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Sanity CheckBlog Authors: Roland Reddekop |
Does Lotus Notes need to be rebranded?
Roland Reddekop |
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Tags:
marketing
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Comments (9)
Salvaging Lotus Notes' reputation is an ongoing battle. A few weeks ago, I was in the board room of a prospective customer selling Lotus Notes (Foundations actually) and I was challenged to update their IT Director, who had ancient experience with Notes about 12 years ago (R4, R5?), on how Lotus Notes has not stood still but has evolved, especially in the last few years to to embrace open source technology like Eclipse. I knew this org leveraged Linux in their Data center so knew that focusing on how Notes leverages Open Source projects as large as Eclipse and Linux would be the right play. The proof of concept was my demonstrations of modern Notes applications. An added bonus was the fact that applications can be built once using XPages to run in the client, browser, and even Blackberry. Since I approached them positively, without being defensive, and showed a true current and future value propositions, I believe talks with them will be ongoing after their upcoming strategy sessions. Another situation: This last weekend, I had breakfast with a very experienced Java Developer from a US Investment firm who remarked, "
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1 Niels J Hansen Permalink Good stories. As Microsoft competitive inside IBM I appreciate it more than most. Actually I find that IBM has only got one brand worth keeping. It would be very refreshing to get rid of all the SWG brands and just acknowledge that the only brand we should keep is also one of the strongest brands in the world...IBM Collaboration, IBM Database, IBM Portal etc. How do you feel?
2 Henning Heinz Permalink Why rebrand something that according to IBM is extremely successful, wins every day against Microsoft and has been growing for years? I don't get that and it does not make much sense to me. And when we talk about the squares. They haven't changed much in years. They should but it hasn't happened yet.
3 Ed Brill Permalink Roland, this is an interesting thought that the community revisits from time to time.
I would think that if we changed the product name from "Lotus
Notes" that the FUD troopers would immediately start the latest
"Notes is dead" campaign (and it would at least have a veneer of
validation). So I think we need to stick with "Lotus Notes". What
I'm less convinced on is that the next major release (which we'll
start talking about at Lotusphere 2010) should be "Lotus Notes 9".
Like your KFC example, I think there's something else we can do
with the product name besides the next incremental version number.
When I hinted at this earlier this year on my blog, it seemed I
received a lot of encouragement...but not many useful suggestions.
I'm wide open on that... and think there is support all over my org
to do something different.
4 Keith H Brooks Permalink Niels,
IBM brand is great, but Lotus, unlike other parts of the Software
group has a history as a company and other product lines. Compared
to Websphere or DB2. Rational has a name, too, but not a consumer
side name.
Notes 9 will not fly in Germany very well.
Since the client will disappear at some point in favor of web/cloud
apps, Domino should be the name going forward and side step the
Notes name issue.
Lotus has a great name, so does 123.
And maybe there is something to that after all.
5 Roland Reddekop Permalink @Niels - IMHO there's always a place for sub brands in marketing: IBM Tivoli, IBM DB2, IBM Lotus... Removing a sub brand, or even changing it isn't a panacea to address competitive pressures. Having been in a retailer's Marketing Dept for a while, I am a little jaded by what marketing can accomplish on its own...lots of smoke and mirrors. The niche and quality of the product is obviously the number one factor. All the marketing in the world won't alter that. But marketing does open door and that cannot be underestimated.
@Henning - Lotus is a worldwide product, so there are regions, even
countries where wins are common place. I'm only reflecting on the
challenges I've seen. Add a little marketing help to repave the
road and open the doors that automatically close when you mention
LN (generally out of ignorance and out-of-date perceptions) would
be helpful.
@Ed - I don't expect you to discuss Lotus Marketing in the clear
here, but thanks for the insights into the future. Regarding the
"Notes is dead" FUD, I do believe that rebranding could be done in
a way that makes is clear that the new evolved/metamorphosed Lotus
product is built on the best of the Notes heritage (hence Notes
lives), yet embraces the changing IT demands toward a more
web-capable, multi-client, multi-platform product.
6 Jake Ochs Permalink Some truth in thism although the Notes brand is too important to treat callously. I do think Expeditor is undervalued as a brand and the Expeditor developer community needs more resources. Ditto for the Symphony community. Perhaps roll up all Expeditor communities into one superpresence? (Notes/Symphony/Sametime/Expeditor
standalone) distinct from Notes app devs?
7 Edwin Kanis Permalink Talking about Lotus Connections works very good, great responses (only when mentioning it's not Lotus Notes), why not brand it something that way and just add messaging (later also UC2) as part of this social software platform with an 'new client' as 'offline' or 'local' social software tool.
Put apps in a fancy catalog (like LC2.5 !!), stop with the old
workspace UI and please now update that to something 'hip' and new
like Apple does, like netvibes does, like connections can
etc.
Email should be most important 5 years from now, Lotus Live shows
that allready, it's about the suite of apps and communication
capabilities.
8 Alan Lepofsky Permalink Introducing a revolutionary software platform... LND
http://www.alanlepofsky.net/alepofsky/alanblog.nsf/dx/introducing-a-revolutionary-software-platform
9 Bas van Gestel Permalink I am not a marketing guy, but unfortunately I would have to confirm that many people (end users) associate the term "Lotus Notes" with legacy software. At least in my surroundings (Netherlands).
I believe rebranding would be a good thing, but only by changing
the word Notes. I think IBM/Lotus still is a strong brand. I
believe the name should have a relation to the collaboration (from
various locations) aspect of Lotus Notes.
If IBM might decide to rebrand Notes. I really hope the learned
from the failed Workplace attempt, which was nothing more than
confusing everyone with extending the already confusing product
portfolio.