Hello Mr. Patel, Let me get this straight. Maya and 3dsMax professionals - presumably long time users - have been hired to evaluate in which areas these other applications add value to their main packages? Aside from the unlikely scenario of Autodesk themselves not knowing their own texture painting/sculpting application would excel in exactly this particular area, virtual production software would have great animation/rigging capabilities, and ICE would be more appreciative than what is natively found in max/maya... you have also used their completely unbiased perspective on what qualifies for the "area of excellence" and made a chart with this "data" for a marketing campaign? The same campaign that has been going on for several years and clearly represents companies official stance.
I wouldn't say Softimage is being kept alive. At best, a "particle plugin" has been put on life support. Discouraging. On Wed, Sep 12, 2012 at 1:07 AM, Maurice Patel <[email protected]>wrote: > Rolling up my sleeves :) > If you don't know me, I (still) head Product/Industry Marketing for M&E > and have posted a couple of times on the forum about our strategy. > First. I'd like to respond to the link to the campaign item that started > this thread http://yfrog.com/h0t6exxtj: > Although I can't say I am particularly fond of that diagram myself (it's > rather ugly), it actually came out of a study commissioned from a third > party research company that hired 3ds Max and Maya animators to evaluate > what (if any) value Softimage, MotionBuilder and Mudbox offered to Maya and > 3ds Max users as a means of determining the value of Suites - so we used it > in the Suites Campaign. > The specific purpose of the campaign is to encourage 3ds max and Maya > users to buy Suites; so yes it focuses only on the areas of these > applications that offer significant value above and beyond what Maya and > 3ds max can already do. It is not meant to be an exhaustive description of > those applications capabilities. > I know Autodesk Marketing is often hard to fathom - heck it is for us too, > but if we want Softimage to survive we (the marketing team) need to work > with the system not against it. We are not going run a campaign to switch > Maya or 3ds max users to Softimage - that would kill our business and > create a massive customer outcry for no real gain. Any expectation that we > would do that is unrealistic. So, if we are not going to do that, then we > need to find a better way to get people to adopt Softimage and, while not > perfect, Suites has been our best bet yet. > Given that, take a pause and ask objectively "where is Autodesk's real > opportunity here?" Is it to run a campaign encouraging Softimage users to > add Maya (or 3ds max) to their toolset? Or vice versa? Which would (1) be > the better business decision and (2) get Softimage in the hands of more > users? > You will probably reach the same conclusion we did. > In terms of overall exposure, I am not going to deny that Softimage is > less visible than when it was part of Avid. Then Softimage was run as its > own entity and there was 100% focus on one(ish) product (ish because there > was actually a few more than one). That is not the case now. Autodesk runs > its business pretty much as one centralized operation for the sale of > efficiency and scale and so M&E competes with hundreds of other Autodesk > products for mind share when it comes to marketing investment and > visibility - and M&E is not the largest part of Autodesk's business. This > dictates exactly how much coverage M&E gets and how many and what products > we can feature on things like the home page. Oddly enough though, the bulk > of our web traffic actually goes directly to the product pages so it can be > argued that this specific point is moot anyway. But yes, visibility is > reduced and suffers as a function of a given product's ranking in the > Autodesk product stack. > Believe me, I have similar discussions with Flame users who also believe > we have abandoned marketing Flame. Deep down most of this is related to our > centralized marketing processes discussed above and not to any individual. > This is not going to change nor is it clear that any alternative could be > successful and/or profitable. Or at least not in the sense one might > expect. In the long run Suites and Cloud Services are changing the way > Autodesk views products but not in the traditional sense. My team's > constant challenge is therefore to figure out how to increase visibility > within the systems we have - be it through more aggressive social media > strategies (why we launched the Softimage Facebook page) or other methods. > While the good old days have nostalgic value (and yes we remember when > Discreet Logic had its own website, as did Alias and Softimage, with their > own dedicated Marketing resources), we have long realized we can never go > back to those days. The battles have moved on to new battlefields - but it > does continue! > Maurice > > Maurice Patel > Autodesk : Tél: 514 954-7134 > > >
