What follows is an open invitation to the good people of VMware to change the way they market, from their new advertising agency partner, San Francisco-based Mortar.
After two years of intensive work with the Corporate Marketing and Communications team, we’re convinced the key to helping VMware stand out is to add a lot more community.
So, why is community important to VMware?
Let’s start with what keeps VMware marketers up at night: You can no longer be defined as just an infrastructure company. Or the pioneers of virtualization. You play a big role in mobile. You have a lot to offer the end user. And you are essential if customers are to cavort across the gap between on-prem and cloud.
But all that is technospeak. It’s geek talking to geek. VMware is much more than a company of nerds. VMware provides essential fabric for global enterprise – and thus touches millions, even billions of lives. People. Society. Teachers. Kids. Farmers. Non-engineers. Astronauts. Cows. We help them all.
We think it’s about time the company acknowledged that you are helping our software-obsessed planet became a kinder, gentler, creative and yes, more efficient version of ourselves.
We CAN say bigger things to humanity. Which is important as we seek to drive beyond IT and into the C suite and on to connect with the teams building and publishing apps.
How can VMware use community to connect with its audience on an emotional level?
We have heard it said that VMware does not actually touch end customers, what with your vast network of partners. Trust us. You do. And you need to start telling those stories.
Anyone visiting VMworld can’t help but take away the stirring sense of fervent community in your backpack-sporting brethren.
Engineers are amazingly creative and innovative. But for some reason many abhor marketing—and this unseen force can suppress creativity and the ability to market with power.
We’re on a mission to let loose your creativity and your community, while keeping you connected to your core.
Over the past couple of years, we’ve had some success extracting your human side.
Our work on “What will you leave ahead?” * revealed an enormous opportunity to talk about the impact of VMware on kids in Africa, dairies in India and schools on the Amazon river. “What will you leave ahead?” also fed the desire of VMware’s marketing team to illuminate your customers’ work and tell more human stories—clearly we are not the only ones thinking this element of VMware is a neglected area of marketing opportunity.
And Pat made big use of our “Innovate like a Start-up, Deliver like an Enterprise” theme in his VMworld 2015 keynote.
Ok, so what does Mortar offer VMware?
We chose “mortar” as a name because it means glue. Building connections. Between people and organizations.
Every line of code started with a person. The decision to install VMware and buy even more VMware? That too is a decision by people, influenced by the opinions, experiences and feelings of other people.
VMware has a massive global fan base. So let’s start thinking of your customers that way, and ask ourselves what we can do to heighten their anticipation? Incite action? And stoke the fires of fanaticism for the next gen of VMware?
Or we could just continue to address the market through a complex morass of acronyms and language that only makes sense inside-the-data center. But that doesn’t build community. There’s a place and time for all that, but it’s not the kind of marketing you’ll do with Mortar.
Give us a buzz if you want to have a collaborative conversation about communicating VMware as the head and heart of an amazingly innovative, ridiculously effective, and emotionally-connected global community. We are chomping at the bit to get into it with you right now. mark@mortaragency.com. www.mortaragency.com.
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