Re: OpenVMS in an HP advertisment

From: John Smith (a_at_nonymous.com)
Date: 10/17/03 

Date: Thu, 16 Oct 2003 22:21:40 GMT

Fred,

If HP spent 1/2 an iota of time (that's currently defined by ISO as 1/2 of a
femtosecond) advertising VMS specifically and spending a some real dough on
the advertising (if carly(tm) could forego only one hair appointment) on
some decent print ads for it, you may find that all of a sudden VMS
Engineering would be hiring more people to help out and add more features
faster due to increased customer sales.

And you might get a raise too. And I hope you do get one.

Serious question Fred - do you and your engineering colleagues in Nashua
ever wonder why HP does not do VMS-specific advertising? If so, what reasons
have you been told by your management as to the lack of VMS advertising? You
clearly have an excellent product and a great story to tell to tens of
thousands of corporations and governments worldwide - especially in this day
and age of worms, virii, and so-called focus on security and reliability. So
why pray tell is there no VMS advertising to tell all these potential
customers that HP has a great solution to their woes?

Do you thing that the soft-sell ads of mouse pointers snatching criminals
off the streets or astronauts ambling down the expressway at rush hour
actually sells VMS product, especially when somebody who sees one of those
ads calls HP and asks for help? Most lekely the HP person who answers the
phone will try to sell them an ink cartridge.

Remember the movie 'Network' from the late 1970's? ...the newscaster Howard
Beale who told everybody to stand up and shout "I'm mad as hell and I'm not
going to take it anymore!!"?? What HP needs to to is take something like
that and turn it into a TV commercial for VMS - corporate execs and IT heads
complaining about the crap they're being fed by the Microsoft and Linux
communities and turn it into an ad with the calm voice of reason explaining
that a certain o/s (VMS...ever heard of it?) offers relief from the lies,
downtime, data corruption, worms, etc... for businesses ranging in size from
one computer through thousands of monster servers (comparative photos - From
this - one small Alpha under a desk to this - a pic of Los Alamos's server
room).

Or something a bit more subtle like two IT guys sitting at a table
discussing their woes. Maybe they are some clearly identifiable military
officer types in uniform, maybe they are just civillians. They have drinks
of some sort on the table - opaque ones. One guy is bitching away about his
issues and asks the other how he manages to handle these same problems. The
second guy begins to stir something into his drink (I don't recall much
chemistry at the moment to say what he stirs in - call it 'sweetener' on the
package) and as his 'drink' goes transparent he says "We don't experience
those problems" while the camera focuses on the stirred drink and the word
'OpenVMS' becomes visible on a box behind the drink, magnified by refraction
through the glass. The voiceover says something like "OpenVMS - the clearly
superior operating system for secure computing. Only from HP.' or a million
other messages you can deliver.

If you want to answer but would prefer to do so under a pseudonym from a
non-HP monitored network I'll understand completely - it's getting awfully
close to Halloween and the time when witch hunts are all the rage and the
Grim Reaper makes her appearance.

Fred Kleinsorge wrote:
> You know, leave it to you and JF. You guys are just unbelievable.
>
>
> "John Smith" <a@nonymous.com> wrote in message
> news:3RBjb.354895$Lnr1.174431@news01.bloor.is.net.cable.rogers.com...
>> Robert Trawinski wrote:
>>> Sue Skonetski wrote:
>>>> Folks,
>>>>
>>>> There is now an HP add with VMS in it for Integrity Servers. It
>>>> is a 3M file. At this point it is not on a web site, but if you
>>>> need a copy please send me mail at my hp email address.
>>>>
>>>> Warm Regards,
>>>> Sue
>>>
>>> The same advertisment was published in August in Computerworld
>>> Polska (Poland). And... no VMS.
>>
>>
>> Ah, so the ad which appeared in the 'New Scientist' was a misprint
>> then. It was clearly an earlier version of the ad before it was
>> proof-read by HP management.

Relevant Pages

  • VMS Advertising & Marketing - a status report
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