What’s the story, Lotus?
I read a lot these days about Lotus Marketing – and most of the things are not really new for someone who has been in that business for years. Looking at the marketing campaigns IBM came up with the last years most of them were worse than the campaign before. Just remember the Codenauts! None of my customers got the message.
Today I stumbled upon Stuart McIntyre´s posting, and I think I should link to it because he put it the right way:
As the head of a 50-person ‘up and coming’ organisation from London that is faced with alternatives from Google, Socialtext, Jive, Huddle, Alfresco etc and little understanding of the Lotus portfolio beyond some buzz on the web about Lotus Connections or Quickr, I’d have walked away utterly confused at what IBM/Lotus was actually offering me or my business.
Nobody outside our little, very closed Lotus community understands what IBM is talking about today. Thats a big problem when a business partner tries to sell the message to it´s customers. I was one of these partners the last 10 years. And I wish IBM would have continued marketing like Lotus did in the past.
Today I work with people in IT organizations who are responsible for running large infrastructurs. They don´t even talk about Lotus. Lotus is something they know back from the old day – but it´s irrelevant today.
In my last position sometimes I felt like the last Jedi. But the force was not with me. Today I see some new efforts being made, including some of the videos of the Working Smarter campaign on Youtube. I would like to see Lotus back on the agenda of my current customers. And still I think: When IBM would like to do good marketing, they could do it. Maybe they simply don´t want to.