Getting things the wrong way round . . .

[Lynn Fredricks]

> I can understand the desire to boost branding on a new site, 
> but there are other ways to do that, like SEO and traditional 
> marketing, without changing the name of the product.

Yes, SEO plays a role, but its an "and" not an "or" part of the total
marketing of a product.

> The last thing I bought from Amazon was this pad for backpacking:
> <http://www.amazon.com/Big-Agnes-Insulated-Sleeping-20x72/dp/B
> 0013MY5S2>
> 
> Note that even though it's sold and shipped from SunDog 
> Outfitters and not Big Agnes directly, the product name is 
> still "Big Agnes Air Core", not "SunDog Outfitter Air Core".
> 
> Big Agnes has worked hard to build their reputation, and 
> SunDog is a newer and relatively unknown entity.  It 
> certainly wouldn't boost sales of this excellent product if 
> customers had to wonder who actually made it.
> 
> Same goes for buying Adobe Illustrator from TigerDirect.  
> They don't rename it "TigerDirect Illustrator".  That would 
> be confusing to the prospective customer.

TigerDirect is a reseller, not a publisher. 

Before the product gets to the customer, it can be touched by:

Developer - engineers of the product
Publisher/Republisher - those that package, market, sell, etc (often but not
always the same as developer)
Distributor - "pick and pack" entities that aggregate products and offer
special terms to resellers
Reseller - bricks and mortar, catalog or online

Partner - bundling/etc, can basically sit in as a reseller or distributor on
cross-, competitive-, complementary- type offers. Then there are plenty of
enablers out there that arent quite one thing or the other.

Resellers rarely get involved in branding or logistics, though there have
been some interesting exceptions. For example, Best Buy packaging
special/exclusive additional disks with certain DVD offerings. My Star Trek
Season 1, for example, came with a special Best Buy disk of goodies.

That's five - depending on your particular market, you'll find more or less.
It is often more complex the more mass market you go; complexity doesn't
necessarily mean worse, because that complexity can also bring in new
customers that would otherwise be inaccessible. Also, with the changing ways
of our industry, you see new types of channel conflict arise that rebalances
how it all works.

There have been many times when Ive sat down with a developer, they've
scratched their heads and said "Damn, I don't want this complexity! Why
can't I just do what I've been doing? Why do I have to give a piece of the
action to someone else?" In those situations, they already realize something
is wrong, they arent growing, their business isnt seeing new horizons - so
they have a reason to sit down to begin with. Maybe they hit a high spot
after about 2-3 years of solid sales, then plateau'd. This happens because
they don't have either the infrastructure or the inside industry knowledge
to know what they should be doing and how to work with the systems that are
in place. 

And even with a new system in place, it has to be constantly nurtured. For
example, Ive dealt with companies that acquire new channels, then view those
same channels as competitors instead of enablers.

This is the sort of thing maybe you and I need to discuss over a half dozen
pints at Revolution Live :-)

> The name is "Revolution". Unless you're altering it to be a 
> different product, why should one product have multiple names?

You can be assured that the installer is the same, and the program
associated with it is under the same EULA. But that's where the similarity
ends.

The notion here is not to provide a completely different name, but a way to
differentiate enough to reduce confusion about this thing I have in my hands
or see on a website. You'll find "Runtime Revolution" in more places this
way - it would confuse matters terribly if we did an actual rename and made
a "Mirye Cross-Platform 'Card Thingy" and it just so happens to really,
really resemble something else.

Dilution is a non-issue; you rarely hear about it except in context where
corporate lawyers have too much time on their hands and need to justify
their existence. If you do a search on "Runtime Revolution" on Amazon after
the product is there, you'll still find it.

Best regards,

Lynn Fredricks
Mirye Software Publishing
http://www.mirye.com

Mirye Community NING
http://miryesoftware.ning.com