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Monday, July 2 (day #1 of shutdown) - got into work 15 minutes late
this morning. Can't understand it. Cars everywhere. Assume other drivers haven't
heard about Sun shutdown. But when I get into office, it's empty.
Have
decided this week to concentrate on outgoing activities with partners and
potential allies in new marketing programs. Waste several hours emailing
technical support, and eventually learn how to access incoming voicemail.
Get
error message:-
buffer full.
Spend rest of day dealing with email, as usual.
Tuesday, July 3 (day #2 of shutdown) - get into work 15 minutes
early to make up for yesterday. Check voicemail, no messages. Check email. Just
one message from another Sun workaholic in Camberley office asking how he can
add a UK company to the website for a marketing program we canned a few years
ago. In the spirit of international co-operation, send him a reply saying I
don't deal with Ireland, but I thought the application form is somewhere on the
web site, and Happy Holiday tomorrow.
Unbelievably, no other emails
today. Decide to plan ahead and email technical support to ask if it's possible
to reset my email preferences so that it doesn't automatically delete incoming
emails from outside Sun. Spend rest of day doing market research on Sun web
site. Check shareprice. Still not a good time to sell options.
Do some
in depth competitive market research. All the focus group reports say that Dell,
and not HP or IBM, is most often cited as our competitor in the mid-range
market.
Search for "Dell" on www.sun.com - get "198
Results Found".
Repeat the same search, using the term "Sun".
Get "31,069 Results Found"
Decide that the focus group
research must be flawed. I can't see how Dell can be real a threat to us when
they're barely visible on the web. I also noticed that the market research
report made no mention at all of DEC. That suggests to me:- either we've got the
wrong company doing the research, or maybe we're getting the wrong people coming
in to the focus groups. I make a note to raise this question next week, when
things are back to normal.
Tomorrow, I'm going to plan our strategy for
the new killer partner program, but I might just work a half day.
Wednesday, July 4 (day #3 of shutdown) - 4th of July, so roads
empty. Got into work 30 minutes early. Had to attract attention of security
guard and persuade him it really was worth opening up the office, switching on
all the lights etc. Big day today. I've been tasked with creating a new partner
program to re-energise system sales. My plan is to get this done a week early,
which is why I've been coming into office. Log-in and get down to making some
notes...
- Avoid negatively charged words like "dot-com"
- Include positively charged words like "Sun" - but, and
here's the tricky part, the legal people said that the new program name must
consist of more than just one word. Although it can be two words which are
concatenated, like:- StorageArray.
Check SUNW price. No change. Think first, that Java applet has failed. Then
remember that stock market is closed today. Even CNBC is showing football
games. Decide to review notes I made earlier about previous successful marketing
programs.
Sun's oldest partner program was Catalyst. My research
assistant looked into that, and it seems like it was a very successful program..
The best part was the numbers. Over 14,000 Sun compatible products.
Unfortunately, thousands of Catalyst products never saw the light of day, and
were only invented by other companies who wanted to get listed in the catalog.
Nobody knows which ones are real or relevant today. My plan for the new program
is to beat the numbers on Catalyst. That's a must-have. Also the web means we
don't have to cap the product entries which was a restriction in the paper
directory days due to shipping weight and page count. Decide that 100,000
products or 10,000 companies is a good target to aim at.
Next, take a
look at another historic program, called "SPARC-compatible." When I
first saw it in the research notes, I looked up "SPARC" in a
dictionary, but unlike "Catalyst", it wasn't there. Guessed it might
be foreign, and tried a German online dictionary. No luck there either.
Asked researcher. She told me it was a pre-Solaris, pre-Java, pre-Jiro legal
term, like a copyright symbol, and never used in marketing communications in
any font size larger than 6pt in print or 20 pixels high on the web. I looked at
the program details and was horrified to find that it included a lot of our
competitors in the Solaris Compatible and Sun Ready markets. As including direct
competitors is one of the no-no's for the new program, decided not to read any
more about it.
Spent rest of morning looking at web sites for current
partner marketing programs. End up being completely confused and get headache.
But persist because I think I'm starting to see a pattern. All the companies in
the newer programs are companies which we like, and want to be associated with
Sun. Otherwise there is no logical connection. I'm starting to feel hungry. The
cafetteria is closed this week, so I've been bringing in sandwiches. They're a
bit dry, because I haven't had time to pick up groceries.
Ping! My
brain goes back to the vacation I had in Australia, just after doing my MBA, but
before joing Sun. A loaf of soft springy, fresh tasting white bread. Much better
than what I'm eating right now... Why am I thinking of it? The label! Yes.
That's it. My friend said "Hey is that the new company you're going to work
for?" - That was before Sun Microsystems became a household name.
I
do a quick check on the whois part of the Network Solutions site... Not even the
cybersquatters have thought of this one, and the domain is not in use, even
though it's a registered trademark in a completely unrelated industry. I throw
the rest of my sandwiches away. Mission accomplished, I'm going to eat Mexican
for lunch, and take the rest of the day off.
After logging out of the
system, I pause. What if the server crashes and they haven't backed it up? What
if I get killed in an auto accident? My brilliant inspiration will be lost to
the company. The shares I leave to my family may not recover so quickly. Just to
be sure, I take out my gold nibbed Parker pen and write on the back of my
business card, and then place it carefully on my researcher's desk where she can
see it next week when she gets back. The name of the new program which will
change all our lives in the months to come. Unfamiliar today, but soon to be
universally recognised wherever computers are bought and sold... the SunBlest
partner program.
Thursday, July 5 (day #4 of shutdown) - didn't get a wink of sleep
last night due to excitement and thinking about details for the new SunBlest
partner program.. Got into work 2 hours early. Nasdaq has only been running a
few hours, but it looks like SUNW is a whole dollar down since Friday. I don't
run the spreadsheet which tells me my net worth in real-time, because I need to
have a positive outlook. But after drinking coffee, I start to feel very tired
and can't remember any of the ideas which were buzzing around my brain last
night.
Check email. Got a reply from the Sun guy in Camberely saying
thanks very much for the info. He tried the web site, and entered all his
partners data, which was very extensive. But when he clicked enter, he got the
following message:
"Sorry! We couldn't find your document. The
file that you requested could not be found on this server. If you provided the
URL, please check to ensure that it is correct or try a search above."
Did
I have any other bright ideas?
Fired up with enthusiasm, I drafted a reply saying not to worry,
because his partner company would almost certainly be eligible to join the new
SunBlest program, which would be starting in the US September, and would roll
out to Europe sometime around May 2002, and would have the different name of :-
SunBlest (Europe).
I explained that the delay was due to language
issues, because the Sun marketing people in Sweden and Germany wanted all new
European programs delayed until they had been translated into local languages.
(Actually the real reason for the delay was that most European marketers took
the entire summer off for their vacations, and didn't start working again until
about October. Then, in November, the skiing season started, and the long
slowdown in the run up to Christmas.)
I didn't put that, in the email.
I actually wrote - "I know that the translation won't take so long for you
guys in Ireland. So you might be able to do a local launch on a non-disclosure
basis, maybe as early as March, timed to coincide with St Patrick's Day."
That
got me thinking again about the important elements of the new program. The key
thing was to be as inclusive as possible, while excluding any companies which
competed with Sun in any other element of their business.
Spent rest
of day researching www.sun.com. Came to the depressing conclusion, that even the
best partners in our current programs develop products which work for the
enemy:- Microsoft and Intel. We may have to rule out 99% of software companies,
and 99% of hardware companies (especially if they had divisions which also sold
storage). That would make it difficult to make the ambitious recruitment
targets, because it narrowed the field to companies which were actually owned by
Sun, and a handful of start-ups.
Then I had another brilliant
idea!!!
What if we restricted the SunBlest partner program to just
end-users?
Decide that will be the focus of my research tomorrow.
Friday, July 6 (day #5 of shutdown) - Got into work 5 minutes later
than usual. Depressed to see what looks like an expensive car convention in a
tight bunch in the car park, and am therefore not surprised to see that dozens
of other marketers have arrived in the office before me. I reply to everyone's
friendly greetings and smile sweetly, but realise this doesn't look so good, as
I am the last one into the office. Make a mental note to email everyone later,
and copy my boss, just so they all know I was here on my own earlier in the
week. See that emails from other Sun marketers have already started to fill up
my in box.
At the coffee machine, find a way to mention my SunBlest
idea to one of the younger marketers. She's only been with Sun less than a year,
and doesn't have to worry about the stock price, because she hasn't got any. She
was recruited to do partner programs with IHVARSP's. Don't know what that means,
but think it may have something to do with Sun Integrators who sell to ASP's who
run Jiro on Linux appliances which connect to Sun servers via iSCSI, but not
wireless.. It's a hot new market, in which Sun has over 90% market share.
She likes the name of my program which she says is very cool. But can see one
slight snag. I ask what it is.
"I could be wrong" she says "but
I thought Sun policy was not to publish lists which are in any way useful to our
competitors. That's why we don't publish a Sun VAR list, except in Europe, where
our policy is always to make sure it's out of date and as misleading as
possible. I don't think the Big Mac" - which is how she refers to
Scottmc@sun.com - "would let us publish a list of end-users. In fact I
almost blew my chances at my interview by asking if I would be able to have
access to our list of end-users. I was told that if I wanted to see a list of
end-users I should apply for a job in the accounting department, and forget
about a career in marketing."
I nod gravely, and make a mental
note never to mention end-users if I ever have to apply for another marketing
job.
"What happened?" I asked sympathetically.
"I
said, that's how we did it at my last company... And my interviewer said, not to
worry, I was still young and would learn how to do marketing properly at Sun.
That's why we had partner programs, so we didn't need to get cluttered up with
details. Anyway, tell me more about your new program. Can't wait to hear more
about it."
I prevaricate, and say that I haven't got much beyond
thinking about the name yet. She nods sympathetically and says that she knows
case studies of companies which took years to think of a new name, so all in
all, I've had a very productive week.
Go back to my desk and consider
how lucky it was that I came into work today, and how close I had been to making
an absolute fool of myself with the end-user idea. Better start with a clean
sheet again next week. No time for thinking now. The inbox is filling up at a
furious rate.
Check SUNW price. Set graph for maximum magnification
and see signs of a definite upwards blip at the leading edge of the down curve.
Am relieved to think that this whole week has been so worthwhile, and can't wait
to get back to work properly next week.
See also:-
Sun SPARC
Trivia Quiz, SPARC
history
Disclaimer:- this spoof article is a work of fiction. Any
resemblance to marketing people living or dead is purely coincidental.
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