During this morning's commute, I was doing my typical zone-out to tunes routine when I happened to catch this advertisement:
Most people probably looked passed this ad without even blinking. I, on the other hand, paid close attention to it because we use Lotus Notes for our enterprise email. Lotus Notes is one of those applications that people either love or they hate. I think most of the haters feel that way because they are probably used to an Outlook/Exchange environment where the desktop client is very easy to use, very user-friendly, etc. Lotus Notes, on the other hand, is a beast. It is very robust in terms of features and you nearly need a PhD in order to use it properly.
Seriously though, it's a very robust collaboration tool for global companies like mine. The built in instant messenger feature is very, very handy. it does everything Outlook does and a ton more -- more so than I'll ever use.
What grabbed me about this advertisement was the fact that it's a consumer facing campaign. The run of the mill consumer is going to know what Lotus is. Most consumers are in an exchange environment, if any at all. Is the point that IT decision makers are riding the MBTA? I'm not really sure what the answer is, but did get a little insight via a commenter who commented over at my Posterous lifestream blog. I also got a couple of plugs on Twitter as a result.
I'd love to do a Q&A with someone who has insights into the campaign. Any takers?
Update: Joseph Hoetzl has stepped up and will do the Q&A for me. Stay tuned.