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© 2001 by Rick Altman. All Rights Reserved.
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There are many things that have me shaking my head in disbelief these days as I watch the nightly news or my preferred Sunday morning talk shows. One of them is the weekly debate about whether this country is or is not in a recession. This is particularly absurd because a “recession” carries with it a specific definition—two consecutive quarters of negative growth—and so there should be no debate. It is doubly absurd because we do not need a label to ascertain the health of our economy.
It reminds me, if you’ll pardon the digression, of the glory days of the San Francisco 49ers, in the 1980s, led by football expert Bill Walsh. The Bay Area sports columnists had an affinity for using the word “genius” to describe Coach Walsh, but they wouldn’t so much come out and call him one as they would publicly speculate as to whether he was one. Is Bill Walsh a genius?, they would regularly ask. Or must you be a rocket scientist to get that moniker? Calling for that reverse on fourth down—that was the work of a genius. But what about when he had Joe Montana run a bootleg with just 45 seconds left to play—that wasn’t very smart. Maybe he isn’t a genius after all. Mr. Walsh's intelligence was akin to a commodity being traded on the stock exchange: one day he was a genius, the next day just ordinary.
Sorry, but it just doesn’t work that way. He is what he is, irrespective of the label that is prescribed to him by those in charge of passing them out. And so, too, does this apply to our nation’s economy. We do not need to have a label affixed to it for us to know that the situation has changed, and I would just as soon not be privy to the nightly debate as to whether we are or we are not in a recession.
I also would prefer not to be asked to believe that our economic downturn is exclusively bad news. Granted, our 2200-square foot home in Silicon Valley is no longer worth a million dollars, and our modest portfolio of stock holdings is, well...we won’t go there, okay? But do you know what else I see? I see:
Simply put, for how long will entry-level graphic designers be willing and able to pony up the dollars that Adobe and Quark software commands before taking an earnest look at CorelDRAW and VENTURA Publisher?
Corel’s chief competition has enjoyed a juggernaut of acclaim and status, and on both counts, Corel has suffered as a result. It is beneath the intention of this column to question the success of Adobe InDesign, Photoshop, Framemaker, or Quark Xpress. These programs deserve the acclaim they have earned, whether from programming prowess or marketing might. But their status as expensive, valuable, and coveted commodities...that is a dynamic worth scrutinizing.
It’s commonly referred to as the Rolls Royce dynamic: The more expensive a company makes a product, the greater the propensity for consumers to perceive value in it, and the more they tend to crave ownership of it. Adobe prices Photoshop at over $600 and packages it as a stand-alone, premium application. And it is a must-have item for most graphic artists. Would it have been any less of a product if it were priced at $295? How about no extra charge at all, as is the case with Corel PHOTO-PAINT? Of course not, but it would have been perceived as less of a product. I experienced this phenomenon first-hand when I opened my consulting practice. My $45/hour fees were too low for me to be taken seriously by many of the businesses in San Francisco. Doubling my fees resulted in a doubling of my client pool. Was I any smarter? Well, charging double turned out to be an accidental stroke of brilliance, but was I intrinsically smarter because I was more expensive? Of course not.
How long can companies afford to subscribe to the Rolls Royce methodology of buying software? Buying according to the standard I understand, and Corel will be fighting that battle through the life of its software. But perceiving value solely as a function of price—the sign of the times must be a death knell to that way of thinking. Corel would do well to capitalize on these shifting priorities.
This is destined to be a column full of digressions, so here is the next one. Do you remember the presidential election of 1988, when Vice President George Bush defeated Governor Michael Dukakis? Bush prevailed because, among several factors, he managed to turn “liberal” into a dirty word. He accused Dukakis of being a liberal. He called him a “card-carrying member” of the ACLU.
Dukakis took the bait. First, he denied it, rolling out several examples of conservative measures he took in Massachusetts. Next, he orchestrated a photo session in which he rode in a tank, wearing a combat helmet. Then, he shot himself in the foot in his robotic response to CNN’s George Bernard Shaw, who began one of the presidential debates with a question that personalized the candidate’s position on abortion (“If Kitty Dukakis were raped...”). And finally, he succumbed to an overly-rehearsed response about how he was a liberal “in the tradition of John F. Kennedy,” whatever that meant.
To this day, I sit in amazement over Dukakis’s acceptance of the negative connotation of the label. What’s so bad about being liberal? Why did Dukakis allow Bush to cast it in such a bad light? Why did Dukakis vanquish his soul, and practically his entire platform, to run away from the word? Why did he have to disassociate himself with the ACLU, and what does it even mean to be a “card-carrying member”? Don’t all members of clubs have cards? Would it have been any less horrific if he were a member of the ACLU but he didn’t keep a membership card in his wallet? (And to end this digression before it gets too absurd, did anyone ask Governor Dukakis to furnish the dreaded ACLU membership card?)
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Referring to CorelDRAW as well-priced software has been akin to George Bush calling Michael Dukakis a liberal. What’s wrong with aggressive pricing? Nothing, unless you couple it with the program’s permanent residence under Windows—then, the label is born: CorelDRAW is a tool for amateurs. The company has spent nearly a decade running away from the label.
It’s time to stop running. It’s time for Corel to stop allowing others to place labels on it. It’s time for the company to play to its strengths, rather than shy away from a perceived weakness. There has never been a better opportunity to extol the virtues of a product that sells for less than half of its competition. And I’d volunteer to write the ad or Web site copy:
Just because you are cutting back
doesn’t mean you have to settle for less.
Look what $495 can get you...
CorelDRAW does not have to retreat from its status as a card-carrying Windows program with a low price tag, even as it courts the Macintosh market. Let’s see CorelDRAW maintain a more upright posture and embrace all of its virtues, most notably its price. And with a new version of VENTURA Publisher on the horizon, the time to launch this campaign is right now.
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If Corel wants to have a label associated with it, how about this one: The maker of software that is ideally suited for its industry and perfectly priced for the times.
Copyright 2001, All rights reserved. Have an opinion? Share it with the Corel community at the CorelWORLD Forum. There is already quite a bit of discussion about this story. Join in.
May 2007: As simple as possible, but not simpler... · April 2007: Killer Keystrokes · March 2007: Resolution Confusion · January 2007: Fearless Forecasts for 2007 · November 2006: Epiphanies at PowerPoint Live 2006 · August 2006: Escaping Death by PowerPoint · July 2006: Notes from the Floor of InfoComm · June 2006: Beyond PowerPoint--Making Movies for Business and Pleasure, Part II · May 2006: Beyond PowerPoint--From Photos to DVDs · April 2006: It’s Your Music!--Overcoming the oppressive restrictions of iTunes · March 2006: CorelDraw X3—A few must-haves and a few missed opportunities, all in all, a credible upgrade · February 2006: Making Windows Inhabitable · January 2006: Fearless Forecasts for 2006 · September 2005: Just What is a Background Anyway? · August 2005: Meet David Dobson, Corel's New CEO · July 2005: Community, Blind Dates. and Albert Einstein: An Interview with the PowerPoint Live Conference Host · June 2005: CorelWorld 2005: Image Editors, Executive Appearances, and Krispy Kremes · May 2005: As Adobe's Shadow Grows, Is Corel Better off or Worse? · March 2005: Delivering Your Presentation: How Close to the Source Can You Get? · February 2005: Digital Photography: The Killer App of this Generation Part II · January 2005: Digital Photography: The Killer App of this Generation · November 2004: A Killer Deal for Corel Or Another Distraction? · September 2004: The Scourge that is Kazaa and AOL Instant Messenger · August 2004: The Golden Triangle: Presenter, Audience, and Slides · July 2004: A Blast from the Past: How Fast is Fast Enough? · June 2004: Guilty Pleasures · May 2004: A Personal Wish List for PowerPoint 12 · April 2004: Eyedropping: Version 12 makes a good tool even better... · March 2004: Deadly Sins Of Modern PowerPoint Usage · February 2004: Is the even-numbered curse finally over? · January 2004: Another take on Achieving Absence of Ugliness · November 2003: What can we do it again??--Debut of PowerPoint Live Leaves Unquenchable Thirst with the Host · September 2003: Corel Corp. Has a New Custodian · July 2003: Candor and Contrition at CorelWORLD · June 2003: What a Long, Great Trip It’s Been! · May 2003: The Boat that Corel is Missing · April 2003: No Fooling...Is Corel Breaking Up? · March 2003: The Annual Design-a-Brochure Contest · February 2003: Symbolism is Everything · January 2003: Mania, Our Semi-Annual Pilgrimage to Holland · October 2002: On Creativity, Problem-Solving, and Paper Bags · July 2002: CorelDRAW 11: Surprise, Surprise... · May 2002: The Sound of Silence: What does it mean when a company plays its cards so close to its chest? · April 2002: The Art and Science of Presentation Graphics--Creating for the Screen Has its own Challenges · March 2002: CorelDRAW 11: What kind of personality and attitude should a software program have today? · February 2002: Oy, my aching fingers... · December 2001: Digital Photography · November 2001: Can we say goodbye to the Rolls Royce Mentality? · October 2001: An Unforgettable Week: The drama that unfolded around CorelWORLD · August-September 2001: The Art of Paragraphics: New-age ingredients for success with Corel VENTURA · July 2001: Your Very Own Interface: How to make Corel applications read your mind · June 2001: Fighting the Font Wars: How to stay sane with your sans · May 2001--Turning the Key at Nicholas-Applegate · April 2001--A Modest Proposal for Reviving VENTURA Publisher
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