Ed Brill

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1. 1  Paul Bastide  | 8/13/2008 1:25:31 PM

   I've had similar thoughts and experiences.

1. 2  Bilal Jaffery http://www.LotusFoundations.com | 8/13/2008 1:34:23 PM

   Exactly, I've seen more IBM activity on twitter than other familiar brands. Ofcourse, we are not comparing ourselves to new startups on twitter. But its pretty impressive -- since twitter isn't the most reliable platform either.

   Follow Lotus Foundations on twitter - { Link }

1. 3  Brian Miller  | 8/13/2008 1:42:58 PM

   I think that you're contending with something much larger: history. IBM had a lot of bumps along the way in integrating the Lotus brand. Some would say that it's still not quite there.

   Most of your Notes/Domino customers (I'd say 90%), on the user level, don't actually know that it's ultimately an IBM product.

   More than half of my users, over the years, persist in referring to Notes as simply "Lotus", as if that's the only product that IBM produces under that brand.

   Plus, most of us in the "yellowverse" aren't really part of the "blueverse". More than half the Notes/Domino developers I've met couldn't get to "Hello World" in Java, or any other structured language outside of formula or LS. They're certainly not going to warm up to any of IBM's other software offerings.

   This isn't something that evaporates overnight.

   Recognition of these challenges in marketing will help, but I have to admit that this is a tougher road than most other brands end up having to travel. Spending money on advertising to these end-users (commercials on CNBC, perhaps?) to not only state why the product is good, but to clarify which product is what, would be a great start.

1. 4  Ruth Kaufman http://twitter.com/mapkid | 8/13/2008 1:47:48 PM

   Ed,

   I have been asking similar questions in an effort to understand how new media such as Twitter impact (or simply expose) the identity of an enterprise. I think the situation with IBM on Twitter (and many others as well) really reminds us that enterprises (all organizations, for that matter) are not much more than collections of people with access to some infrastructure that helps them work together and tend to certain types of affairs. While some companies are engaging with their customers via Twitter as their brand (e.g., JetBlue, ExxonMobil), the ones who come across as sincere and authentic are the ones who speak with individual voices (e.g., several of the new web 2.0 services and a personal favorite, SeatGuru), quirks and all -- rather than the machinated voice of the umbrella brand.

   I agree with you that the perception of IBM is in flux. As a former IBMer, I first and foremost affiliate with the people with whom I worked at IBM -- people who are like family to me. In more recent experiences, I encounter people who affiliate IBM with their own customer service and consulting engagement experiences, and these aren't always positive. So at the end of the day, it seems that affiliations have everything to do with which part of the elephant you're touching. It makes a strong case for expressing the brand through individuals -- as many as possible, perhaps in contrast to over-engineering messages and media.

1. 5  Steven Frank http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/lotus | 8/13/2008 1:51:27 PM

   Thanks, Ed, for sticking up for us! Many of us IBMers are trying to make good use of Twitter, not only to communicate among ourselves, but also to communicate with customers and potential customers. We recently created two new Twitter users tweeting Lotus-related technical content from developerWorks and our blogs and wikis ("dWLotus" and "LotusTechInfo").

   We've been getting a slow, but steady, stream of followers, too. Hopefully your readers will be interested: Follow dWlotus at { Link } and LotusTechInfo at { Link }

1. 6  Volker Weber http://vowe.net | 8/13/2008 1:55:14 PM

   IBM has become a bunch of bloggers who work in pyjamas out of their bedrooms. :-)

1. 7  adam christensen http://twitter.com/adamclyde | 8/13/2008 2:04:50 PM

   excellent points, Ed. What this all has exposed for me is the need for a better public aggregation point for the many individuals within IBM who are active in the social media landscape... how we do that, I'm not entirely sure, though I've got some ideas. First, we should have a better place for people to find IBMers who are active on certain topics. Those of you in the Lotus world have got a great system going with the Lotus planet. Something like that - but would aggregate stuff like Twitter, etc., would be great if it crossed the company. And be completely community driven... Stay tuned.

1. 8  Keith Brooks http://www.vanessabrooks.com | 8/13/2008 2:12:02 PM

   As an ex-Lotii I will probably always see it as Lotus, an IBM company.

   Although I have some great staionery from my time with IBM Israel and other job detours.

   Customers want to feel loved, you know from your job Ed, as I know from when I did my role in EMEA, that is what many of them want, to know Lotus loves them and sees them. IBM doesn't seem to do that the way Lotus used to, maybe it's a modern problem, fewer people doing more work equals less touch per customer? No idea.

   But just because IBM sees Lotus as a a line in the Software group doesn't mean those of us on the outside do. We see Lotus as Lotus.

   A Corvette is known as a Corvette, not as GM's Corvette or even Chevrolet's Corvette(except in print ads).

1. 9  Travis McCracken http://www.kryos.com | 8/13/2008 2:17:06 PM

   Lotus isn't the only IBM product that gets this distinction. Think about it, it's not IBM Portal it's Websphere Portal or Websphere Application Server or Tivoli Access Manager or Tivoli Storage Manager. It's not that people don't think of them as IBM products, it's just easier to say Lotus Notes than IBM Lotus Notes.

1. 10  Catherine Helzerman http://helzerman.com | 8/13/2008 2:21:36 PM

   The great thing about IBM culture is that it allows each IBMer to have a unique voice. As a result a Twitter feed from an IBM employee may be drastically different from another's with its own distinct feel. You might enthusiastically follow one IBMer and stay as far away from someone else's feed as you can. The fact that I was not only never fired, but never even asked to "tone down" any of the content of of my sites (blog, Twitter, etc.) is probably the best endorsement I can give of IBM's policy of enabling employees to express themselves. To me, that's IBM's strength in this area.

1. 11  Adam Gartenberg http://www.adamgartenberg | 8/13/2008 3:02:20 PM

   @7 - For a while, @bluechirper { Link } was collecting IBMers on Twitter, but I know there are far more than the 100 or so being followed there. A similar story for the IBM Twitterati Facebook group: { Link }

   Maybe we could get an official ibm.com page (similar to the one listing all the various IBM bloggers?)

1. 12  Kirk Kuykendall  | 8/13/2008 3:09:23 PM

   Sorry Ed... I still affiliate myself with Iris Associates... just too old I guess. I'll come around one of these days.

1. 13  Craig Wiseman http://www.Wiseman.La/cpw | 8/13/2008 3:32:14 PM

   You act like sucking at Twitter is a BAD thing.

   8-)

1. 14  Ben Langhinrichs http://www.GeniiSoft.com/showcase.nsf/GeniiBlog | 8/13/2008 3:46:43 PM

   Ed,

   It hardly seems surprising that many of us tend to identify with Lotus rather than IBM. As has been discussed many times here, IBM works with many software platforms, including ones such as Exchange that directly compete with the Lotus products. Given that circumstance, advocates of Notes/Domino are going to identify more with Lotus than with a parent brand that frequently advertises and speaks against Notes/Domino and in favor or Outlook/Exchange/Sharepoint, etc.

   - Ben

1. 15  Richard Schwartz http://www.rhs.com/poweroftheschwartz | 8/13/2008 4:03:33 PM

   Lotus is focused on what I am focused on. IBM is not.

   For anyone other than corporate CIOs or multi-brand IBM partners, this is not perception. It is truth. For anyone else, IBM's focus is just too wide to identify with -- and IBM's advertising strategy reinforces this.

1. 16  Ray Bilyk http://www.thepridelands.com | 8/13/2008 8:27:05 PM

   I'm glad you talked about this Ed! Now I have some new people to follow on Twitter... about things I'm interested in...

   Here's one for you... My daughter knows I used to teach IBM Lotus Notes classes, so she now equates the IBM logo and the Lotus logo with what Daddy did.

   I guess she's 'the marketing blend' that would make everyone happy...

1. 17  Erik Brooks  | 8/13/2008 9:54:14 PM

   As an SMB, I tend to look at it as @8 and @15 do: "Lotus, [now] an IBM company".

   To me, IBM = Blade servers. It's all I see ads for. And Lotus is something completely different. If IBM "gets Notes" as seems to be the direction that things are heading post-Workplace-era, we will hopefully see better coupling between the two.

   Part of it is the branding: sometimes it's "Lotus Notes", sometimes it's "IBM Lotus Domino Utility Server Express Collaboration Edition version 8.0 Mark III GTR V-Spec".

   The former identifies more with SMB. The latter sounds like mega-enterprise overengineering. Fortunately I can swim in the IBM ultra-tech, but then again I've been working with computers for 26 of the 32 years I've been alive.

   "What would you affiliate with?"

   I guess I affiliate with "Lotus" because it touches vast numbers of end users. No other IBM software products do: Websphere, DB2, Tivoli, Rational... and neither does the hardware, except for maybe POS machines in Starbucks. And that's a stretch.

   IBM - through Lotus - has a great opportunity to touch the "my grandpa" and "my mom" users of all of us. I tend to affiliate with that more so than the enterprise big iron products.

1. 18  Ed Brill http://www.edbrill.com | 8/13/2008 10:07:53 PM

   @17 interesting observation... I was with an IBMer yesterday who pointed out that we have *two* product lines that touch end-users. I couldn't think of anything other than Lotus...the answer was point-of-sale. Very different world.

1. 19  Bilal Jaffery http://twitter.com/bilaljaffery | 8/13/2008 11:51:17 PM

   I guess with time, the perception will be more neutral. It is changing but it does take time. IBM brand has a pull in the market as well along with Lotus Brand.

1. 20  Graham Dodge  | 8/14/2008 1:26:45 AM

   @12 If you remember Iris then do you remember "3 for 3". It was the first product that came out of Iris (even before Notes 1.0). It helped you run Lotus 1-2-3 R3 on Windows 3.

   <chomps gums and mutters to self>

   "There's no-one left from the old days..."

1. 21  Erik Brooks  | 8/14/2008 3:34:06 AM

   @18 - Yeah, the POS software isn't even IBM's, and that's the part that POS users seem to relate to and remember.

   Wow, what a horrible acronym. I'm sure we've all dealt with POS software and POS users in one way or another. :-)

1. 22  Alan Bell http://webbookblog.com | 8/14/2008 3:35:28 AM

   err, IBM does TV adverts with big blue borders, corporate settings and big fat servers and blade servers. Stuff that sits in locked rooms that a handfull of techies see occasionally and a couple of senior managers signed a bit of paper to pay for.

1. 23  Erik Brooks  | 8/14/2008 3:35:30 AM

   <Warning: big "history of IBM as I see it" approaching.>

   @19 - I agree. If you look at IBM's history, they're great BIG industry leaders. They've done big hardware for eons, and big "mega corp" software for the past few decades. The only way their brand touched Joe Everyuser was through the original IBM PC, IBM PC DOS, and later the IBM PC-compatible.

   During the time when all three of those later products were churning in the market computers were still boxes of voodoo magic tweaked by wizened recluses and introverted ultra-geeks. Oh, and me, because I was obviously neither ;-)

   And computers were primarily used for business. So IBM is seen as "International Business Machines". They make news with Deep Blue and the like. And they wear suits and ties.

   Along comes Microsoft. They start touching the end-user immediately. Windows - 'nuff said. They open things up to Joe Everyuser.

   Meanwhile, IBM sells off the BIOS rights, and just as average people start buying PCs for home use they're told to buy "IBM-compatible", further cementing IBM as a techie-hardware brand and distancing themselves from it.

   But computers were still primarily used for business, and you had a major brand pop up in that space:

   Lotus.

   Oh, and Word Perfect. :-)

   Joe Everyuser LOVED those products. So MS does what they do well, and they copied and they marketed and they sold and they obliterated the two from Joe Everyuser's desktop.

   And IBM started selling Thinkpads (which everybody loved) and Desktop PCs (which nobody really bought). More hardware.

   Fortunately Lotus Notes had penetrated into Big Business so much that the Lotus brand had survived the death of 1-2-3 and AmiPro. Being in that space, IBM perked to attention and bought Lotus.

   So what do they *do* with it? I think IBM found Lotus a tough pill to swallow. They hadn't had to deal with end-user-touching software since the DOS days.

   So they focused on the big business - they tried to categorize it, redefine it, even tried to re-engineer it, and it just didn't work. It took them awhile to simply "get" it. It just wasn't like anything they've ever dealt with before.

   Then they woke up. They started re-investing in it, they put a User Experience Team on it, and they added more to the brand with Symphony et all.

   In the meantime, Ed and crew kept it chugging and sales growing, but (I'm going to guess) mainly in Big Business.

   But by this point Joe Everyuser has changed. Joe Everyuser now touches a PC at age 5, goes to school with a cell phone at age 8, and is browsing the web at age 10. And they'll have software opinions that matter at an executive level by age 30. And they know Microsoft.

   Joe Everyuser doesn't know IBM as anything other than Blades, tie-wearing guys, and the occasional news story about things like IBM helping Mars research the Chocolate Genome. And DNA research is as geeky and as sub-cultured as computers were 20 years ago.

   The only way that perception will change will be if IBM gets into the mobile appliance space (e.g. iPod) or... DUN DUN DUN... through end-user-facing software. Lotus.

   So IBM seems to be "getting it" with Lotus now, at least from the production side of things. But now IBM Marketing has their work cut out for them. They've got products to re-introduce to people who haven't heard the name "Lotus" in decades, and also to introduce to people who haven't heard of Lotus at ALL. It's an audience that they've never really had to sell to before.

   And they need to present it in a way where IBM's stereotypical image doesn't get in the way. Tricky stuff.

1. 24  Pete Spoors  | 8/14/2008 4:08:47 AM

   I'm new here, so spent some time browsing old posts. To my mind this post is amazingly close to this:

   { Link }

   Although it is just a few of months old, this new post is being written as if the problem of IBM not seeing value in getting the consumer familiar with Notes, is something new. I spent an hour reading the above post in the last couple of days and now it looks like I have to do it again, but replacing the "consumer" angle with a "twitter" angle. I come away from it all feeling "IBM just doesn't seem to get it" Still!

   Pete

1. 25  Andy Piper http://andypiper.co.uk/ | 8/14/2008 4:26:29 AM

   Great analysis Ed - I'm equally as baffled about this analysis of the way we engage, and my comment on the original post kind of grew into something that stands on its own, so I posted it: { Link }

1. 26  Ben Poole http://benpoole.com | 8/14/2008 5:05:27 AM

   @24 It took you an hour to read that post? Crikey.

1. 27  Karl Roche http://ragtag.wordpress.com | 8/14/2008 5:54:33 AM

   What I found entertaining about Rumford's article was that he says brands suck because there is nothing going on and was also blasting Dell, "Someone help me find a human." He can't have it both ways.

   It is about being more human so why the "brands sucks" post? Attention probably.

   When we go out into the wide world do we all go out as IBM the brand. No we go out as Adam said as individuals. You don't phone up IBM and say, "Can I talk to IBM?"

1. 28  Penny Allen  | 8/14/2008 6:48:02 AM

   In many minds, Lotus and IBM are two very different things. IBM = big, huge company, very diversified dealing with hardware, software, etc and aimed at dealing with companies. Lotus = small, friendly software makers that concentrate on one thing and deal with people.

   Perception - IBM is a corporation. As an individual, you have no say in how they do things and no influence in making changes.

   Perception - Lotus is a bunch of friendly people producing a great product and keeping in touch with the wants and needs of their customers. It is a brand, an idea, a philosophy, a state of being. Lotus is approachable. They listen, care and actually implement suggestions offered by the users of their products. (As evidenced by Lotusphere.)

   Perceptions are very difficult to change. It takes a long time and a lot of effort. It's easier to identify with Lotus because there are names and faces that you can associate with it. It's much harder to see the face of IBM.

1. 29  Ed Brill http://www.edbrill.com | 8/14/2008 6:59:24 AM

   @24 I don't think my angle today was that the twitter user (or a consumer) *needs* to grok IBM. I want to know what IBM means to the consumer presently as a way to influence change in the future. And I'm "allowed" to re-blog on a topic -- my interests and focus change depending on projects and conversations and natural ebb and flow.

1. 30  Dvir Reznik http://dvirreznik.blogspot.com | 8/14/2008 12:26:51 PM

   Ed,

   Totally support your post on the matter, and Adam's comment in the list itself. IBM is a very diverse organization, with 'gazillion' opinions and individual views. There isn't @IBM because there's no need for it, and even if there was @IBM, it would not be solution/product/service specific. And creating @IBM just for being on a list, well, that's lame.

   The IBM community @twitter is very large (just see @edbrill or @dvirreznik network), and very specific, so anyone can follow his/her topic of interest.

1. 31  David Bell  | 8/14/2008 12:36:13 PM

   Lotus is the SWG brand that is focused on the "front-end of computing" software of IBM. Not surprising that end users would more readily identify with Lotus than IBM in my mind as Lotus' purpose in life is to hide from them the middleware and infrastructure layers.

1. 32  Bilal Jaffery http://twitter.com/bilaljaffery | 8/14/2008 11:40:23 PM

   100% agree on Dvir's comments. However, I do think that we have @IBM for corporate identity reasons.

   I follow edbrill and dvirreznik on twitter and there is quite an IBM community folks!

   @bilaljaffery

1. 33  David Hablewitz  | 8/15/2008 10:34:09 PM

   My CFO and CEO never even heard of twitter. It had no impact on their decision to move us to Outlook. What is written here is irrelevent and inconsequential in impacting those who make decisions. Sorry Ed, but they don't even read your blog.

1. 34  rob  | 8/18/2008 1:27:33 AM

   Technically - a third avenue to end users...

   Tivoli CDP for Files --> Selling in retail at about $40.

   (I'm not sure how many copies have sold - but still - it is technically another avenue)

   { Link }