By Stephen Phillips
Electronic Data Systems Corp has unleashed an advertising blitz that before year-end will have cost the firm as much as it spent on advertising during the previous decade. The number two computer services provider kicked off the campaign on Sunday with premium slots during the first matches of the NFL American Football season on national TV networks, CBS, Fox and ESPN.
The lavish campaign, EDS’s first such drive on a global scale, spans TV and print media in North America, Europe, Asia, Australia and Latin America. It is aimed at building EDS’s profile with business decision-makers and getting the firm to the tender shortlist – the first base in the IT services bidding war – where it has flagged in recent years.
It is also aimed at drumming up business for its recently-created e-business unit, which the company hopes will net $2bn worth of business by year-end. The Plano, Texas-based company has overhauled its web site to complement the ads, running case studies and providing hotlinks to hand-picked business, technology and government sites.
The firm declined to disclose the cost of the campaign, but new marketing chief, Don Uzzi told a press conference last Friday: What we will spend from September 12 through the fourth quarter is probably what this company has spent in the past decade. Dick Brown, EDS chairman and chief executive said: We have been too low, too long … its time to get the word out [about] what we do and what we’ve been doing.
The campaign, branded EDS Solved pushes the firm as an innovative solutions provider with the people to get the job done. Taking a leaf from the book of mud-slinging presidential candidates, it takes a dig at rival IBM’s ultra-successful electronic business marketing slogan, e-business pointing out the complexities of online transactions and pushing EDS as the one-stop solution.
The revitalized web site addresses the net-phobia of many decision-making executives with headlines variously titled: e- anxiety, e-insomnia and e-denial. The campaign follows hard on the heels of last week’s streamlining of the firm into four tight business units as CEO Brown takes a new broom to the firm. EDS’s growth rate has languished behind industry average growth rates and particularly the soaraway growth of bitter rival IBM Global Services, which has displaced it as market leader. CEO Brown has sworn to reel in IBM Global Services and recapture top slot in the computer services provider marketplace for EDS.
The $400bn global computer services market remains fragmented with no single player achieving more than a 10% share, leaving EDS plenty of time to recover from its years of sluggish growth, analysts say. Company officials predict the total market could double in value in five years fueled by a corporate trend toward renting hardware and software on an outsourced basis. áSee also Barbed Wire.
