One person wrote a thoughtful private reply to my earlier comment that IBM is
doing us all a favor by running their advertisement:

> Your customers are probably the exception to the rule, but I think that
>  the majority of 'pointy haired' manager types won't make the connection.
>  In fact, I think that some of the manager types in a lot of
>  organizations wouldn't even know if they had a S/390.  The 'Peter
>  Principal' in full blown glory!
>
>  I think that if HP wants to sway people over or back, they need to be
>  much more vocal about the virtues of the HP3000.  An add like the one
>  mentioned would be a good start.  The blanket adds are nice, but the
>  need to keep up with more adds and different approaches.

It's important to recognize that the primary motivation behind IBM's ad is
customer stabilization, the minimization of back-end abandonment of S/390's.
The important tag line of the ad is: "You already own it!"

IBM is generating no new revenue (at least immediately) off of such a
campaign. But, by letting IBM pay for a series of ads like this one, the ad
WILL do installed HP3000's approximately as much good as it does current S/390
owners.

Moving off of one (legacy, proprietary) mainframe system onto another is an
extremely expensive proposition. No one, not even the pointiest-haired
manager, would propose doing that. The tendency is, and always will be,
towards cheaper, not necessarily better. The point of this specific ad is
precisely to educate the pointy-hair managers of the extraordinary value they
already have in hand.

The moral of that education is universal.

But my saying all of this should not be taken to mean that I am opposed to HP
running more ads for the HP3000, particularly eye-catching, aggressive ads,
without a hint of defensiveness in them.

Wirt