Collaboration Matters!

What's the frequency Kenneth?

Since I will be presenting at a LCTY in June, I am interested in thoughts to get across or address.

I was more thinking of Oasis' "What's the story, morning glory"...

Well written Stuart. I think you've caught the essence of the issue.

As plain as they are, THIS I believe is why the "people ready" ads work, and IBM's overly broad generalist spots don't.

K.

See point 4 here

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well written and spot on

Thanks for contributing to the discussion... need those thoughts and angles.

Great post. Hopefully when LCTY is in the Bahamas, they will update their slides.

The Lotus product designers have personas to help them crystallize use cases.

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Why not carry those all the way through to marketing? Or use other personae, but the idea is to show how Samantha, Daisuke, and Philippe solve their business problems with the Lotus Products.

I guess it's not about selling features, it's about selling solutions.

Example: "Here's the problem... Sounds familiar, right?... Here is how Philippe used to do things... Here is how he now uses Notes, Sametime, and Connections to do the same tasks more efficiently..." (spontaneous cheering.)

The more common and painful the problem and the more elegant the solution, the more people will see the value of the products and buy them.

Show, don't tell.

Very good points coming from a different angle. Many of the IBM presentations have gotten to this point recently unfortunately. This is not to place blame because they are trying to do their job (and the job of 3 or 4 others at the same time) but don't have the resources to do it. To get good cases (like the Masters Broadcasts) takes effort and coordination. The Lotus tools should help with the Cs, but the $$ gets in the way. That and "it's not my job" and "it's not what I want to do". So I feel bad for those stuck presenting something that they and the author both know would be so much better if it included the things that you suggest. As you said, this isn't about Bruce (who's a good guy) or many of the speakers who have given that same presentation across the world. The top needs to realize that Lotus is a different brand focussed on a different type of audience and requires different types of marketing assets.

Stuart, I hope you'll trust me when I say that I heard some things today that make me believe that you will get your wish.

That is all I can say just yet. Not due to NDA, but simply because I haven't had time to write up the details of this morning's conversation.

I do not think you will be disappointed.

Stuart, although your criticism of Lotus has in the past irritated me as it has come across more as moaning that being constructive, I do think you have picked up on an issue that I have been attempting to bring to the attention of Lotus senior management for a number of years.

As a long term Loti, I see this problem and the direct affect it has on the success of Lotus from the inside and d'you know what, they neither seem to understand, or even worse...care. I have on a number of occasions attempted to constructively criticize the marketing and advertising strategy and have been met with a mixture of apathy and PC responses trotted out by legal along the lines of " We don't do Brand Advertising"..."Everything we do is about the IBM 8 Bars" blah blah blah. The problem with that is that the IBM senior management do not seem to recognize that Lotus holds a fundamentally unique position within IBM Software Group as it is the only brand that appeals directly to the end-user community, be that technical or more often, not. Our customers' line of business users couldn't give a cr@p about Process Server or the latest Tivoli widget but they do care about what is on "their" screen and for Lotus to succeed, it has to present itself as providing tech that users "want" as well as need. In stark contrast this is something that Microsoft do so well and given that the majority of their portfolio is actually less than inspiring and most of it technically flawed ( Exchange is a crock and don't even get me started on the BS they call Sharepoint ) it is essential for them to have good marketing and advertising. To create the "want" relies on promotion of the brand and if their is no brand promotion we get back to the point that Lotus products will be lost in the mire. For too long, IBM has relied on the Domino customer base, but guess what, there isn't another Domino and unless this issue is addressed and very soon, there wont be a Lotus for any of us to criticize .

Applause for IBM insider. Fuerte aplauso para la opinión del Sr. de IBM.

Thanks for all your kind comments, folks.

@Nathan, I was on the Blogger Q&A call as well, and was also heartened by some of the statements that Bob P made, especially regarding the fact that he and others are reading the feedback on the blogs and embracing the comments made. Both you and I only want the best for Lotus, its people and its products, so I'm pleased that they are taking the constructive criticism as it is intended.

@IBM Insider, I'm not a great fan of anonymous comments, but you seem genuine and I can understand your position. Thanks for your honesty regarding my posts - I do try not to rant or moan, but I respect your opinion.

That, if not the heart of the problem, is certainly a big part of it. While IBM bangs on and on to business partners about SMB, actually much of the development and all of the marketing is about the large IBM-sized customers. Is DAOS a deal-breaker for a 50-person company? No. Is the inability to change the 'from' address in Notes without mucking around with separate mailfiles, locations and IDs a deal-breaker? Quite possibly yes: at the very least you will end up with some mightily unhappy users who can't email out from info@ etc, and when somebody shows them how cleanly Outlook handles that (very simple) requirement ...

It's no surprise that the messages at LCTY and at Lotusphere itself are primarily of the dreary "6 new accelerators for Websphere Portal" variety. That's what happens when your audience is 97% existing users.

There has been great work in the last few years to bring the older products, Notes itself of course but also Quickr and SameTime, into the 21st century. There's still a long way to go in terms of both actual and perceived performance levels, particularly of Notes, but the products IBM has now are more than good enough to warrant showing them to a wider market. And, as Stuart so eloquently described, there needs to be a clear "wiifm" message.

There's no point in waiting for the products to be perfect before starting to rework the approach to marketing. IBM is starting from such a lame and lagging position marketing-wise, it's going to take a few attempts to get it right. And those of us in the yellow bubble will criticise and applaud, as justified, every step of the way.

Having worked on the Lotusphere OGS the past 2 years, I know that we do try to have a story in the background for our users, at least in the demos. We decided not to spend precious demo time setting up an elaborate scenario, however, and simply reference it as we go..."I need to check my personal calendar to make sure I can attend a customer dinner..."

Anyway, check out this presentation we did at Lotusphere and let me know whether that is along the lines you were thinking of:

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We consciously did not use any product names in our slides, but used our demos to show the products and purposely blur the lines between them. Some people get it and some try to figure out which product is which.

Chris

Hi Chris - yes I saw that presentation and actually have used a few of those slides myself since - the graphics and storyline to resonate with users at all levels. I'd love more Lotus presentations to use this style of communication.

In a way I understand your frustration with your expectations from IBM in general but please make sure that you do not generalise excessively. The UK team is a highly motivated, dynamic and passionate team and hopefully we do a good job on your behalf and I am sure if we did not you would tell us.

The unseen hero's in the UK is the marketing team and the girls who do a fabulous job bringing incredible events to BP's and customers under very difficult circumstances. Your unintentional swipe at the marketing team will have ramifications for all in the UK as the marketing team is influenced by the UK technical teams and the BP's and to make sure they get the message right they constantly ask us, and you in particular, for input, feedback and suggestions. If you think they have failed to deliver the message and the audience was not properly targeted then we have all failed.

Why would you even suggest that events are geared for selling to IBMers? Of course our colleagues that attend events are keen to see our fabulous technology in use but they/we attend events to ultimately speak to customers and BP's and share knowledge. The Lotus Portfolio is amazing and there is so much to digest that it is difficult to keep up. Ed did the LCTY keynote in Edinburgh and every point he made was valid, interesting and of great value to the audience as it reinforced the Lotus portfolio values but Ed can not be everywhere at once.

It is a pity you left before the breakout sessions as we worked hard to ensure that there was a great balance between the obligatory strategy pitch and a the "day in the life" presentations done by UK Tech sales people. I am not going to take issue with your view on the strategy presenter as that is your opinion but please amend your entry that suggests the rest of the day was not informative and useful as you simply were not there. Also, the UK marketing team did a fabulous job in organising the events and I know you will agree with this so please make clear in your post that you simply generalised when you used the term marketing as a verb and not specifically the girls in marketing. You should know better than this. :-(

Ray, I hope you know me better than this.

As I said to you and to others in the IBM team at LCTY London, I was really impressed with the event itself - great venue, super location, impressive attendance, well-populated vendor showcase and so on. I think the team organising it did a fabulous job, and as you know I appreciate all that your team and others do for us partners. Perhaps I should have made this clearer at the outset, and I apologise for not doing so.

I did stay for a couple of the breakout sessions and realise that they filled in many of the topics covered in the keynote.

My post was intended to be a criticism of the presentation materials used by IBM/Lotus, and just happened to pick on LCTY as that was the most recent example. It is just as relevant for Lotusphere or for many of the other presentations I see used at other events.

I'm sorry if I offended you or anyone else in Lotus UK, Ray, however I thought long and hard about the main message of the post and stand by my comments. However, I'm more than happy to post about the other great work going on in the UK and to correct any misconceptions of my view of the work going on here.

Let's grab a coffee sometime soon?