Big Blue Launches Ads With Attitude, Targeting Microsoft

Big Blue Launches Ads With Attitude, Targeting Microsoft

IBM's Combative Campaign Pits New OS/2 2.1 System Against Windows and DOS

By Laurie Hays, Staff Reporter
The Wall Street Journal

May 18, 1993

For International Business Machines Corp., struggling for a bigger chunk of the multibillion-dollar personal computer software market, it's no more Mr. Nice Guy.

The gloves have come off with the start of an acid ad campaign for a new, advanced operating system, OS/2 2.1, that IBM announces today and hopes will outdo a competing version that Microsoft Corp. plans to announce next week.

"Nice Try" IBM says in a full-page ad in last week's trade journals. The letters N and T are highlighted in a big, bold capital-sized sneer at Microsoft's Windows NT program. On the next page, the oversized text reads, "Not just up and coming. Up and running," implying that Microsoft is running behind Big Blue.

IBM and its agency, Interpublic Group's Lintas, also plan a blitz of ads in Sports Illustrated and USA Today pegged to the Indianapolis 500, which does all its scoring and record-keeping using the IBM OS/2 2.1 system. One of the ads pictures a hand-held globe with a chunk cut out. The core reveals OS/2 2.1 and the slices include Microsoft's existing operating systems, Windows and DOS, suggesting that they will soon run on OS/2 2.1 as well.

Noting that Microsoft, the industry leader in software operating systems by a longshot, has never been "sensitive" to its competitors, IBM concedes its new stance is born of desperation.

"We've been just plugging along, talking about our products," says Wally Casey, IBM's director of marketing for personal software products. "Then last March, a group of dealers and managers that meets regularly, said, `Wally, you've got to get aggressive.' And we decided to go ahead and do it."

Only two years ago, Microsoft was actually an IBM partner helping to develop the predecessor program, OS/2 2.0. But Microsoft later walked away from the project.

IBM says OS/2 2.1 will serve such sophisticated business users as hotel chains and car rental companies, as well as the Indy 500, that need to coordinate a variety of computer programs as well as multimedia, such as text, sound, still pictures and video. Its advantage over Microsoft's current Windows program is that it can operate a 32-bit PC system. The potential market is billions of dollars, or the chance to outfit around 35 million to 40 million machines.

Some industry experts are asking why IBM is targeting a general-interest market which may not necessarily be buying the sophisticated OS/2 2.1. IBM's Mr. Casey, says the point is product and name recognition.

But Microsoft says it finds IBM's newfound advertising boldness strange. "It's very confusing to me why IBM is doing this," says Dwayne Walker, director of Microsoft's Windows NT and networking products. But Mr. Walker says he isn't losing any sleep over IBM's OS/2 2.1. Windows NT is a more sophisticated product that, when it's released, won't even fall in the "same realm" as OS/2 2.1, he says. Microsoft is itself planning an industrywide ad effort starting next week, but promises it will be more low-key.