Malcolm Haines Draws Battle Plans for Next iSeries Marketing Campaign

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Newswatch
Malcolm Haines Draws Battle Plans for Next iSeries Marketing Campaign


Article Information


Article ID: 15673

Pub: iSeries Network

Dept: Newswatch

Date: November 01, 2002

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by  Cheryl Ross
Senior News Editor

November 25, 2002 ?  Malcolm Haines, the iSeries' self-styled minister of 
propaganda and
inventor of the marketing battleship, is busy with reconnaissance, trying
to find the best target for his next assault. First, he's got to get the
lay of the land and see how things have changed in his 15-month absence
from the battlefield.
Since well before the iSeries was the AS/400, Haines has been at the helm
of its most memorable marketing campaigns ? London's successful taxicab
campaigns, the platform's blitzkrieg on Lotuspheres both stateside and in
Europe, and the extreme iSeries campaign of two years ago.
And it's no fluke that the mild-mannered marketing wizard chooses such
belligerent terminology to describe his craft. Good marketing usually
causes a stir and upsets people, he says, "and as long as you're upsetting
your enemies, it's okay."
For example, Haines approves of Rochester's assault on HP World, carried
out in his absence from the platform, where the iSeries team annoyed
Hewlett-Packard by flying iSeries banners in the corridors and cutting hp
e3000 customers and vendors out of the pack to explain whey they should
abandon HP for the iSeries. "That's a kind of marketing battleship," he
says.
Haines took a leave of absence from IBM and the iSeries last year to plot
marketing strategy for a new company, Lazy Software. However, the startup
received a cold shoulder trying to launch a new product in an even colder
economy, so it decided to retrench and pare back to just the core
engineers to find a new direction for the product.
Haines was making the rounds of interviews with another company when
iSeries General Manager Buell Duncan called him 12 days ago and asked him
to rejoin Team Rochester. Two days later, without thinking twice, Haines
was back in his old office in Somers, sorting through his old files on the
ThinkPad he'd turned in when he left ? which he can't wait to trade in for
the latest model.
Even before making sure that his phone numbers were set up and his e-mail
addresses reactivated ? or even that he's officially on the payroll ?
Haines jetted off to focus groups in Chicago and Manhattan where Rochester
was testing customer reaction to new ideas for the platform. He'll spend
this week before the holiday catching up with the folks in Rochester.
Within the next few weeks, Haines expects to lay the groundwork for his
next campaign "to help the iSeries obtain its fair share of the market,
which I believe is 100 percent," he says.
Although Haines isn't sure yet what direction that campaign will take or
in what venue it will run, he sees great potential for the iSeries with
IBM's current focus on on-demand computing.
"People are crying out for something like the iSeries but don't know about
it," Haines says. "Most of the world feels that IT is a monster ? an
omnivorous monster that's gone out of control and keeps eating things,
like eating money and eating resource, and is developing a mind of its
own. Projects come in over budget and late and sometimes don't deliver
what they were supposed to, because there are so many variables. ...
On-demand is a perfect fit for iSeries. It coincides precisely with what
this platform has always stood for. Now the world has caught up with this
concept."

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