This post is in response to an Adobe Digital Marketing Blog post, which discusses the rationale behind Bombardier‘s recent and continuing use of Adobe’s Experience Manager. The blog is titled “Bombardier and Adobe Experience Manager – Unifying the brand of planes and trains”.

Adobe Experience Manager is a software that combines an organization’s existing webpages into one uniform platform. This is especially useful for companies like Bombardier that have many international markets and websites and at least one large diversification in their product mix; for Bombardier, this is planes and trains. By unifying Bombardier’s online content, Experience Manager has effectively allowed the brand to be perceived in one distinctive way.

Companies such as Virgin have had a lot of success by extending their brand into new markets. They leverage their existing positive perception of being a reliable organization in order to gain market share in entirely new markets. This is a common process for many large companies. However, what I found interesting about Bombardier’s story is how they are doing the same process in reverse order. They have existing market share in both the train industry and in the aerospace industry in many international markets, and they are pulling all that back. Regrouping, in a sense. They are attempting to ensure that their extensions are all portraying the same carbon copy image before further dissonance occurs between the major departments of the brand.

A unique aspect of Bombardier is the fact that it is the world’s only innovator in both the train industry and the plane industry. This is their big claim to fame, and in order to showcase it effectively, a level of consistency in the way that each is marketed has been adopted.

More information on Bombardier’s story can be found in this Adobe Success Story.

Ryan, a classmate of mine in my introductory marketing course, recently responded to the slanderous marketing campaign of Microsoft in his blog. Microsoft launched a video that aimed to discount the innovations of Apple. The video, which features two colleges (representing Apple employees) presenting their latest breakthroughs and creative designs to a boss-figure, was quickly taken off the air after widespread negative consumer feedback.

I quite enjoyed reading Ryan’s post as the controversial video had previously never made it past my eyes and his analysis of the video was comprehensive and clear. There was, however, one point where our opinions differed, albeit a minimally important aspect. Many public viewers speculated that superiors in the video were meant to  intentionally resemble Steve Jobs and other Apple execs. Ryan, however, stated that he did not believe this resemblance to be an intentional action on part of Microsoft. Conversely, when I initially viewed the commercial, I made the assumption that they were in fact meant to represent the Apple execs. Regardless of whether or not Ryan’s view is correct, the commercial crossed the line of appropriate and ethical marketing and is simply ineffective.

This negligible variation in our opinions does not take away from Ryan’s overall message. I was pleased to see that he included the Samsung ad in his blog because I truly enjoyed Samsung’s commercial when I saw it on TV. It accomplished what Microsoft intended to. By poking fun at an established competitor in a humourous and coherent fashion, they effectively outline, not only where Apple may be behind but, more importantly, they indicate where their product is in relative terms. There are many reasons why Microsoft’s commercial was unsuccessful, but a key element is that they neglected to indicate that they have been innovating as well.