Sanity Check

Before switching to an IT, I worked for a number of years in the Marketing Department as a Photofinishing Services Category Manager and also as a Business Analyst for a leading Canadian Retailer. With that background, now creeping to the bottom of my resume, once in a while, to the chagrin of many, I put my marketing hat back, issue some quick commentary about what my company or another company should do, then retreat to my safe IT world where the forces are reasonably controllable by coding or configuration settings.

So, here we go again, except this is not directed at a company (IBM Lotus) alone, but also at the Lotus Community.

2008 was an interesting year to read the comment threads on websites that post articles about Lotus' moves in the marketplace (Notes 8, Symphony, IBM's Open Desktop, etc.). I am referring to sites that generically cover IT news whose readers are not primarily "yellow". The old canards still come up in comments, like "Lotus Notes..people still use that?" and other enlightening displays of ignorance. Mind you, when articles about Vista are posted, the comments can be just as acerbic.

The question I'd like to pose to the community is this: How will you participate to make our strongest skeptics into believers? That is, for those who so boldly pontificate behind the keyboard without a current understanding of the product they are bashing, how do you enlighten them to at least to the possibility that Notes Domino has enough business benefit that it could be even considered strategically advantageous?

Answer: You need to get out there, onto the highways and byways where people travel, and and repeat the strengths of Notes again and again and again. The fact is, even mistruths, repeated often enough, are believed (MS are experts here). Even better, when you can show true and tangible benefits, AND repeat them often enough, you're on your way to transforming perceptions. Its simply a matter of volume. If a former Notes user, who had a problem with some old weakness of Notes, like say HTML formatting, doesn't hear anything about Notes for several years, and then suddenly there's some out-of-the-blue article on Notes, he'll of course not be too impressed, and may even dump a negative comment. However, if he sees dozens of articles, in different blogs, ezines, and other media he reads, some of those messages begin to get through and over time he may even think, "Hey, maybe Notes its worth another look."

In former years, we, as a community, and IBM as a company, made few attempts to make plays in media where Notes was not necessarily dominant.  And when we made an attempt and got the old "Notes sucks" type of responses, we were outraged and retreated, grumbling about those Nimrod trolls. 2008 was an improvement with the new confidence in Notes 8, and 2009 with the release of Notes Domino 8.5 there is a real opportunity to break out of our insular community where we preach to the choir and have more "missionaries", so to speak. Only long, sustained, repeating, enduring effort to communicate clearly to our skeptics is required for any noticeable change over time. Quick hits without any frequency don't really do much, in fact in a way they can hurt. For example, maybe a young IT decision-maker doesn't know anything about Lotus Notes and they read a dozen negative comments and not much rebuttal. Of course they could become inclined to believe them, especially if there are common slogans repeated. But when one reads mindless, often emotional troll comments, and then intelligent, clear testimonies in a comment thread, the neutral reader knows which ones have legitimacy.

So to summarize:

Strategy A. There needs to be more articles put out in mainstream publications that clearly and succinctly bring out the feature/benefits of Notes Domino. Use of graphics, interviews, case study examples, and convincing arguments need to communicate the essential benefits of Notes. Emphasize that, as the world has evolved, so has Notes, especially of late. The frequency of these releases needs to be high enough so that the average IT professional will run across 4-6 Lotus articles a year minimum, which itself goes a long ways to demonstrate the legitimacy of the product.

Strategy B. The Lotus community needs to get involved in commenting on these articles in a genuine, non-defensive manner. Rebut the argument not the person. Point out the true benefits you and your org, and your customers have experienced with Notes Domino and let those speak for themselves. Engage the trolls only on the concrete points they offer. Ignore the crude, nonspecific comments which any intelligent reader will bypass anyway.

And this should all begin with the 8.5 release. If a sustained effort is made, the needle should begin to move one year from now.