Too bad they didn't use the money spent on that gigantic and befuddled USA Today ad, that was a failed attempt to clear up the "To Java or Not To Java" debate, to publicize their new product instead.
With an 80 million US annual advertising budget, the money spent on the "Corel + Java" ads was just a drop in the bucket.
The failure was not the ads, but the presentation of the Java strategy by management. There was so much information being pumped out by journalists that 'Corel had dropped Java', that it was probably neccesary to have the ads to show that Corel's commitment to Java still exists.
There was an internal memo distrubted at Corel saying that the new technology was to complex for journalists to understand and that 'loose lips can sink ships'. This proved to be right. After the journalists had a field day trying to describe "Remagen" (along with all the WW II references) and their best attempt on how Office for Java and CorelCentral were being incorporated into "Alta", Corel finally decided to clearly state the strategy by taking out newspaper ads and posting a whitepaper on their website.
The typical consumer does not care whether the company is exploring some exotic programing language that may or may not pay off two years from now. He wants to know: what can you offer me today that will help make my life easier and maybe, with luck, free up a little time on the weekends.
Those ads were aimed at the enterprise, IT types, and not the typical consumer. The typical Corel consumer will continue buying WordPerfect Suite 8 for 120 bucks or so.
The so called 'exotic programming language', called Java, now has over 450,000 developers and programmers working on new technologies each and every day. Any corporation that has any type of software development is going to be left in the dust if they don't at least take a serious look at Java and devote some resources to Java.
Corel's spening on ads that go in a completely different and irrelevant direction are just another sign that this management is way out of touch and does not know how to develop a product.
What proof do you have that they lack product development skills ?
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