 | Let's treat people like kids Adaptec's annual report See Dick lose his shirt. Jim Nelson |  |
|  Adaptec, the largest worldwide producer of SCSI adapters, has sent all its major stockholders its 1996 annual report in the form of ... a children's book. Imagine handing your stockbroker a check for fifty thousand dollars and he hands you "Dick and Jane Blows Your Life Savings On Bubblegum And Tinker Toys". Ah, the world of high-tech finance just gets weirder every minute. Adaptec's explanation goes something along the lines that, in this hazy-crazy world of ours, it's somehow reassuring to read the status of your hard-earned cash in monosyllabic sentences phrased condescendingly. Their marketing people have taken this one step further by investing serious moolah for full-page color ads in all the computer weeklies displaying SCSI host adapters as comic book heroes and Western cowboys. Imagine the artists for Weird Tales or Black Mask being propelled into the future to produce copy for a hardware company. Fascinating stuff, perhaps, but not exactly the way to treat your customers as fiduciary equals. And let's face it -- comic books aren't exactly the winningest market these days. | ||||||||
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| Ad Nauseam http://www.barbecuingpeople.com/nauseam/ | Original text, photography, and artwork copyright © 1995-98 Ad Nauseam and Jim Nelson . All rights reserved. Maintained by Jim Nelson | ||
