is so much more Notes could be, so much more it could do. IBM is slowly getting there, I'm just anxious for them to hurry up already.

@24 - Back then they should have been designing software to appeal to users. It just took them a few years to realize it and act on it. Now they need to realize that they need to advertise and market their spiffy new user-focused software to users. That's going to take another few years for them to grok and act on. Progress comes at a glacial pace, but it does eventually arrive given enough time. It's that last bit that IBM is running out of, and why there is such urgency to the discussion now.

There is still time to claim end user mindshare in much the same way the way they did on the corporate side with the R5 advertising and marketing blitz. They recognized that as an important thing to do because they saw a legitimate threat. The threat from other consumer software is ramping up (the rise of Apple in the corporate world is a prime example) and the window for capturing mindshare is rapidly closing. Not only that, there is a negative perception Lotus has to overcome so it's both more difficult and more critical. Like most who are commenting on this meme, I am seriously concerned that IBM will miss their opportunity and Lotus will be left out in the cold.

7 - @10 hmm, another Rational employee I guess, they seem to not like Lotus, at least the ones I meet.
There are always people who get stuck with THAT PC. The one which is always causing problems. No matter how many different machines you bring them, they still manage to have problems.
It's never about the PC is it?
Do IBM and yourself a big favor and just leave. How did they miss you in the Q1 cuts?

8 - make a free sametime client and setup a free sametime server , demostrate scalability and uptime, security to everyone , and use that to sell sametime on premises. that would target endusers and corp at once.

9 - @23- Should have specified that we did begin to get into marketing talk in that thread. And despite what happens all the time...I still would have expected(selfishly so due to my vested interest ) more PR around that release at the time and not just marketing in trade publications.

@24 - Even so...I think my points above apply to then and now, just more so with the 8.x client as you stated.

10 - @10 - LOL. You know how I can tell you're a troll? You said "utilize" twice when "use" would work perfectly.

And Jabber? Seriously? You see major penetration from Jabber?

Goodluckwiththat.

11 - Marketing at a high-level to end-users will fail. One of the primary marketing rules is to address the wants and fears of your target audience.

Thus, Notes as a collaboration tool will miss the mark. Providing a nice interface that addresses their pain, will resonate and get attention.

Where you place the message is a matter of discussion here. We could all be correct or incorrect on any medium. Lotus needs to be willing to try and make a few mistakes, to find the correct mix...and yes, the risk is the competition will get some ammo, which you can use against them in a strategic manner.

12 - great post nathan. dude you can hang out on my lawn anytime. ;)

oh and btw YOU may not have known what you said yesterday, but i sure as hell did. LOL!

good stuff sir.

i love the passion in this community.

the disconnect is: community passion <--> user perception

it's tough. even in the days when the UI was clunkier there was still poetry underneath. this is what ppl like Anonymous IBMer don't understand. there is poetry underneath. the kind of flexibility that allows solutions to constantly emerge.

now the UI has gotten a lot better and continues to. there is poetry on the glass. (have you seen xPages, Anonymous?) now end users have a chance to feel what those of us who use the stuff under the covers have understood for many years.

it would be great if IBM took that message to end users in a serious way.

13 - The fact is that no end user in his or her right mind would ever utilize the Notes or any other Lotus product. Lotus products are forced upon employees by their employer, and there are decades richly-earned ill will from employees toward those Lotus products that they are forced to use.

IBM is better off convincing people that make purchasing decisions for large numbers of people that their products come anywhere near a solution provided by a combination of Jabber and Google Apps for Enterprises.

The fact is that Lotus software is profoundly dysfunctional. It is a hard sell to try and convince people that 1980s era Notes Databases are a solution for.. well, anything, much less the clunky user interfaces, resource hogging, and infinite other problems with the Notes suite. No one will ever want to spend 8 hours at their jobs in front of Notes with random crashes, client-lock-ups-while-that-database-loads, and then go home and do it all again with their personal e-mail. When I start a small or medium business, it will be a point of order to avoid Lotus products and utilize a system that enables my employees to work.

14 - Unfortunately @10-13 expresses an opinion I run across frequently in blog posts, elsewhere. I have said elsewhere that I love working with Notes/Domino, but Anonymous IBMer voices an attitude that is unfortunately common and is part of the challenge ahead for Lotus marketing. I read comments like his/hers and move on, but I can't ignore them.

15 - Anonymous IBMer,

You are full of it. I work with a lot of small businesses all who have minimum IT skills and ones who you would call "end users." Just with Symphony alone we have many using "Lotus Products." These end users have benefited from Lotus products tremendously. One of these "end users" was able to grow his business over 300% during the past few years and we are talk 6 figures numbers using the "Lotus Products" as the foundation to its operation. If he used other products he would still be in development rather than responding to the changing market conditions.

True, IBM has a way to go in marketing to end-users, but the Lotus line of products are far superior to what is our there. Yes, it may have had a clunky interface, but that can be easily fixed by using a Web interface or something like Flex. Like everything, you need to understand the requirements and apply the right tools. But if your tools do not have a sufficient foundation it may look good by is useless.

Oh, also I have started three businesses and with 18 years of experience as an entrepreneur so I believe know what I am talking about.

16 - Good article. I have been less than thrilled with the Marketing of Lotus Notes for a loooooooooooong time. Even this doozy back in 2002 when there was no announcement about the release of R6 on the main website - { Link } .

My argument has been for years (to anyone that would listen) is that just because it was typically a "business software" package, it still doesn't hurt to change the perceptions of those people who use it, as opposed to only those who purchase it. Why not tell everyone you can about what a great product it is (besides mail & scheduling) so that they are aware of it and can ask about it. Eventually some users end up becoming purchasers/decision makers.

Additionally, there has been an issue with negative perceptions of the product...why not put some more marketing out there to help the users of the product see(and potentially ask for) this beautiful, new, user friendly 8.x client?

I also don't understand why its ok to have IBM commercials on business resilience, globalization, servers, and 'ideating', but no commercials regarding one of the more consumer-friendly products. I would think it would be more effective(although its just my opinion), but I dont think alot of end users go to their managers and ask if they should be using the lastest server from IBM. However, a commercial about Lotus Notes and all of the extras you mentioned above, a user might be more inclined to ask their manager about that. But thats just me...

That all said, I really like Ed's availability to the masses and I think it shows a willingness to listen to and be involved in feedback.

17 - Since I somewhat had a hand in starting this meme, I kept thinking I would follow it up after Kevin's post. And between you and John, I kept having much of my "next point" already covered. And I think this one completely finishes what I've wanted to say, but now don't have to... :)

IT doesn't dictate any more. Users and departments say "we want this", and IT has to react. Case in point... "Our users want Outlook." "I want to connect my iPhone." "I have an <fill in the blank> file I need to process."

This doesn't mean that IT is at the whim of the users, but tech is mainstream.

Looking at the Smarter Planet and other IBM ads... I understand they're going for a concept and a certain attitude. But Sally in Payroll doesn't sit down Monday morning at 8 am and say "wow, I could sure do my job better if I lived on a smarter planet." She says "why do I have to use three things to get my job done? Why can't we use that software that I saw last night on TV/Bob uses at company Y/I use at home?" Once the din gets loud enough, changes are made.

Ads? Yes, I would like to see Lotus Notes/Domino specific ads. One, to let Sally and Bob know exactly what Notes can do. Sally and Bob don't want to "collaborate", they want to "fix process x". And two, to reset the mindset of the market to recognize the name Notes/Domino as software that isn't an old spreadsheet package, that didn't die years ago, and that is more than just email. Don't even mention Microsoft. Ignore them. Tag the campaign "Notes Can Do That?" and show fast office interactions doing actual stuff. Let Sally and Bob go into work on Monday and say "why are we using these three packages? I saw an ad that says Notes can do that."

And yes, I do feel like that ad for Dish TV where the smarmy sales guy says "I learned this in business school... when I read about business school... in a book." But I'd like to think at least a page or two of all that business book reading stuck somewhere in there... :)

18 - @7 - I didn't say the users BUY the software. I said they DEMAND it. Your daughter might not BUY the Jonas Brothers CD. But they probably generate DEMAND.

(Okay, maybe *your* daughters don't.... but other people's daughters do.)

19 - Anybody remember OS/2?

I do. It was (still is) an absolutely incredible multi-threaded operating system. When Merlin (Warp 4) came out, it was the absolute best there could be.

I used to support OS/2. I was an IBM Best Team member, and participated in the beta program.

I used to make fun of the crappy operating system from Microsoft. Win95, Win98, WinNT were all jokes as far as I was concerned. And Microsoft was targeting consumers (well perhaps not with NT so much), not the Enterprise. OS/2 was a killer operating system, and IBM marketed it directly at the Enterprise market. Why bother with consumers? End users don't make purchasing decisions.....

20 - I agree with Andrew, @7, not a surprise for anyone that read "the Ed thread" yesterday. Now, as I pointed out there { Link } , and I will do again here, you have to market, advertise and sell to each different level. In fact after talking to some of the sales peeps here at STS (the people out selling and marketing this really great software to organizations of all sizes), I'm going to change my "General and Private" analogy some.

It is now a three level (four if I count foundations):

CxO - General
LoB Manager - Platoon Leader
End user - Private

For foundations it is a slightly different play:

Owner - Newly crowned Dictator

Each of the above requires a different marketing, sales and advertising strategy, a different budget and will provide different levels of sales (ie, success) at each and every level.

For example, and again Andrew is correct, Privates don't buy enterprise software. I'm sure that is a shock to all the "Che revolution, power to the masses" readers here and on edbrill.com it is a fantasy perpetuated by small businesses (and yes, I belong to one of them). They do however say "where did my Outlook go?". They are however part of the equation and if they have never heard of "xyz" it must be inferior. You are not selling to them, you are marketing to them. Different. Right?

Basically, at all levels there needs to be a distinct and different modicum of mind share ("not a spreadsheet") and you get this via marketing and advertising to you intended target, over your targets preferred medium(s). And the press isn't dead, just like video didn't kill radio.

So what is the problem? I guess the tactics and the strategies. YouTube is all well and good, but most organizations of any size have that blocked at the firewall for anyone except IT (hence, end users will never see, unless they go home and do it...right!). You see where I'm going here right? If they don't know it exists they will never, ever buy it, never champion it and always complain about the inferiority of it for no other reason than their ignorance to the existence of "xyz".

There is no "build it and they will come", you have to build it, tell them about it, get them excited about it and then they MAY come.

So what else? Well you have to hit a pain point. Eric Mack { Link } doesn't sell Notes. He sells a solution to a pain point. 8.5 sells well due to ID Vault (and other things like DAOS), another pain point. But this is a different play in both marketing, advertising and sale. Right?

@8, "Our users want Outlook", not really a true statement. More like someone at a reasonable level of power wants Outlook (>= Platoon Leader) and they will use the excuse that "our users" want it to generate ground-swell. I see this play out all the time and they are on <= R7! Are you kidding me? No wonder Outlook looks good.

21 - @20 Gerry, I'm really surprised you'd bring up a seven year old example. As explained in the comments on that very post, the official launch was a couple of days after the product was released. This happens in our industry all the time. Notes 6 was on the front page of ibm.com as of its official launch. I don't see that as a misstep. It is *really* funny that Nate and I were arguing about TV commercials for Notes using almost exactly the same words on both sides in that same discussion thread, seven years ago. I guess neither of us has successfully persuaded the other

(NB: Responding to Gerry does NOT mean that I'm ignoring the other comments. Read 'em all).

22 - Wow "Anonymous IBMer"...you are a loser. Do us all a favor and take off to start your business now. Good luck with that. With your attitude, I'm sure you'll go far...

23 - Get off my lawn.

Which is my way of saying, I don't agree. I know this shocks you.

Quick'r and Connections are geared to making the users happy, but the users still don't buy the software. The users don't have the purchasing power or the understanding to make the enterprise software purchase.

Users want, and buy, Sharepoint. Share point is how I, as a department manager, can share my stuff. By share, you must understand that I mean to say it is how I put my stuff out there for you to all come view and read and learn about the cool things I do. Yes, I know you have a Share Point of your own, but I'm not interested in your stuff. My stuff however, should interest you because it is critical to the company.

Users buy sharepoint because it is how they "share" stuff. They don't actually share anything, they just put it out there as if anyone cares, but that's not the point.

Users do not care about the things which make an Enterprise solution better. They don't care about cross "share" management. They don't care about security management standardization, and they don't have any idea how or where to go to buy IBM software.


Now, on the subject of advertising -- I think its a huge mistake for IBM to fail to push its message to consumers. Make the product cool, and you take pressure off the people inside fighting for it.

They are, however, two totally different ideas.

24 - I agree that there should be a hybrid approach that needs to be executed here.

- Bilal Jaffery

25 - I've been agreeing with your points of view that you have posted here and on Ed blog. I'm totally with you - well done. I just wanted to voice my support, rather than lurk.

26 - Nathan I couldn't have said better what you wrote. I agree 300%.

27 - @3 - Bilal, strangely, I consider you the biggest victim here. You're responsible for marketing the single most consumer-centric item in the IBM portfolio; squarely targeted at small companies and competing directly against cloud services.

And yet you're expected to work with viral videos about meteor strikes. Unless you wrote that yourself.

@5 - I'll give IBM all the time in the world for output. But a change in attitude only requires a moment.

@all - one thing I forgot to say was that there are tons of consumer products that are used in business. Clothing, shoes, cars, televisions, pens, toilet paper... do fashion designers say "we only sell clothes to people who wear them to work, so let's market them to CFOs?" "Our shoes are worn to work, so let's advertise in the trade press."

I'm sure that happens, if you make delivery uniforms or steel-toed boots. Does anyone think that Connections and Symphony are industrial-grade designs? Wouldn't the UI lab cry if you told them that?

28 - Nathan,

I agree. Our biggest push back against Notes that we are encountering is not Exchange and Outlook but GMail and Google docs.

29 - I don't watch tv much, only during Football season. So if you want me, that's a great time to advertise to me.

That said, I concur with you, IBM has, in some aspects, put itself in a box that they maybe didn't want to be in(or did and the jokes on us for not seeing it sooner). But now they are there and maybe it will be time to spin off Lotus and some other pieces to a consumer oriented company.

But who are we kidding, IBM has way too much invested in Lotus and who could afford to buy it anyway?

What if they are trying to change? What if there is something new under the sun inside IBM? What if Ed is just Red herring us? Maybe I am overly optimistic but I see the last few weeks have shown steps, not always forward, for IBM and the Lotus line so give them a little longer to work it out, you can always complain in January, but it's barely been 90 days since Lotusphere.

30 - Deja Vu ...
When I started in IT I worked with the AS/400. IBM had the best product but users wanted windows GUI’s not green screens. Sadly IBM did not know how to market there advanced solution, IT kept it alive. Now again I see the same comments but a different product. Users don’t care about the technical superiority of Lotus, they want familiarity. I’m with @8 I love the catch phrase “Notes Can Do That" (No question mark).