Slashdot Mirror
Unisys Targets Just 20 Execs With Ad Campaign
Carl Bialik from WSJ writes, "Security company Unisys is taking niche marketing to a new level, aiming ads at about 20 top executives, delivering custom-covered issues of their Fortune magazine subscriptions, and even placing billboards where these individuals will be likely to see them, the Wall Street Journal reports." From the article: "If an executive flips over the mock Fortune cover, he or she will discover a letter — also individually tailored — from a senior Unisys manager describing challenges in the target's specific industry. The Fortune 'cover wraps' also offer personalized Web addresses, where the executives can find mock news videos that mention their names and tell how they achieved business success. To reinforce the message, Unisys is placing billboards and outdoor signs — albeit without information-chief portraits — close to the executives' offices. Some ads will even appear on video screens in the elevators of their office buildings."
I'm torn as to whether this is cool or creepy. On the one hand, it sounds pretty cool because it's so individualized and personalized. On the other hand, if I was the target of this kind of marketing ploy, I might feel like I had a well-connected, well-financed stalker.
People talk about how advertising is becoming more invasive. It's everywhere. But what about when it knows who you are and maybe knows a little too much about you? Imagine a urinal that got your ID from your phone via bluetooth, analyzed your urine, and then said: "Hi, Bob. Noticed a high level of sodium in your urine. Ask your doctor about Gronkaflix XP. Better yet, I see that Doctor Finkelberg is your doctor of record. Say 'yes' if you'd like me to e-mail him the results of my analysis of your urine, Bob."
I don't know. While this Unisys campaign will impress some people as cool, it just makes me feel we're one step closer to nosy urinals.
- Greg
Start a happiness pandemic
Oh wow...whats next? Toilet paper with ads for microsoft vista ?(that would be cool)
or possibly a toilet that tells you, when flushed, that crest (tm) toothpaste whitens your teeth?
If this was just for top buisness executives, why'd it get viewed by millions in this slash-vertisment? Obviously Unisys is advertising to all of us, albiet through a new and novel means.
... sales execs who've actually done some homework on the dozen or so people in the entire universe likely to meaningfully purchase what they have to sell will be taking these guys on golf outings. I mean, how creepy is that? They'll probably even shake hands!
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
If your target market is 20 individuals whom you all know by name, isn't it standard to do something like have your salesmen get in touch with them for a face-to-face discussion?
Admittedly, the personal letters are a step in this direction, but the main effect of advertising--on anyone--is simply to remind them the product exists. Convincing them to buy it falls more heavily on other forms of sales and marketing. Then again, sometimes experimental marketing produces unexpected results.
In Repressive Burma, it's not just your connection that dies. slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=314547&cid=20819199
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
Seems the ideas in the Minority Report (eg billboards targeted just to the person the advert is aimed at) are starting to have a basis in reality instead of just science fiction.
Video Game cheats, hints a
Since when is Unisys a security company? I know them as a computer manufacturer. Did I miss something, or are they trying to re-market themselves?
2) Going to their website to look into #1, I not only see that is that their current persona, but also that the top headline in their News section is "FBI contracts with Unisys for combined DNA index system." So the guy worrying about being individually marketed to by his urinal may not be so far off.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
I think this would annoy or creep out the average person, whereas top level execs would probably love to hear how great they are from billboards or the mock videos.
In a world of acronyms, the words are the real victims.
User Guide to Unisys Mosquito Killer
1. Catch the mosquito and pluck its wings so it does not fly away.
2. Lay the mosquito on its back and tickle its feet.
3. When the moquito opens its mouth to laugh, dump the Unisys Mosquito Killer into its mouth.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
... that's because Unisys is full of them.
I left Unisys recently and it was the wisest thing I ever did. Crazy shit like this and massive amounts of management yes men compared to technically skilled staff (hell, they even outsourced INTERNAL support to Bangalore..), it's not a company I would trust to secure my shoelaces, let alone my systems.
I'll dig ditches before I work for them again.
When HP was spying on journalists, it was just a trial run for their new partnership with Unisys for spying on victims^H^H^H^H^H^H^H prospective customers.
Indeed, Unisys IS spying on these executives through a company named PHD (which suspiciously contains HP in its name)
"To guarantee the executives in question would see the billboards erected near their offices, field teams from PHD tried to figure out how they might commute to work. In some cases, such as around Citigroup's building on Lexington Avenue in New York, PHD staffers even scoped out local coffee shops and eateries to see where an executive might grab a sandwich, Mr. Von Kennel says."
I hope they didn't spend a lot of money stalking/targeting the CEO of HP. Might be a short campaign.
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
Good.
Hopefully theese are the same executives that blindly give the ok to their marketing departments to harass me in every way possible trying to get me to buy crap I don't need or want.
Wanna fight ? Bend over, stick your head up your ass, and fight for air.
If you're in radio earshot of the capital beltway, you can always tell when some congressional committee or federal procurement process is closing in on a big contract decision. The local AM radio stations (and NPR sponsorship slots) will fill up with advertisements that can only be meant to influence about half a dozen people.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Wasn't this first?: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0853096/
-Styopa
it seems there's three sorts of people left at Unisys.
1 - People hoping that the company will turn around, and hoping to avoid redundancy
2 - People who are being made redundant
3 - People handing in their notice.
I left band 1 and joined band 3 last Friday. Four colleagues in my team of 9 have been made redundant. The whole team are all chargeable until at least next July on client projects, and are on site. It's not like Bangalore can suddenly go on-site... Another colleague will be handing in his notice as soon as clearance comes through. That leaves 3 people to do the work that clients have paid 9 people to do. Offshoring won't work.
To be pissing away money on this sort of advertising when the company is collapsing is disgusting. The phrase "swansong" comes into mind, as does "desperation".
What's left of the company is going to be struggling to meet existing contractual commitments, and sales are going ballistic to bring in business for Q4. I don't believe they can deliver what they're trying to win.
Where does advertising cross the line between informing someone of a product, and criminal harrassment?
The measures outlined in the header seem a little extreme. Are they so sure that some of these execs simply won't cancel their magazine subscription - I mean after all if a magazine that is prepared to do this for a buck, how unbiased can the content be? Why can't this corporation contact the execs by the normal methods of telephone, sales reps, letters, etc. Why do they feel they have to bombard or "brainwash" their "targets". Are they thatinsecure about their information or product? Or are these executives so lacking of any critical thought that they will mindlessly concede before this abuse?
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
If it were Forbes Magazine, these execs would also be getting personalized :CueCats.
Slightly disreputable, albeit gregarious
It worked with me, I love my new littoral combat ship.
imagine getting back to your seat and having ads in your inbox for Purell Hand Sanitizer (Bob, you didn't wash your hands), Dockers Stain Resistant pants due to the occasional splatter-back, and, of course, Whizzinators.
It worked with me, I love my new littoral combat ship. ;)
Hey, I almost got that! But since I like faster stuff, I opted for a Joint Strike Fighter. But stupid me (early adopter!), I got the one from Boeing instead of the final one from Lockheed. It's like owning a flying Betamax. Oh well, it still has Firewire, and it runs Linux if you don't care about the display drivers or compatibility with cheaper imported air-to-air missle hardware.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
When I think of UniSys I think of the submarine patent on gifs, and the "burn all gifs" campaign.
I suppose that there are worse companies to do business with...I could even hazard a guess at the names of a few. Still, UniSys isn't a company that *I* would choose to do business with unless there were not a decent alternative.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Haven't heard much from Scotty lately....
They're a vanilla IT corporation. Is having the first word of the submission be inaccurate a first?
What you do with a computer does not constitute the whole of computing.
It sounds like something out of that film with Michael Douglas, "The Game".
Whoever did this ad campaign should be fired, dumped in the gutter, and blackballed from the industry. Why? Because a simple sales call would have accomplished the same thing for a tenth of a percent the cost.
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
In 2004 Reason Magazine put the name and a satellite photo of the house of 40.000 of their subscribers.
http://www.reason.com/putting/
It's a nice way of saying "We know where You live, and where Your kids go to school"
Wow. It sounds like these executives are really being assaulted by this advertising campaign. And I thought popup windows were annoying. Thank God I'm not the executive of a billion dollar corporation!
Wouldn't have been cheaper to just bribe the execs to buy Unisys stuff? ;-)
On second though, doesn't Unisys bribe them already by inflating their ego?
Slashdot posts story that is only interesting to 20 people.
Moving right along...
Ads, thats the ONLY 5 people LEFT on the planet that DO NOT HATE UNISYS, and have not had a crappy experience using their HARDWARE and heinously restrictive software and support.
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
Homer: Good evening, Madam. You have been selected by the good people of
Slash-Co to reap the benefits of their new Nev-R-Dull knife edge.
Here, shake hands with the Slash-Co! [hands her the knife]
Woman: [grabs the wrong end] Aaaaaagh!
Homer: [to himself] Handle first, handle first...
UniSYS used to have a magazine add that said "If you are late to the party you had better bring something good" or words of a similar nature, as a cartoon man came down a winding staircase at a mansion, carrying their PC. So they were late coming out with a PC, and they are using stale marketing ideas now. Seems consistent to me!
I thought they would have lost their raison d'etre by now after their GIF patent-thingy expired.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, write technology blogs.
So they're a security company? Are they, perchance, offering information security? Something along the lines of: "If you worked with us, your personally-identifying information wouldn't be out there for every Tom, Dick and Adman to find and exploit"???
It's obvious to them, and anyone, that it's targeted to them, so the fact it's on a magazine, should carry no more weight than a simple office memo, but far more expensive and time consuming to produce. Are their executives really that stupid and impressionable from a print ad??
Stupidist idea I've seen in awhile. Hard to believe Unisys is still dominating the computing industry, despite these brilliant ideas. Oh, wait...
Love many, trust a few, do harm to none.
They're not horrible; same thing every consulting firm deals with which is attracting and retaining talent. Some divisions are better than others.
You better watch out, there may be dogs about . .
Around 20 high-ranking executives at corporations such as Subaru of America, DHL, Citigroup and Northwest Airlines will get a surprise when Fortune magazine arrives on their desks this week. Each will find his or her own face gracing the cover.
Actually, I doubt they will be surprised since it has already been reported in the Wall Street Journal.
www.timcoleman.com is a total waste of your time. Never go there.
Back in the early 70s I worked for Burroughs supporting their largest mainframes. Burroughs later merged with Sperry to form Unisys. We had an account manager who needed to get the attention of the executives in charge of all the regional IBM systems. In those days the safe choice was IBM, but the other smaller vendors each had much better products. They simply couldn't exist in that environment If they weren't superior to IBM. it was well known that "no one got fired for choosing IBM." So, one day he sent each of these executives a baby pacifier to remind them of the security blanket they were hiding behind.
to the market share myth.
sneaker companies were taking out rival billboards in Akron Ohio where I used to live when Lebron James was still in high school. The target audience was one, Lebron James. The message was basically please sign with us.
They are targeting more than twenty people. They are targeting twenty people and all the people who are going to pester them because SOME of the targeted advertising will be seen by their superiors. The fact that a company has one of the twenty targets should be enough to generate a buzz that requires attention to be paid to the ads.
It's a clever way of forcing you to pay attention to the sales pitch. I've had salesmen decide the best way to get through to me was to go over my head to my boss. It's too heavy handed and has never worked. This may be a better way of going over someone's head.
I struggled for days and days and all I got was this lousy sig.
Unisys (no camel case) didn't exist in 83.
Unisys was created via the merger (or rather, hostile takeover) of Sperry and Burroughs in 1986.
Sperry originally had the patent - and Unisys discovered it and its potential implications later, which is why they appeared to wait so long.
I'd imagine someone knew about the patent when they merged, but it was probably considered unimportant at the time, with both Sperry and Burroughs being mainframe companies. Since CompuServe didn't come up with GIF until the following year there probably wasn't any use of the algorithm outside of the now absorbed Sperry at that time.
Advanced users are users too!
Do you really expect anyone on Slashdot to know what 'littoral' means?
Perhaps by reducing the number of people who see its name in print, Unisys will lower the chances of someone being reminded of "LZW" and "patent troll." This is a good thing for their corporate image. Plus, how many of today's CIOs would remember the GIF fiasco from a decade ago?
Nope. I expect people who listen to WTOP to have heard the commercials for Lockheed's littoral combat ship and thus cackle madly at my witty joke. Or maybe not.
Or the Secure Border Initiative. etc. etc.
Technically you may be (probably are) correct.
HOWEVER, expecting programmers to follow patents is totally disingenuous. Perhaps some more abusive word that submarine should be substituted, as your argument that submarine is the incorrect term is probably valid.
P.S.: For programmers to follow patents would be a very bad idea. If you claim to understand what a patent means you automatically become liable to triple damages. (I think I have that right. It may be worse.) Only an attorney approved of by the patent court is supposed to be allowed to express an opinion as to what a patent means. (Yet another reason why the patent system and all laws authorizing or implementing it should be revoked and reconstructed ab initio with a blank slate, and no ability to patent anything that was known before the present date.)
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Whoa, I read that thing, and your post, and shuddered.
If I could ask my newspaper to skip the sports section and plop in a tech section instead, that'd be great; but if tomorrow's paper said 'Hi Klay!', or even worse if there were me-targeted ads outside my front window, I'd be "creeped out" (?) for sure!
Anyway it probably would not work; whenever I detect I'm being subjected to an ad I do my best to stay the hell away from that product, or do my own market research.
"Good news, everyone!"
"Congress to pass a law making ANNOYING ads mandatory." There, I fixed it for you.
:( If they are then at least you'll have an opinion, or whatever the thought is. It stinks.
But yeah, I do the same. It doesn't seem to be working. In my country, ads actually aiming to be "loathsome"!
I just wish my HD recorder could skip ads automatically, but apparently that's not allowed, or supported, here.
"Good news, everyone!"
Are Fortune's subscriber lists open to any buyer?
How did Unisys know these people even had Fortune subscriptions?
Sure, it starts small. But I don't like where it might be going...