Rothman Rides Again; IBM’s Cloud and Glyde.com

Posted by Joe Franscella, 11-17-09 –

Anyone who’s ever brought a client in front of Mike Rothman for a briefing knows two things: 1.) Prepare the client to tell the truth; 2.) Prepare the client to hear the truth. Although a lot of times clients don’t realize it at first, the toughest briefings — which may leave them rattled — often end up being the most productive as they not only provide (pardon me) “insight,” but also a good indication regarding the true level of resonance that their messages are having. Prior to going to eIQ, when Rothman was still taking briefings, I had an opportunity to bring a couple clients in front of him, while the clients didn’t necessarily exit walking on sunshine, they were forced to reconsider at least a couple bullet points and then recraft them to be more aligned with reality as opposed to hype (which paid off in subsequent briefings). My hope is that Rothman will again take vendor briefings and continue to provide the same sharp-witted insight as he has in the past — the truth, as harsh as it may sometimes be, does everyone a favor.

I am glad to see Alan Shimel continues to go strong on his blog, now AShimmy, when he announced he had left Still Secure I was left to wonder if he’d continue to post his thoughts and opinions on the tech industry, to my delight he continues to go strong. Many of my It security marketing and PR plans start off with a trip to Alan’s blog to find out what he’s saying about “it,” to understand how he’s breaking “it” down or to find out if I am really planning around something “new” (note to security PR pros: when Dan Kaplan at SC says publicly that Alan’s blog is one of the sites he looks at for potential ideas, checking it out on a regular basis isn’t a bad idea).

Alin posted an interesting link to an I.B.M. Cloud commercial aired during Monday night’s NFL game. I don’t disagree with him that taking the Cloud into the pop culture main stream may signal the demise of it’s media sexiness, however, my observations were on the quality of the commercial itself and what a valuable learning tool it was for those of us pitching technology full time. Watch the commercial:

I.B.M. does a nice job of quickly defining what the Cloud is from a technology perspective and then goes heavily into what the business and consumer benefits it offers are. This format is a good lesson for anyone pitching a technology story — go light on tech and heavy on practical benefit. A lot of times it’s hard to get client’s to understand that a lot of the writers you speak with, unless they’re techy bloggers, don’t have time to become engineers, what they write about are the practical benefits a technology provides over its really cool code.

Reading Brad Stone’s piece in the New York Times on new eTailer Glyde.com got me thinking, what’s the return policy? If I buy a used — often very cheap –  game at Game Stop I can return it within seven days for a full refund and it won’t cost me $2.50 (see Glyde.com return policy). New DVD’s are so cheap to buy at stores like Walmart and to rent at RedBox in the supermarket it doesn’t seem to make any sense to buy something used on an online venue. It will be interesting to see where this company heads and what the future holds for this Web site, surely the profitability plan can’t be based around consumers selling used games and DVD’s to one another, there has to me more coming in the future.