[Fwd: NYTimes.com Article: IBM Aims Ad Budget at 'Infrastructure' Buyers] -- MIDRANGE-L

Hi Folks !

Sorry to send this this way. Got the link in an email from Search400
today. Didn't want to pass the link on since it makes you register (for
free) with the NY Times and figured not everyone would want to do that.
So I emailed it to myself (that should avoid any copyright stuff) and
not to the lists because I didn't want the list getting mail from NY
Times...

Interesting reading !

Chuck

Subject: NYTimes.com Article: IBM Aims Ad Budget at 'Infrastructure' Buyers
From: clewis@xxxxxxxxxx
Date: Tue, 12 Dec 2000 13:43:30 -0500 (EST)
Delivered-To: clewis@iquest.net

This article from NYTimes.com 
has been sent to you by Chuck Lewis clewis@iquest.net.

Chuck Lewis

Check this out !!

Chuck Lewis
clewis@iquest.net

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IBM Aims Ad Budget at 'Infrastructure' Buyers
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/technology/tech-ibm-advertising-.html

December 12, 2000

By REUTERS

 

Filed at 12:45 p.m. ET

NEW YORK, Dec. 12 (Reuters) - International Business Machines Corp.
on Tuesday will reveal a sharp shift in its $650 million-a-year
advertising spending to focus on its role as a business tools
supplier instead of as a 'gee-whiz' technology developer.

``Chapter II of the Internet is when e-business gets back to
business,'' IBM spokesman John Bukovinksy said in describing the
thinking behind the computer maker's new marketing. ``We've been
through this heady period of euphoria but that's over.''

The company's name for this strategic thrust is ``e-business
infrastructure'' -- the tagline for a marketing push on which IBM
plans to devote upward of $500 million in 2001, ten times the
amount it spent on the theme this year.

The campaign reinforces IBM's legacy as a business technology
supplier, while taking a page from the play-book of far
faster-growing rivals such as Sun Microsystems that target the
still exploding Web infrastructure market.

The world's largest computer maker will emphasize IBM's capacity to
deliver not just the machinery and Internet plumbing but the
complex software and necessary services to help companies do
business in the networked economy era.

``E-business, particularly business-to-business, offers tremendous
opportunities, but only if one is prepared with the hardware,
software and services that solve fundamental technology integration
problems,'' the IBM spokesman said.

The Armonk, N.Y.-based company plans to introduce the first
newspaper advertisements centered on the new theme in an eight-page
advertising supplement in editions of the Wall Street Journal to be
published on Wednesday.

Television advertising is set to follow in late December, running
during major sporting events. These TV ads will retain the widely
recognized blue border and quirky style of recent IBM campaigns
developed by agency Ogilvy & Mather.

IBM was first to popularize the term ``e-business'' to describe the
ways in which the Internet was transforming traditional businesses,
in the process reviving the once dominant computer maker's own
image as a forward-looking Internet player.

The focus of IBM's brand advertising would shift away from
advertisements that focus on what the company describes as
''invention and opportunity,'' commercials designed to elicit a
''Wow'' or ``What will they think of next'' reaction.

The company's focus on the concept of ``infrastructure'' marks a
calculated risk that its target audience of top-level executives
has become comfortable with this favorite piece of
computer-industry-insider jargon.

IBM has been seeking to revive its flagging revenue growth by
redoubling its focus on higher-growth areas beyond its traditional
focus on big business computer systems. 

The New York Times on the Web
http://www.nytimes.com

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