Advertising? Or just name calling?

I do like advertising from time to time. I think advertising gives away a lot about how companies operate and what their internal values are. You also find out if the company understands their market and their potential users.

When looking for VMware View articles with Google I came across an ad for Citrix, look at the picture to the right. The ad is somewhat funny actually. Citrix says that their solution with HDX is faster than VMware View. Perhaps it is, perhaps it isn’t, I don’t know. It all depends on workloads, hypervisor, storage and so on.

This looks a lot like some sales training program where they teach you to sell your product like: “Our product is the best because the competitors product is worse”. Why do companies feel the need to point out that they are better than their direct competitor.

If you know your product is good, why don’t you just use the strong points to make an ad. Just stop throwing mud at your competitor and make a real commercial or ad like the one for the Opel Insignia. If says almost nothing about the product and absolutely nothing about its competition. After watching the commercial I really felt compelled to go to the dealer and at least make a test drive. And I don’t even like Opel!

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 17th, 2009 at 20:08 and is filed under Citrix, View, VMware. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

About Anne Jan Elsinga

Anne Jan Elsinga is a Consultant for Imtech ICT in the Netherlands. He spends his working hours with a lot of virtualization stuff, from feasibility to implementation for server virtualization/consolidation and desktop virtualization. In 2009, 2010 and 2011 he was awarded with the VMware vExpert status. In the night time he dances latin, ballroom and salsa and he also discovered the pleasure of diving.

http://www.vmguru.nl Froos

I think, when selling, you should use your own strengths instead of the other one’s weaknesses. Tell the world why your solution is the right one. Pointing out what’s wrong in the competitors products actually points the attention towards the competitor, which is actually the thing you try to prevent.

Basically, tell the world why YOU are GOOD, not why the other ones are bad

My two cents..
http://www.vmguru.nl Alex Muetstege

I think, when selling, you should use your own strengths instead of the other one’s weaknesses. Tell the world why your solution is the right one. Pointing out what’s wrong in the competitors products actually points the attention towards the competitor, which is actually the thing you try to prevent.

Basically, tell the world why YOU are GOOD, not why the other ones are bad

My two cents..
Joe__C

There are different ways to motivate people. You can draw them towards your product(like a moth to a flame) or you can try to make them run away from something else and hope at least some of them run towards your product.

If they don’t have enough confidence in their product to attract customers to it based on merit then they try to drive them away from the competition and hope some of them notice their product as they pass in the stampede.
Joe__C

There are different ways to motivate people. You can draw them towards your product(like a moth to a flame) or you can try to make them run away from something else and hope at least some of them run towards your product.

If they don’t have enough confidence in their product to attract customers to it based on merit then they try to drive them away from the competition and hope some of them notice their product as they pass in the stampede.
http://www.vmguru.nl/ Edwin

This one made me laugh, something I really wondered about several weeks back with the launch of XenDesktop, they tagged it with the number 4. Why use the number 4?, they have XenServer on 5 so why not bring it in line with that? Maybe someone @ Citrix felt, VMware View 4 be in the same range as XenDesktop? or didn’t they dare to call it XenDesktop 5 what would have been seeing the Advertisement above more logical?

Bottom line: I think its good that their is competition in the virtual desktop market so innovation goes a lot faster and progress is being made to give our customers a true and great virtual desktop experience.
http://vmguru.nl Edwin Weijdema

This one made me laugh, something I really wondered about several weeks back with the launch of XenDesktop, they tagged it with the number 4. Why use the number 4?, they have XenServer on 5 so why not bring it in line with that? Maybe someone @ Citrix felt, VMware View 4 be in the same range as XenDesktop? or didn’t they dare to call it XenDesktop 5 what would have been seeing the Advertisement above more logical?

Bottom line: I think its good that their is competition in the virtual desktop market so innovation goes a lot faster and progress is being made to give our customers a true and great virtual desktop experience.
http://www.vmguru.nl/ Erik Scholten

Ah, I’ve missed the blunt Citrix marketing bs for a while. Thank god they’re back.

I don’t understand your comments, Citrix is the best solution for application deployment, server based computing, server virtualization, VDI, damn they’re the best at everything! Why? Because every other vendor sucks and makes horrible products. So HDX is great …………. because PCoIP sucks and XenServer is great because vSphere is too expensive.
http://www.vmguru.nl Erik Scholten

Ah, I’ve missed the blunt Citrix marketing bs for a while. Thank god they’re back.

I don’t understand your comments, Citrix is the best solution for application deployment, server based computing, server virtualization, VDI, damn they’re the best at everything! Why? Because every other vendor sucks and makes horrible products. So HDX is great …………. because PCoIP sucks and XenServer is great because vSphere is too expensive.