The New Sun Ad Campaign

Just in case you haven't seen the new Sun ad campaign, here are the ones that got rejected (there's a tab on that page to see the ones that will actually get run). This comes shortly after they flew a banner over the Dell HQ. This isn't the first time Sun did something like this. You may remember that they tried to hire a fleet of exterminators to attend the Windows 2000 launch to remind people how many bugs it had (the plan was canceled by the owner, who feared that Bill Gates would buy the company just to close it…which should give you an idea how the average person viewed Microsoft at the time). Now, marketing 101 says that if you are a market leader you never mention a competitor, and if you are not a market leader you mention them, so that people put you in the same category. That's clearly what Sun is doing here. I'm not sure I'd want to be in the same category as Dell on this one though. They make cheap servers that are known for being just that – cheap. Sun has traditionally been an innovator, which is something Dell does little of in the server market. I guess times have changed though and you can see why Sun would want to try and change their focus. At any rate, they are getting some major press out of the deal, so mission accomplished. IBM did a non-traditional marketing blitz when they started to support Linux, and look how well it worked for them. Sun is clearly in a different spot than IBM was, and the campaign has a much different slant…but generating that buzz was the same end goal.
–jeremy
Sun, Dell, IBM, Marketing