Dassault Systemes Ads on CNN.com
As some of you may know, I worked in the Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) world for a number for years. If you want to know more about PLM, checkout these videos or keep an eye on Cris Kelley’s blog. Our biggest competitor was a French company, Dassault Systemes which was allied with IBM. In my opinion they trailed us in almost all avenues - innovation, vision, strategic understanding of how work is done, usability, etc. However, they always seems to kick our butts in marketing and communicating the value of PLM.
We always struggled both externally and internally getting the point across to developers and support folks why PLM matters to business. DS always finds ways to express that value, or at least does it better than we ever did. Even within our products we found it difficult to convince users why features mattered to them, partly because these are abstract ideas to express and partly because we tended to choose technical answers to nearly every question. DS seems to take another tack, they choose practical or conversational answers, something Arena seems to do as well, almost to the point of throwing out features. That was something we could never do.
Along those lines DS has extended beyond the borders of trade journals and B2B routes, and has been advertising on sites like cnn.com of late. The latest ad, appearing as of 7am central time on cnn.com, is really well done and can connect with people - not just users or managers or executive - but people. Hats off to them. Many time it’s not about the features you pack in, or the platform or the license - it’s about value and how you communicate that value to the people who make the final purchasing decisions. Ads like this can help do that, hopefully others in the space will follow suit. One great way would be to invest in the visual mapping done by a company like xplane, I had been working on such a plan for a few years while I was there, but never got the traction to complete it.
Agree completely that communicating the value of PLM to everyone that could have say in the product definition and creation process is the key thing holding back PLM from gaining the same mind share as ERP and CRM.
I think this is going to become even more important as the users get more involved in defining and even delivering the products they use.
I guess I wonder though if traditional ads are the best way to communicate that value. With all the new media opportunities (including blogs like this), aren’t there better ways to get that message out than a 30 second spot on CNN?
Chris,
Thanks for stopping by. I completely agree with your last point. EMbracing these new marketing streams is vital, however, there’s something ‘grown-up’ about the CNN ads. PLM has been a second-class citizen, or at least an unknown cousin to, ERP systems and any graduation from that status will depend on more bottom-up understanding of product value. Or at a minimum more name recognition by mid-tier and executive consumers.
When you look at a small company manufacturing fiberglass boats or plastics, looking to step into the bigger leagues of managed data seeing these ads or hearing the name will have an impact. Whether they are reading blogs or non-conventional media is another thing. It’s growing, but it will take time.