LIAM EAGLE: LETTER FROM THE EDITOR

WHIR Magazine, March 2008 - The Marketing Issue

Another marketing issue here, which is always a nice thing for us. There's a certain satisfaction in dealing so thoroughly with marketing every year, since hosts deal with marketing pretty thoroughly every day.

At the same time, we want to be careful not to repeat ourselves too much. And though the precise details of search engine marketing or banner advertising may have changed, we've covered the sort of immutable principles involved at length. And frankly, there are better venues for following the evolution a step at a time.

In the past, we've filled the pages of our marketing issues with practical, how-to style articles about specific areas of marketing endeavor. This year we sought to include material - still practical, mind you - that illustrates through example, bringing you on board some of the biggest undertakings in image, aesthetic and atmosphere the hosting business has seen, that some of the principles on display might inform your own marketing efforts.

In February, I traveled to Houston, Texas to visit the recently completed headquarters of The Planet, and to witness first-hand the results of CEO Douglas Erwin's great corporate culture undertaking. Since being installed at the head of the company created by the merger of EV1 Servers and The Planet - one of the largest organizations in the business - he has worked to merge the "suit" mentality of himself and the investors that brought the companies together with the "geek" culture that pervades the hosting business and that created the two companies in the first place. Chief among the core values at the company is its investment in the people who work there - a change that has seen The Planet implement changes in the way it deals with incentives for employees, enables them to take ownership over products and seeks to instill in them a fundamental consideration for the impact their daily activities have on customers. The result of this so far is a tangible sense that the company's employees are invested in the work they do. And, from what they say, a feeling among customers that good things are happening.

Late in 2007, SWsoft announced that it would be starting 2008 with a new identity, rebuilding its brand from the name down as Parallels. Taking the name from a property acquired by SWsoft in 2004, the undertaking seeks to cast the company - one of the most widely used suppliers of hosting technology, if not one of the most widely known - in a more cohesive image. And to emphasize the fact that the Parallels product line is a system, designed to work most effectively in combination with the company's other software to deliver, as its new slogan suggests, "optimized computing."

In each of these major examples, the company is dealing with an issue specific to its own business. But it is our hope that in reading their stories, you will find more universal notes to inspire change in the design of your own ideas about marketing, branding and culture.

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