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Sharing Status Updates Reduces Duplication Of Work
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HOLY CRAP! A full page Lotus AD in Wired Magazine
Alan Lepofsky    

As winter quickly approaches here in Toronto, the real story may be that hell has actually frozen over.  

As I was sipping my morning hot chocolate and flipping through the latest edition of my favourite magazine Wired, I almost spit out my multi-grain bagel as I stumbled upon this...
Image:HOLY CRAP!  A full page Lotus AD in Wired Magazine

That's right.  A full page advertisement for Lotus in a major magazine.   WELL DONE!!!

If you read my post about the Lotus Knows airline videos, you'll may recall I did find it to be affective.

"Honestly it does not hook me into wanting to find out more.  If you don't already know what Lotus is, this does not tell you, and it does not make me curious enough to go find out."
"I think the failing is that it does not say what is in it for me, which is one of the main things an ad should do. "


So how does this new ad stack up?
It very clearly says (not shows unfortunatley, but says) "delivers collaboration and social networking capabilities to a web-based platform".  Excellent.  That gives me a general idea about what the ad is for, and I keep on reading.

However, I still think it falls short on hooking me in by providing any personal connection.  It does say "So you and everyone else on your team can use the cloud as an excellent place to get things done".  But get what done?  How is it better than what we do today?  What problem does it solve?  What benefit does it provide?  Why do I need one?  etc.

Compare the Lotus ad to two others found later in the magazine for Microsoft and Citrix.   Both of these make an immediate personal connection via imagery.
The first is for Excel (Office) and tells me that if I know how to budget properly, I can afford a night out.   I like it.  
The second for Citrix GoToAssist says "lets you view and control your customer's computer's online, so you can use your expertise to instantly fix the problem".  Bam!  They hit you with a very clear benefit statement vs the fluffy "get things done".


Image:HOLY CRAP!  A full page Lotus AD in Wired MagazineImage:HOLY CRAP!  A full page Lotus AD in Wired Magazine

I'm not trying to be overly critical.  I think it is GREAT that Lotus is advertising.  However, in this one man's opinion, the ADs are not as affective as they could be, and I hope my reviews of them can help shape future improvements.

Thoughts?



---------------------
http://www.alanlepofsky.net/alepofsky/alanblog.nsf/dx/holy-crap-a-full-page-lotus-ad-in-wired-magazine
Oct 21, 2009
7 hits



Recent Blog Posts
97


I’m Disappointed In Snow Leopard
Wed, Mar 17th 2010 12:10p   Alan Lepofsky
I know I'm late to the game, but I finally upgraded from Mac OSX 10.5.8 to 10.6.2 last night. One of the new features I was the most excited about was "Sort your Spotlight search results by name, date modified, date created, size, kind, or label." Sadly, it does not work as I (nor many other upset people posting to various forums) expected. As you can see below, the only sort options in list view are name, date, and kind. Size is greyed out. Size is an extremely useful search parameter, [read] Keywords: apple applications mac
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I’m Disappointed In Snow Leopard
Wed, Mar 17th 2010 11:30a   Alan Lepofsky
I know I'm late to the game, but I finally upgraded from Mac OSX 10.5.8 to 10.6.2 last night. One of the new features I was the most excited about was "Sort your Spotlight search results by name, date modified, date created, size, kind, or label." Sadly, it does not work as I (nor many other upset people posting to various forums) expected. As you can see below, the only sort options in list view are name, date, and kind. Size is greyed out. Size is an extremely useful search parameter, w [read] Keywords: apple applications mac
349


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Fri, Mar 12th 2010 4:00a   Alan Lepofsky
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24


Sharing Status Updates Reduces Duplication Of Work
Tue, Mar 9th 2010 5:40p   Alan Lepofsky
Last week I wrote Using Social Software To Accelerate Business Performance, as the introductory post to a new series where I'm going to discuss how "Enterprise 2.0" tools provide benefits in the business world. I'm going to begin the series today by discussing the internal use of microblogging, which enables people to openly share short messages with their coworkers. For those of you unfamiliar with microblogging, the most widely known example is Twitter, where you enter "140-character or [read] Keywords: email enterprise instant messaging office social software twitter
270


How Sharing Status Updates Can Help Your Colleagues
Mon, Mar 8th 2010 9:10p   Alan Lepofsky
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170


Using Social Software To Accelerate Business Performance
Fri, Mar 5th 2010 2:50p   Alan Lepofsky
One of the main themes of the "2.0" world is the shift to more open sharing of information. In our personal lives, that shift is fairly well understood and accepted. Pictures are shared on Flickr. Videos are shared on Youtube. We talk about our lives on our blogs. We say what we're doing on Twitter. We even tell people exactly where we are on Foursquare. Our lives are an open book, for friends, family, and sometimes even strangers to see. In the business world, many companies are just [read] Keywords: email enterprise social software twitter
34


Socialtext Launches 4.0
Wed, Mar 3rd 2010 3:40p   Alan Lepofsky
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57


How General Motors Uses Socialtext for Its RD
Mon, Mar 1st 2010 5:43p   Alan Lepofsky
At Lotusphere 2010, General Motors spoke about their use of Lotus technologies to enable internal collaboration. Some of you sitting around me heard me politely say "and Socialtext." What I found funny about the GM talk was how they emphasized the Volt, which is the result of the work of GM's Research division, which uses Socialtext. Of course big companies often use more than one vendor, so no big deal. "To address the difficulty in getting researchers to interact with each other at the s [read] Keywords: collaboration lotus lotusphere community office
280


Very cool new 3D History Browser Plugin For Notes
Mon, Mar 1st 2010 10:20a   Alan Lepofsky
As reported on Niklas Heidloff's blog, Hiroyuki Okamoto has created a very cool 3D history browser for Lotus Notes. It currently only works on Windows, so even though it emulates the carousel feature made popular by Apple, it does not yet work on Macs. I don't know anything about Eclipse plugin development, but I thought the point to moving to Eclipse was for cross platform support? What is it about certain plugins that cause them to not work across OSes? Also, is there anyway for the [read] Keywords: lotus notes apple development eclipse openntf
262


Zen - This is the way all software should work
Mon, Feb 22nd 2010 11:50p   Alan Lepofsky
I don't promote products often, but after 5 minutes looking at Zen, I wanted to tell people about it. Zen is an online tool for project management that follows the Personal Kanban methodology. I'm just starting to learn about this, but I can see how it could really help me manage my tasks. Zen's UI is clean and gorgeous. It is so easy to use that there is no need for training or help. I found the selecting/highlighting of objects, collapse and expanding options, drag and drop, to al [read] Keywords:




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