"Why you NEED product X" line is wearisome

Francis

I appreciate our friends in the marketing department's efforts to keep the sales coming for FL, but there is a wearisome cumulative effect to seeing blog posts of the kind "do you need another commentary set?". One becomes cynical and thinks "boy, is there ever suspense as to what the suggested answer will be!". I would be perfectly fine with a line such as "a great opportunity to acquire a useful commentary set" or something along those lines. But the why you need line is a crude approach to advertisement and I find it somewhat insulting of the intelligence of Logos users. 

I don't mean this as a scathing criticism, but as feedback. As I wrote earlier, I know it is important to FL to generate continuous sales to sustain business and development. And, as a matter of fact, advertising sales can also be a beneficial service to users. Just wishing for a simpler, yet more elegant communication style. 

If I may use an analogy without drawing undue comparisons between people, I would compare as a positive model the way Eli Evans typically communicates on the forums (there are others who do it well) as opposed to some other more defensive and one-sided staff who in the final analysis seem to care more about the product than genuinely for the interests of the users. Transferring this in the sphere of marketing, there can be advertisement that come across as more genuine in terms of promoting mutual interest and others that seem to want to trick people to spend more  and feels like the gold tooth car salesperson approach. I hope this analogy makes some sense.

I reiterate: this is not scathing criticism, just feedback and something of a suggestion of improvement.

mab

Content is mythic. It's useful up to the point that someone will dig deeper into it, not that so much is there you won't fail to find something useful. 

Marketing caters to the fear of missing out. After a certain point, you aren't missing anything significant.

Doc B

Francis said:

but there is a wearisome cumulative effect to seeing blog posts of the kind "do you need another commentary set?". One becomes cynical and thinks "boy, is there ever suspense as to what the suggested answer will be!". I would be perfectly fine with a line such as "a great opportunity to acquire a useful commentary set" or something along those lines. But the why you need line is a crude approach to advertisement and I find it somewhat insulting of the intelligence of Logos users. 

Interesting observation. I've thought similarly, but haven't posted here due to the requisite push-back that occurs.

This is one of the worrisome parts of the FL world that seems to go unacknowledged: the difference between providing a product for which there is a natural market ("It sells itself!") and providing a product for which a market needs to be artificially created on a constant basis. Logos Corp. lived in the former for many years. I see hints FL Corp is now moving (has moved?) into the latter as a result (of many things, but partly) of their rapid expansion of product lines.

Marketing is just doing their jobs. I don't begrudge that. But if it starts to sound shrill, look out.

DMB

Hmmm.  This one is tricky.  

If they told me I NEEDED the Ugarit databank, and then why, I'd appreciate it.  I'm always surprised how far Rick has got with the ancient/cultural  resource thing.  Yesterday, it pointed to the databank.   Well, hello.  Now I have to investigate.  Maybe they blogged it.

For new customers, is it boilerplate?  I'm trying to remember just a few years back, when NEED was the big question.