RSSSun's $50 Million Extreme Makeover
By Ed Oswald | Published May 31, 2005, 11:36 AM
Realizing that its public image is not where it needs to be, Sun on Wednesday will start a $50 million ad campaign to rework its corporate brand. In comparison, the company only spent $14 million for advertising during 2004. The campaign will contain outdoor, print and online ads that highlight the concept of "sharing."
The sharing concept refers to using computer networks to do tasks such as buying a car, shopping online or keeping up with the latest sports scores. In order to drive the point home, Sun will use advertising themed on its partnerships with companies such as General Motors, eBay and Major League Baseball.
Sun will also sport a new simple S-curve logo, which it will launch on June 1. The company hopes that the rebranding will give Sun a softer image and a refocus to help it regain lost market share to rival companies.
Sun was hard hit by the tech downturn, as two of its key businesses -- telecom and financial services -- were part of the hardest hit industries. Even as recent as last quarter, Sun was still losing money - although at a much lesser pace than last year. Sun posted a $3 million loss for the quarter, down sharply from a $760 million loss a year earlier.
Ironically, Sun is hoping its new marketing campaign will succeed by de-emphasizing what the company actually does. Focus groups have said that references to General Motors and eBay creative a positive image of Sun, even if they do not understand what Sun's business encompasses.
What is also very strange in this marketing campaign is I can't tell the gender of the people holding up those signs in the Sun ads.
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|And the fight for relevancy and life continues.
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|STUPID STUPID STUPID STUPID STUPID STUPID...
god... someone give me $50 mill please. I've never seen such a lavish waste of money in my entire life. I can't think of a single product from sun worth its weight in today's market that's even worth glancing at. Apple stole their premium workstation thunder, AMD and Intel's 64 bit stuff stole their edge... who put the bomb it dot bomb... SUN DID! with their retarded ideas for ad campaigns advertising their inferiority. If it weren't for legacy systems and contractual tie ins this company would have been gone years ago.
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|To NULLedge: you have lived up to your name!! Sure, it's easy to see fanboys all over BetaNews, Slashdot, K5, OSNews, etc all raving about Linux, but in the real world, Sun is still a big boy.
When you need TOP RATE high availability servers, SPARC/Solaris is still unmatched. SERIOUS servers use Solaris. Sun isn't going anywhere for awhile.
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|AMD and Intel couldn't touch a SPARC/Solaris machine if they tried. You show me an Intel or AMD box with 72 working processors and over 9TB of RAM... You're on crack! Sun, IBM, and HP won't die. AMD is already eating Intel's cake and AMD is hitting limits in technology. Sure... cheap commodity machines tied together using Linux are lovely. I heartily recommend them. But if you want real power per machine, Intel and AMD aren't even playing in the big leagues.
You obviously haven't had the opportunity to use real servers in the real world. SPARC/Solaris time since restart approaches years. Intel time since restart approaches months... if lucky!
It's your ignorance and inexperience that leads you in your beliefs. If you think Sun is going anywhere, you need to stay in the tech industry for another 20 years and then reevaluate your position.
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|Good Call Moose, good call indeed.
Sun is here to stay, back off little boy with your little xeon server.
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|LOL NULLedge isn't a Linux fanboy. ;-)
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|I have had Windows boxes with uptime in years (minus patch downtime), and Linux, Solaris, and HPUX boxes as well. Intel boxes can manage uptime in years as well as your Solaris servers if you know how to manage them properly.
Here you go, 96 processors and 192GB of RAM.
http://www.orionmulti.co...fb2d1da8db565592e34d37a
Just because you have 96 CPUs in your Sun server, it doesn't mean that it's fast.
http://www.tpc.org/tpcc/...s/tpcc_perf_results.asp
You have to build your box(es) to suit the task, you can't just throw an E20K at every problem out there.
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|On the same note, the sun of yesterday is no longer resembling the sun of tomorrow. Look at what they just bought, a storage company. Storage is boring, it's not going to change Sun's misfortune's around, and Sun's importance is dropping rapidly. While yes you can currently get the high end like Sun, (read IBM) you will be able to much more with Dell and HP as well.
Cost matters, and Sun is a premium companies are no longer willing to fork over.
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