STEP BACKGROUND
Designers are a difficult market segment to reach when it comes to software. They are the most technophobic when it comes to using new tools and their adoption cycle are slower than the rest of the early adoptor market. We saw this behavior with the desktop publishing and CD-ROM multimedia technological advances. Once designers see and experience the value of these new tools, they often become loyal converts. In this new software category of Web authoring, there were few tools. NetObjects Fusion was an application developed from the ground up using the best practice and conventions from Desktop Publishing (DTP) and Multimedia applications. It was a great product for the time and it needed to build a large install base that would be loyal over the life cycle of the application. We decided to go after professional designers and we knew that we needed to accelerate the adoption cycle. The best way to do this is was to launch the marketing to designers with the release of NetObjects Fusion for Macintosh. A six-month marketing campaign was mounted to target designers. This was in addition to an overall marketing campaign with trade and business publications, trade shows, banner ad media purchases, road shows and other PR efforts.

STEP OUTCOME
To encourage consideration, the campaign used well-known designers to challenge and provoke assumptions about the web as a new medium. By appealing to designers’ philosophical side, the ads showed that NetObjects understood the designers’ concern and that they would develop appropriate tools. The call to action was for the readers to visit the NetObjects website and download a trial version of the software. There was a noticeable boost on the number of trial downloads whenever these ads ran. The challenge then was to convert these into sales. It required NetObjects to be timely with direct sales and provide excellent technical support. For a nine-month period in 1996 and 1997, NetObjects Fusion was the top Web-authoring tool of choice.

Ad campaign
		Who's in charge here? | Bill Drentell and Jessica Helfand Launch your browser and log on to the Web: What do you see? A spin - ning, flaming logo? A pictographic wayfinding system that?s an organizational straightjacket of arrows and buttons and needlessly clickable text? Typographic frenzy? Strange geometry? A strident disregard for anything even remotely imaginative? Maybe. Still, there are qualities to this new medium that take us far beyond what?s possible on a static page. Filmic qualities. Emotional qualities. An opportunity to tell stories in dramatically different ways. An opportunity to invent something new. creative brief. enlarge
		Is Print Dead? | Massimo Vignelli You?d think the Web was the Second Coming. In its early days, zealots were screaming the Web would put traditional designers out of business. Well, things have calmed won. The hype is over. And now, people are starting to see the Web for what it is. It?s another medium for communication. Put in the hands of great designers, it can entertain, teach, educate, enthrall. Put in the hands of shams, and, well, you get stuff tht?s ugly, nonsensical, and ho-hum. enlarge
		This is live. What do you have to say. | Tibor Kalman This is live. What do you have to say! enlarge