Back when dinosaurs ruled the earth I was a technical writer at a software company. These were the days when software came with printed user guides, which I wrote.
I was NOT the de facto product marketer at this software company; the owner was. But during my tenure I observed how he marketed the evolving line of products through three distinct phases. I’m presenting these phase in the chronological order of the company, not the logical order.
Phase One: Multiple Related Products
When I joined Logic eXtension Resources (LXR), the company was transitioning from consulting work to becoming the leading software provider for users of the THEOS (formerly OASIS) operating system (Wikipedia). THEOS could be configured as a multi-user operating system that could run on (souped up) microcomputer hardware, and thus was an attractive alternative to minicomputers running UNIX.
And LXR provided the business applications: multiCALC for spreadsheets, multiWRITE for word processing, multiMAIL (which I recall nothing about), and multiPERT for project management.
Speaking of dinosaurs, this was when Lotus 1-2-3 was prominent in PC-DOS and MS-DOS circles. You may recall the key word associated with Lotus: integrated. (One prospect at a trade show asked if multiCALC was integrated—it wasn’t—but I doubt he even knew what the word meant.) But in the mind of the consumer, Lotus and the future Microsoft Office caused these seemingly disparate software packages to be regarded as a unified offering.
So the four products I mentioned were loosely related, inasmuch as all of them were business applications, and all ran on THEOS. “Hey, you know that spreadsheet you have? We have a word processor also!”
So we had customers using all four products, and I was eating my own wildebeest food and writing all my user manuals in multiWRITE.
Until I didn’t.
Phase Two: Multiple Unrelated Products
Behind the scenes, LXR shifted to the Macintosh computer for internal work, including my user manuals. We all admired the elegance of the Mac for developers and users alike.
At the same time, the owner decided to pursue his personal interest in education and launched a product that didn’t fit on THEOS and didn’t fit in the “multi” product line.
Enter LXR*TEST, an educational measurement/test generation software package for the Macintosh that created test banks of questions incorporating text and graphics. Questions from the test banks could then be incorporated into individual tests. And if you didn’t want to create your own test banks, third parties were creating test banks in LXR*TEST format.
So, how did the owner/product marketer market LXR*TEST along with all the “multi” products?
He didn’t.
The two product lines served two completely different target audiences. THEOS business prospects didn’t care a whit about test generation, and educators on Macs had no use for a THEOS word processor.
So LXR marketed separately to its target audiences, addressing their individual needs.
Phase Three: One Product
Eventually I left LXR and after a few years drifted into the wonderful world of biometrics.
I can’t remember exactly when LXR discontinued its THEOS products, but eventually it concentrated exclusively on LXR*TEST, bowing to the inevitable and releasing a Windows version to complement its Mac version.
Even after LXR was acquired, the parent company continued to offer LXR*TEST for years afterwards.
Of course this allowed LXR to devote its product marketing attention exclusively to the testing market.
Until LXR*TEST, and LXR itself, faded away.
Like several of my other employers that no longer exist in their initial form.
Bredemarket 