>>It occurs to me that a computer/computer software that is advertised
>>on TV or radio is in pretty bad shape.
>>
>>Observation: Never has a TV campaign, so aimed, succeeded.
>>
>>Examples: Commodore Amiga's number of ads
>> The original PS/2 and OS/2 ads (MASH)
>> Phillips CDI & Commodores CDTV (flops)
>
>Or then there's Microsoft Windows and it's associated software. Or the
>Intel Inside campaign. Yep, it's never succeeded.
Those were not TV campaigns in any meaningful way. I don't
think it would be wholly unrealistic to argue that the TV ads
were next to meaningless next to the media saturation that
Windows and Intel aimed at. Windows, well, got it mostly
for free. Intel has one or more two-page spreads every month in
most ofthe computer magazines. Intel also has concentrated it's
Intel Inside campaign in a sort of insidious advertising rebate
plan that eliminates the price difference between the Intel
parts andtheAMD/Cyrix parts by paying some of their advertising
costs. (Something much more anti-competitive, IMHO, than Microsoft
has everdone).
>>When you advertise on TV or radio you are spending a lot more to contact
>>a limited number of people. How many of those listeners/watchers
>>have computers? How many know jack about them?
>
>Actually when you advertise as IBM did on a major bowl game, you hit
>EXACTLY the market you want: College-educated men between the ages of 24
>and 45. Unfortunately, IBM dropped the ball with their totally lame
>advertising.
1. I strongly doubt if "college educated" is really the majority
of the foot-ball watchers demographics. Furthermore, I doubt that
this is mostly irrelavent: college educated != computer literate,
by any stretch of the imagination. I imagine that more computer
literate people could be reached by advertising on scifi shows or
more general non-sports related_entertainment_. Probably for a
lot less than IBM spent on the Fiesta Bowl.
2. Even ignoring this, they could have hit a lot more
of a concentrated audience by advertising in computer
magazines or hitting the college campus promotional route.
Magazines dedicated to computers *ensure* that the audience
is at least somewhat interested in the subject. There is
a much greater chance of hitting receptive minds in a
self-selected audience than there is in trying your luck
and spending a fortune on a football game.
>>A few ads in a some computer magazine (say, a two or three page insert
>>a la DesqView/X)--or all ofthe computer magazines--would deliver a much
>>higher hit rate than any radio or TV ad.
>
>Not true at all if the target market is the general home audience, the
>folks who have been buying Windows like crazy.
OS/2 is not targeted at the home audience. Most still have
8088 and '286 machines that OS/2 wont run on at all. The rest,
for the most part have 386 machines with 2 or 4 megs of
RAM and a 40 to 60 megabyte harddisk. These people run DOS
and Windows, and would be very unhappy trying to run OS/2.
The audience that IBM is targeting, that is, the people with
the equipment *already* to run OS/2 are already aware of it,
the are simply not trusting of it. They need 1) name confidence
(the mess of 1.x versions makes people wary of OS/2, and the
media "OS/2 is doomed" isn't helping) 2) reason to bother with is.
Advertising on the Fiesta Bowl, unless it was *very cheap*
(unlikely) was a stupid waste of funds that could have gone elsewhere.
>>And "multitasking" is not the thing to advertise. Most people--99% of them--
>>can multitask adequately under Win3.1 w/4 megs and a 40mb HD (stacker or without). The thing to push is that OS/2 is in many ways better (but let's not
>>lie about it) and costs no more. Furthermore, it would be nice to see some
>>ads that showed real performance benchmarks for a 386sx-20 w/8 megs compared
>>to the same system under DOS or Win3.1..
>
>I agree with you here. The multitasking issue is a bit arcane for these
>folks, what IBM should have stressed was the superior crash protection,
>the improved user interface and the ability to run most existing
>software more efficiently.
As far as these folks are concerned:
1. OS/2's superior crash protection is irrelavent. If the
program crashes (windows) they simply reboot and have it running
again in one to two minutes. Auto-save prevents most losses
of work, so nothing much is lost even if it does go down.
Plus, Windows doesn't crash much for the non-DOS using
"average" user. DOS hardly crashes at all (and the difference
between DOS crashing and OS/2 killing a task because it
went awry is minor--in both cases, you have to start
from the last autosave).
2. As far as these folks are concerned, the WPS is a clumsy,
confusing jumble next to the simple drool-and-click Program
Manager. Want to run Word? Click click double-click. Nothing
to it. The "average" user hardly does any file management, so
that's not a big deal (and even if it is, just click click
