Re: WHAT IS THE BEST WAY TO BRING NEW CUSTOMERS TO THE ISERIES

[Hans Boldt <boldt@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Booth Martin wrote:

> I am not convinced we disagree. 

I agree. I'm sure we agree more than we disagree. The fact that I really 
enjoy playing "devil's advocate" probably confuses people too! ;-)

> The survey reflects what people believe, not what they do. The point is
> about what consumers do.  Does anyone else have trouble getting teens into
> Wal-Mart brands? 

Well, for me, I'll experience that first-hand in about 12 years. In the 
meantime, I'll just have to try to teach my daughter about the motives 
of advertisers and about value for the money. I can certainly try to 
lead by example - practically everything I'm wearing now, shirt, pants, 
socks, etc., is a store brand product, not a name brand. ;-)

> The facts of life are that advertising pays.  Otherwise soap and tobacco
> companies would never waste billions on advertising.

And for these classes of products you mention, nothing distinguishes 
between them otherwise. ;-)

> I would agree that IBM, Sun, Oracle, Cisco, and Novell won't gain much from
> prime-time TV advertising, but there's a lot of other kinds of advertising. 
>
>
> I know lots of people will grit their teeth at this but Dr. Frank Soltis is
> a Personality.   If IBM's PR people would play him up it'd have huge impact.
>  Hell, isn't he the one that has the on-board computers in his cars and
> trucks modified to his own specs?  Is his garage really bigger than his
> house?  Did he really get his tail feathers trimmed with his comments on the
> iSeries that MS owns?  This guy turns the staid iSeries into a personal
> adventure.
>  

Dr Frank mods the chips in his cars and trucks? Now *that's* a geek!

But then you're still preaching to the choir. Dr Frank is well known 
within this community, but not to the outside. I agree that there could 
be some truly great ads featuring iSeries personalities like him. But 
would such a campaign really play well to the target customer set? That 
is, those buyers who are looking for applications, not a flashy image. 
Image sells commodity items, like soap and breakfast cereal and Unix 
servers. But I'd like to think the buyers of iSeries machines and 
applications are a bit more discerning.

Cheers! Hans