Marketing Strategy Notes

[Ed Julson <ed.julson@eng.sun.com>]

Marketing & Awareness team members,

I've finally had a chance to write down my notes from our marketing strategy 
discussion in Brussels. This is not intended to be a polished document, but the 
basic jist of what we talked about is captured. 

I believe the next step is to post for review, fill in the gaps, and then 
translate this strategy into a tactical plan to implement it. Even if we only 
identify the top 3-4 things to do right now, that will at least get us headed 
down the right path.

Ann, would you like to chime in with a suggestion on the best way to proceed 
from here?

Marketing Strategy Discussion - 5/11/00

Target audiance
---------------

We identified four different target audiances for our marketing messages:

o IT Architects
o Developers
  - IT developer (in-house app's)
  - independent software vendors (ISV)
o ebXML collaberative partners
o Senior executives

A distinction was made between in-house developers, who write app's for in-house 
deployment within corporporations; and ISV's, who develop s/w for resale. The 
mechanism for reaching these two groups of developers may be different and we 
talked about the possibility of creating a "ebXML inside" type of branding for 
packaged app's that support ebXML.

Collaberative partners refers to companies who want to work with ebXML on early 
access to ebXML specifications under development, reference implementations, or 
joint marketing. Some of these collaberative partners may be ebXML members, 
others will not be. 

Since the ebXML effort is really a framework for data interchange, it makes 
sense to include IT architects on our list of target audiances, since these guys 
are the policy makers in medium & large corporations. 

Push/Pull Strategy
------------------

We agreed that the most effective way to get the ebXML messages out is to deploy 
a combination of "push" and "pull" marketing strategies. A pull strategy is one 
in which the consumer of the information, tools, or messaging is proactive in 
seeking it out. The most common example would be a website where the collection 
of ebXML marketing materials are posted for review, forwarding or download.
This is a very passive approach to marketing and does not normally generate much 
industry visibility.

A push strategy is much more proactive, seeking a higher level of visibility and 
utilizing a number of different mechanisms to deliver our messaging and actively 
manage industry perceptions around ebXML. Examples of this approach would 
include PR campaigns, branding programs, seeding of technical conferences, and 
joint marketing of ebXML with member companies.

One of the determining factors in developing a marketing strategy will be the 
availability of funding to support a marketing approach that deploys some 
combination of push and pull elements. The less money we have available, the 
more we will have to rely on the more passive pull tactics.

One of the outputs of our marketing plan should be a request for funding 
required to support our marketing objectives. We should not be bashful about 
seeking funding from the executive committee if we believe it is required.

Communications Channels
-----------------------

We didn't go real deep here, but did identify the following alternatives for 
communicating our marketing messages. These are not prioritized in order of 
importance.

o print media; combination of IT industry & general publications. This is not
  advertising. What we are talking about here is contributed articles or
  interviews about the ebXML mission and spotlighting of succeses along the way.
  (eg; Economist, Computerworld, Forbes, Information Week, etc.)
  
o complementary websites; link to ebXML from websites that address complementary 
  topics, such as EDI, XML, or b2b/b2c content. Also included in this category 
  are links from ebXML member company sites, including the display of the ebXML
  logo where company policies allow for it.
  (eg; XML.com, XML.org; Ann to provide others)
  
o trade shows; since ebXML is a virtual organization, we need to rely on the
  support of member companies to include ebXML in their trade show plans. 
  To make this easier to do, we ought to develop some "canned" materials and
  artwork that can be accessed from the ebXML website. It was also agreed the
  the project teams should be used as a conduit for access into member 
  companies and to influence trade show planning to incorporate ebXML content.
  
o press releases; we all know how this works, but we need to have more
  visibility into what the project teams are up to, in order to put together 
  a decent PR plan and press kit.
  
o analysts; one of the biggest influencers of industry thought are the market
  analysts. They have enourmous influence with their clients, and analyst
  recommendations carry a lot of weight in large companies. Again, our best
  avenue of access to these analysts is through the existing relationships 
  that ebXML member companies currently have with these analysts. In addition 
  to the official ebXML spokepeople such as Klaus and Bob, we need to have a
  number of individuals within the member companies who can talk credibly 
  about the ebXML agenda and objectives. Out of all of our marketing options,
  working with market analysts is probably one of the most leveraged and
  effective things we can do. 
  (eg; Gartner, GigaGroup, Burton, Seybold)
  
We didn't have a chance to get very far into the discussion of what a tactical 
plan would look like to deliver on the strategy outlined above. However, we did 
agree that most of the work will need to take place betwee these quarterly 
meetings and that we need to have a mechanism to track progress on a regular 
basis.

Ann volunteered to set up a weekly conference call to touch base on status, and 
help us manage this effort on an ongoing basis.
  


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Ed Julson			Sun Microsystems
XML Marketing			901 San Antonio Rd.
XML Technology Center		MS UMPK16-201
				Palo Alto, CA 94303

ed.julson@eng.sun.com
650-786-9258 (x89258)
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