Viral Marketing
I am currently reading “Who Says Elephants Can’t Dance?” – a biographical story of IBM between 1992 & 2001, written by their Chairman Louis V. Gerstner, Jr.
On p.138, Louis writes:
“IBM had always designed its own operating software to run on its hardware. However, when the PC came along, IBM’s lack of real commitment to that market resulted in the company asking Microsoft to provide the operating system for the first IBM Personal Computer. Microsoft seized that miscalculation and artfully built the most powerful franchise in computing.”
And a little later, he writes:
“What my colleagues seemed unwilling or unable to accept was that the war was already over and was a resounding defeat — 90% market share for Windows to OS/2’s 5% or 6%.”
If MS operating system rode piggy-back on IBM’s hardware, can our ResuMine/ResuSearch ride piggy-back on SAP/BAAN/PeopleSoft’s ERP? Or on a Microsoft product?
To extend this logic,
What is in it?
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For Computer Manufacturers:A free software bundled with their hardware. This software may not be of any particular attraction to individual buyers of PCs but certainly very useful to their “corporate” buyers (– who, in any case, are our targets).
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For 3P:Our webservice gets free publicity. As Louis Gerstner says, we manage to build “the most powerful franchise in computing” by riding piggy-back on computer manufacturers.
Not be able to convince IBM/DELL/COMPAQ, but even if we succeed with 2/3 small Indian manufacturers, it is still great Viral Marketing!
It may be easier to convince “grey-market” assemblers of PCs who, in any case, are always on the look-out for absolutely anything (any software) that they can bundle “FREE” with their assembled PCs. Since “assembled” PCs is a downright commodity market (selling PCs by weight!), anything which will allow an assembler to differentiate his product would be a welcome feature!!
I presume grey-market assemblers are most “susceptible” to our offer!
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For PC BuyersFor an individual buyer, there is not much value in getting this free software. Of course, we can argue that if he is a professionally-employed person, he could “convert” his email resume using ResuMine & in future, send such “converted” resume to placement agencies or while applying for a job. Such a “converted” resume would anyway look/feel superior (as compared to a plain email resume) – and, therefore, has a far better chance of getting “noticed” (amongst a heap) & getting “shortlisted”.
For a corporate buyer (of PC), such free software opens up new vistas/directions of improving the productivity of their entire recruitment process.
Our Objective
Our objective is to “hook” the corporate buyers of PCs to the ResuMine/ResuSearch way of recruiting. I assume that once they have used our software to convert 500 email resumes, they would get so used to it that they would log in & subscribe to our webservice. For us, this could be THE LOWEST COST MARKETING METHOD.
We have to only give one MASTER CD to each PC manufacturer (– and grey-market assembler – starting with Prafula Jain?), who will copy/install it on every PC shipped out.
Of course, we have to make sure that neither the PC manufacturers nor the buyers are able to decrypt/crack the software code and run it forever! That would be a disaster & kill our webservice instantly!
(Signed, dated 13/04/03)
Printed Text (Book Page 157 – Strategy):
By 1999 we were finally ready to admit to ourselves that we could never be as single-minded as application providers that were in business to do just one thing—and do it better than anyone else. We exited application development but saved the very few pieces of software that IBM had successfully developed and marketed in the past. Thousands of software engineers were reassigned to other work, laboratories were closed, and investments were written off or sold.
Important as it was to stop deluding ourselves about our proficiency in this part of the stack, just as important was the message that we were prepared to work with the leading application software developers. What we said to them was:
“We are going to leave this market to you; we are going to be your partner rather than your competitor; we will work with you to make sure your applications run superbly on our hardware, and we will support your applications with our services group.”
And rather than just having lunch with them and saying “Let’s be partners,” we structured detailed commitments, revenue and share targets, and measurements by which both parties agreed to abide.
The first company we approached was Siebel Systems, which had a leadership customer relationship management software package. Its CEO, Tom Siebel, was understandably enthusiastic about the prospect of having IBM’s worldwide sales force and services organization marketing and supporting his product. But based on what he’d observed of IBM’s agility (or lack thereof), Siebel told us he doubted we could structure a deal on his timetable. He bet the IBM team a bottle of fine wine that the whole process would break down due to what he called “cultural impedance mismatch” between Siebel and IBM.
Five days later Tom was picking out a fine Chardonnay. The contract was signed and we announced the relationship and the new alliance program. Over the next two years we signed 180 similar partnerships.
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