Big Boy Marketing

I don’t know much about marketing; surprisingly, it wasn’t part of my curriculum at college. But, I have noticed something interesting about Macromedia’s marketing approach to their product line aimed at developers, and those products aimed at higher level institutions. Read on…

11 Replies to “Big Boy Marketing”

  1. “After fighting my way through hundreds of posers, I got the job.” – How did you do that? Just trying to find that fine line between persistence and nagging. (And I’m pretty sure I’m not one of the posers.)

  2. As far as I’m concerned, they can market however they want. I just wish that some of those “institution” sized apps (ie. breeze) were affordable for developers like me.

  3. Maybe some of my insight makes sense but here is what the way I see it.

    There are two types of Applications that companies usually buy. Custom built solutions and packaged solutions. There are benefits to both (quickly, Custom Built solutions are custom and are made to meet the exact needs of a customer, Packaged solutions are already finished and usually cost less but might not meet all the needs of a customer).

    If you look at the MX family of products I think it makes sense what Macromedia is doing. They are targeting the people who are developing the custom-built solutions. I don?t think I want to get into the details of how their marketing works with the MX family but they want people building solutions using the MX famly of products and want it to continue to be the best method of doing so for the web (FlashCom is for custom-built solutions).

    With their more pre-built solutions I see it like this. Macromedia I?m sure has a department that is in charge of going after corporations and selling them products. These companies are not interested in learning Flash, they are interested in a product that they need. These departments exists in Adobe/Microsoft/Sun/Oracle/etc and are there to sell solutions (If you look into some financials, Adobe was saved that past years from the existance of PDF and they are looking to getting all corporations using PDFs before any other competitor is around).

    Usually there are different things that can come of such solutions.

    1. Macromedia will make some extra $$ hopefully out of these sales
    2. Macromedia will get a better feel of what such corporations want
    3. (This one is for us). Macromedia products and Flash will get better awareness and recognition/respect at such companies. Allowing us to sell custom-built solutions on the premise that they are already using these technologies.

    For the people who say that Macromedia is eating away from their business, I really don?t believe they are. There is always a need for custom-built software. No matter how flexible a pre-packaged piece of software is, there are always companies that need something specific.

  4. Cub, I was contacted by 2 hiring agencies via finding my resume on Monster.com. After going with one, I was told what I needed to do to prepare. These companies usualy have 3 days to find candidates; hence that’s why you see the same job posting the same day because tons of hiring agencies get the candidates that day if they don’t alread have a stack of resumes ready.

    As far as IBM went, I was lucky enough to make it through to the final 4. As the very last one, I listened to 20 minutes of what IBM does; they just asked me 2 questions: rate myself 1 to 5 in Flash, and 1 to 5 in ActionScripting. Naturely I said 5 in both, but they at that point already thought I was full of shiote. Thankfully, my gf had made me stay up late working on a mini-portfolio, and I demaneded they let me prove to them I knew my stuff by letting me show them my code since I wasn’t given any chance to show my skills. I had no idea how big companies worked, but I knew if I were interviewing, they didn’t know Jesse Warden at all.

    The hiring manager’s mouth dropped.

    Thankfully, my coding of components got me the job.

    Granted, if I were like my gf, or any other person with a lot of talent at marketing themselves, I still think the code got me the job on that one. Still, a lot of the advice I got from Monster.com and other sites held true:
    – follow up 1 day after and 1 week later until you get a feeling they are blowing you off
    – try every avenue: newspaper, internet, yellow pages, industry meetings.

    Keep in mind I’m the 7% that got their job (both of them, hehe) off of a website; the other 9% were like hiring agencies and the rest were ALL networking. That’s just in tech.
    – be positive; don’t be a “this industry sux and I’m losing my house”. They can read that a mile away.
    – have a portfolio; one online, one off; the mini-CD-ROM in my front pocket saved my arse.
    – make sure you have a support group of friends and family to help keep you positive; let me know you need their help.

  5. Michael, I think that’s just it. Melvyn mentioned that they are hard to customize; nigh impossible. However, it seems they are making it so it’s a little easy to customize, but still, people who buy those products, per Chafic’s post, seem to want packaged solutions. So, even if it was affordable, it’s not very customizable. Screw that, I’m an craftsman.

  6. Chafic, I agree with all your points. Thank you for your insight, I learned a lot.

    However, I disagree with your last statement. I have heard form people selling products to the same market who also use the MX productline, so it seems they are a minority, or just don’t have as big a mouth as I do.

    Still, really good info. Makes a lot of sense.

  7. I lost you a bit Jesse on this comment

    “I have heard form people selling products to the same market who also use the MX productline”.

    Do you mean that Macromedia is selling to companies both packaged solutions and the MX product line?

  8. Naw, like I think Brian Lesser stated that his company develops products, it seems packaged with more than your average customization, to the very same types of companies that Macromedia is marketing too with products like Breeze.

    However, Brian Lesser is also a developer in my eyes because he’s smart, I’ve seen him on the Flash lists, and I think he’s written books aimed at developers.

    So, technically, he’s both.

  9. I guess that is true but also from what I have seen from Brian and as you state, he is one smart dude and I would prefer to have a custom solution by him anyday over a non-flexible yet finished product from MM. But that is just me :)

    On another note, i’m sure that if a developer is creating a product very similar to breeze live then they will be in competition, but there are already a bunch of interactive power-point type applications out there. If I were a developer I would not create such a product today, even if Breeze Live didn’t exist. I can’t remember the names but I saw 3 out there already during Flash Forward.

  10. Hi, I see it as “toolkits” and “solutions”… ways to make things, ways to do things. Dreamweaver helps skilled people create a wide variety of sites; Contribute helps anyone edit the content in an existing HTML site.

    The Breeze platform helps anyone create certain types of presentations, trainings or meetings… the Flash toolset helps skilled people create a wide variety of applications.

    Here’s an older column on a similar topic:
    “Toolkits and Solutions: How Contribute and RIAs both fit into Macromedia MX”
    http://www.macromedia.com/devnet/jd_forum/jd020.html

    Am I on-topic to what you’re seeking, or did I drift off-course in my understanding…?

    jd

  11. Naw it makes sense… sort of. For one thing, still reading & digesting your article. Secondly, at least in my opinion, I think your article, or at least your perspective on it is ahead of its time. By that, I mean, a lot of these things need to come to fruition (not any results, just the events themselves) before I’ll personally feel they are now old enough to reflect on them.

    I don’t wanna wait, though, so these inights do nicely. Just trying to learn how people operate. Thank you very much!

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