Slashdot Mirror
Is "Marketingspeak" Killing Technology?
An anonymous reader writes "In this essay titled, inevitably, "SUNset?" an analogy is drawn between the car industry in Detroit, which failed in the 70s because the execs looked out their windows and saw nothing but American cars and so missed completely the threat from Japanese companies, and Sun Microsystems. "Sun is going to fail in this decade if it does nothing but send out surveys to customers asking them to validate marketing phrases of Sun's creation," says the author. He adds: "If you are someone who never gets tired of hearing 'proven,' 'best-of-breed,' 'cost-effective,' or 'taking the surprise out of business solutions,' then contact Sun and demand as much of their current marketing material as they can muster." But it isn't just Sun, surely. This is a failing of technology marketeers in general. Hmm, doubtless we can all come up with our own examples far equally awful as these from Sun. Who can come up with worse?"
Are these signs of a mature industry which is in need of a disruptive change in the market to shake it up?
Will never understand Technology.
I find in every place I've worked that Marketing and Technology NEVER can agree on anything, so why should Sun be any different?
is that this is the only time I want to see the word "synchronicity" being used.
Small potatoes make the steak look bigger.
So, I go into this store, and I ask about such TVs, and all the sales droids yammer on about Sony with "ColorStream!"
WTF is ColorStream? Does that mean component video inputs, i.e. YPbPr that support 720P and 1080i inputs? "No," sales droid says, "ColorStream" gives you a better picture.
It was only by requesting the manual for the set in which I was interested, that I could verify that ColorStream meant YPbPr. And even then, I had do refer to the specification summary page.
I'm sure that many lost sales happen because some sales doofus doesn't know that the product they're flogging actually meets the customer's needs perfectly!
You could've hired me.
First, run the "BS Detector" (www.streettech.com/bs) over your website to check for marketing-speak. Then deploy and action these tips:
Convert your online visitors into customers by inviting them to act. Every page should have a clear call to action to get your visitors to take the next step.
Cut to the chase. People scan web pages, they don't read them, and they read at least 30% slower off the screen than off paper. Use active verbs rather than passive ones. It saves words and is more persuasive.
Note all the bolded text in the snippet above. Is this an inside joke? Look at all the BS in those sentences!
Un-news
The market delivers what customers want.
My theory is that the problem, if there is one, is that MBAs are making too many of the technical decisions. (I.e. "Which mail server should we use? Why, Exchange, of course!")
As long as the real customer is a non-technical person, technological products will be marketed this way.
-Peter
could you imagine a Beowulf cluster of thinkers like this in Soviet Russia - where the industry changes you?
Yea, I know, I should have just shut up and modded the parent post as funny. It will be interesting to watch though, the parent smacks of a funny post that is in danger of being modded insightful.
A goal is a dream with a deadline
Talking to your existing customers works fine in a static market. You can still win even if the technology is changing but the customers remain the same. "The Innovator's Dilemma" pulls a lot of material from a large study of the disk drive industry. Incumbent players stayed in business through radical changes in technology, dying only from changes in the market.
Changes in the market happen when a "disruptive" technology comes along. "Disruptive" doesn't mean you have to rip out your assembly line: the disk drive makers succeeded at that several times. "Disruptive" means something that redefines the market.
The personal computer is a clear example. Like other disruptive technologies it was cheaper than what was already there, sold to a different set of customers, and wasn't as good (*at first*) as the incumbent technology. DEC's customers continued using VAXen to do work that wouldn't fit on the first personal computers.
Then the new customers buy in volume, mass production drives down the price, high volume pays for improvements, and before you can say "386" the disruptive technology is undermining the old technology. Companies like DEC wind up selling "proven" solutions to a shrinking customer base. Eventually they die.
"Marketing", in its highest and most useful form, involves getting into the heads of your customers and understanding what they need before they know it themselves. But the future lies with people who are not your customers.
The book listed other examples including hydraulic earth-moving equipment, but the principle was the same.
It's jargon and buzzwords and nothing more.
That is mostly correct. Decision makers do get deaf to words they hear too much. But, tech marketing is also a numbers (or versions) game. For instance, is Company A's Superpro 1700 better than Company B's Megapro 1600? The people making decisions don't know what the numbers mean. That marketing hype is in all areas of hardware from the computers to video cards and monitors (my 19" LCD has a screen that is actually 17" - but the casing is 19"). It is also in software - just look at IE and Netscape's version jockying in the past.
The previous comment is purposely vague and generalized, but all of the facts are completely true.
well, they just mean by "misson critical" that if the program fails then your WHOLE OPERATION WILL BE SCREWED, it doesn't actually have any promise of that it wouldn't happen...
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
Deciding if marketing-speak is BS based on buzzword matching/frequency counting is just sinking to their level. It's as devoid of semantics and real thought as buzzword matching to do hiring. After all, there's always a marketing/engineering disconnect, so this will likely tell you zilch about the technology.
If you want to evaluate a technology, evaluate the technology -- ignore all of the marketing. Be empirical. Actually play with the technology. If they won't let you get your hands on it, then be suspicious.
Responding to the original post, that's right if you define "maturity" for an industry to mean "the point at which a significant fraction of those involved don't understand what they're saying and just pass along marketspeak like neurons in a big brain processing signals."
I think it would depend on your company's "mission".
The truth about Led Zep should never be told on
> But it isn't just Sun, surely.
There's dumb marketing everywhere.
But Sun could have the best marketing on the planet and still not be selling their products (hardware and OS), which have been largely commoditized. Yes, they have high-end servers...but years ago, cheaper Intel/AMD boxes weren't considered "server-class" hardware like they are now.
There is a larger issue: Sun's ability to "pull an IBM" and figure out how to leverage the changing software/hardware world instead of defending their market share.
Hardware and software where people's lives are on the line are mission critical. Think Apollo missions and nuclear power plants, folks. Anything else, isn't.
That's an extremely poor definition.
"Mission critical" is a concept that very much relies on the nature of your "mission" (obviously). Not everyone has life-or-death issues hinging on our projects. Usually, it just means that you'll lose some customers, lose some sales, lose a few million dollars, lose your job, etc. However, just because no one's dying, doesn't mean that it isn't important. Obviously.
For example, I used to work for a company that supplied printing plates to a cardboard box manufacturer (the agricultural industry). Our mission was getting these plates to the customer fast enough so that they could keep their multi-million presses running 24/7.
The economics were as such: every hour the press wasn't running (waiting for plates to arrive, whatever), cost the company $55k.
Plus overtime for the press operators.
Plus not getting the boxes to their customer before their product started to wilt in the field.
Plus delaying the schedule of the truck drivers who had to haul this stuff cross country.
Plus my company getting a rep for not being able to come through in the clutch.
Essentially, one "little" mistake (or delay, same thing) ends up affecting hundreds if not thousands of people, and their livelihoods.
In my case, that's what "mission critical" meant.
What's your mission?
m-
You catch enchiladas by picking them up behind the head and holding them underwater until they don't kick anymore -VeGas
The basic problem is that marketing is charged with explaining a technology to non-technologists. Often these technologies are quite difficult to explain. For example, how do you explain an identity management system to a CFO?
Now, the knee-jerk slashdot reaction is to say that the CFO has no business making technology decisions. It is his business, however, to determine what the company is spending money on. Is this identity management system some IT toy? Or is it something that will make the company more profitable?
You need to be able to explain technology to non-technologists in order for good technologies to sell, especially when those technologies are expensive.
Buzzwords evolve when someone develops a way of expressing something that actually means something. Then others latch on to those words and dilute the strength of their meaning. Over time, people forget what the original meaning even was.
Paradigm is a real world with a real meaning. In terms of describing technology, however, it has lost all semblance of meaning because it is now used to mean anything. Once upon a time, however...
Where is the Apache marketing budget going to come from? Why does Apache need marketing? To make more "sales"? The software is available for free download! They make no money on "sales"! It seems to me all the Apache projects need is developers, specifically competent developers expert in fields related to the various projects. So those cryptic, obtuse Apache web pages are actually spot on for their purpose, which is to get more developers (who know and understand the issues already, newbies need not apply) involved in the projects.
(To get a real visceral understanding of the difference between "open source project" and "marketable product", try downloading MythTV and setting yourself up a PVR; then try buying a Tivo and plugging it in. I say this not to cast aspersions on the MythTV project -- I am a dedicated hardcore MythTV user and will probably never buy a Tivo -- but to highlight the fact that MythTV is all about TV-recording technology, while Tivo is all about recording TV. Which one needs marketing? The one that records TV, not the one that provides interesting technology.)