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Technology Stocks : IFMX - Investment Discussion -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: harryl1 who wrote (10111)	3/31/1998 12:24:00 PM
From: @jim	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 14631

RE: Harry & Chaz...Tagline Comments. A vote might make those who participate, feel good. But it won't change the fact that this tag line will never be a "historically" innovative or inspiring piece of positioning work. In a prior post we listed many of the great taglines. The line "The Database With the Future Built In." certainly has some positive elements to it. It implies positive, futuristic things in a non-specific way (leaving the door open to imagination and interpretation), but technically from a wordsmithing standpoint I think it could be done better. For one thing, it's a passive statement. And it doesn't include the customer. Also, I'm not crazy about using the word database in it because it limits the company's future vision to one of niche player. We want the tagline to allude to a vision of greatness as well as differentiation from competitors. If the gamefield is database that's one thing, but we have several majors (Oracle, MicroSoft, IBM) who are looking way beyond this gamefield. They have already framed the game in terms of e-commerce, networking, client/server. Database is old stuff. It's commodity now. The focus is on applications. The hot spots are PeopleSoft, Brio, Business Objects and Baan. No one believes that it's just about the database anymore. The writing of a great tagline is an arduous exercise. One which I'm not interested in tackling without a contract....but, here are a few ideas to illustrate what I'm talking about in terms of direction and craft. Tomorrow's Business, Today. Your Transaction SuperMarket. Transaction Management for Tomorrow. The Ultimate Information Switch. The Ultimate E-Commerce Machine. Anyway, these are not it. But, IFMX needs to get outside the box in how they position themselves. The current statement dosn't do it for me. It's ok. It's average. But it's not going to help them. While I'm on the topic, the name "Informix" is a problem, too. It's really too bad that techno saavy engineers (current company excluded) truly seem to believe that with the right logical input, they can come up with good names. It's unlikely that a good marketing person would have ever selected a name like Informix. IMHO If engineers can name company's, I think marketers should start insisting on their code to be used in sub-routines. jim ps, harry, I appreciate your opinion on the topic, but..."think different" has already worked very well. Lots of press, stock is upppp, and G3 is "Toasting" Intel! (See their new ad in WSJ)