Ever since I heard that IBM/Lotus was going to spend some serious time (and money) promoting Notes 8, I’ve been anxiously awaiting opportunities to see the results of those efforts in action. Anyone who’s talked to my lately might be surprised that I’m not posting something about my true feelings behind this ridiculous concept.*
But no, I’m living by the “if you don’t have something good to say…” rule.
While I was on Digg.com today I noticed a clever little ad on the side promoting Notes 8 (kind of). As you can see, its a nicely designed ad and I thought a pretty clever way of distributing those pieces of content.
Not bad. Not bad at all!
* OK, so since the end of the “If you can’t say something nice…” comment in today’s world means “… then post a blog entry about it.” I felt it was appropriate to give an ever-so-brief reason for why I thought the link above is a bad idea:In short: Its a clever idea, but poorly done. It is apparently targeted at end-users but does very little to explain what the product does and why I need it … certainly not until I read the text on the cards shown after picking my “messed up animal of choice.” However, even once you read those short descriptions, you find comments like “… that’s almost as smart as Notes 8.”Now, I may be jaded on this one. So I did a study. I put that site in front of 8 people I knew that don’t work in IT and have never used Lotus Notes. I simply said “I want to show you this site about an exciting new product that you could use every day at the office to improve the way you do your job – and I want you to spend 3 minutes with it and tell me what the product is, what it will do for you and if you are interested in learning more.”
So far the answers are (summarizing common themes here):
- Um… Lotus Notes?
- Don’t know. But it has something to do with animals.
- No, not really. Why did you show me this?!
Still, I’m hopeful that other upcoming ads will be more informative and inspiring.
What people here are saying…