The Print Advertising Wars continue with some new .NET advertisements. These new ads stress interoperability and ease of development. These advertisements are rather fascinating in what is stated versus what is implied.

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The most common of these two advertisements is one for Emery Forwarding. The advertisement is titled "Quickly Connect the Orchestra and the Conductor".

The subtext in the bottom left reads: " Emery Forwarding, part of Menlo Worldwide, needed to integrate its new event notification software with the freight transportation and logistics system it used in 200 countries. Using .NET connected software from Microsoft, it quickly integrated the new system with its legacy UNIX environment. The result: Emery now provides customers with real-time information about shipments and expects more than a 100% ROI in less than five months. Signed, sealed, and delivered." Next to this text is a diagram uniting the Pocket PC to BizTalk Server to other non-Microsoft hardware and software.

This advertisement is directly responding to the perception that .NET is both proprietary and doesn't provide a good return on investment (ROI). I brought up these exact issues about .NET on the UT about six months ago. MSFT and others on the UT were critizing me for having the temerity to bring up these very points. The fact that MSFT marketing is attempting to address these issues is actually a very good sign -- Microsoft is addressing real perceptions, not .NET fantasies. There's a lot to like in the tenor of these advertisements.

What's also fascinating in what isn't said. Reread the subtext. Read it a couple of times. Note impressions versus what is really said. The impression is that .NET software integrated disparate IT environments. Fair enough. Now look at the specifics. The only .NET piece is BizTalk Server. So one would assume that Emery is using BizTalk Server to translate data from UNIX via XML into other places as needed. Fair enough? What specific .NET technology was used??? BizTalk Server was XML based before receiving the .NET moniker. The answer: Nothing!

Reread the subtext one more time noting what's implied versus what is being said. That's marketing.

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Another new .NET advertisement is titled "Automatically Connect Track 12 And Row 12"

The subtext in the bottom left reads: "Collecting voluntary information about its customers through Virgin.com, any one of the 30 plus business divisions can use the information to create tailored offerings. Sending alerts to customer's PCs, Virgin Mobiles
and other devices, Virgin can cross-sell everything from albums to airline tickets. Now that rocks." This time there is no diagram.

So, do the same test. What is implied, versus what is said?

The implication is the same as the Emery ad -- .NET is the glue for your Balkanized IT department. What is said, specifically? Collecting voluntary information about its customers through Virgin.com -- Virgin upgraded their web site from ASP to ASP.NET. That's it. Now that's marketing.

Brilliant advertising! It's clear from this advertising that Microsoft has a stink of a problem trying to come up with something in .NET that provides value to the consumer. Microsoft is providing the perception of addressing this issue.

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Did anyone note the February 10, 2003 edition of eWeek? In this issue is a rather large article on page 9, titled "Microsoft hones .NET". The article continues on page 12 where there's another article titled " Charity reworks processes with VS .Net". Here's an article talking about how .NET specifically saved them money. Quoting the article: Dennig said that using .Net "saved us time and developer dollars. It also saves us a lot of complexity in terms of management scope."

Can't argue that, right? Can you believe it, some actual savings???

Uh, hold on...

On pages 1 and 2 of the magazine is the infamous Dana .NET advertisement.
On pages 24 and 25 is the slacker coder .NET advertisement.
On pages 30 and 31 is the Emery .NET advertisement.

That's right, six pages of .NET print advertisement.

That's quid pro quo with .NET.

Bill Anderson