>  Editor's Note: Loved this "competing tools" trick Synopsys Marketing
>  tried.  Everyone reads it as Mentor FastScan because they're their big
>  ATPG rival, but legally Synopsys can claim they were talking about
>  someone else!  Don'tcha just love EDA press releases, folks?  - John
>
>      - from http://www.deepchip.com/wiretap/061114.html


From: Lou Covey <lou=user domain=vitalcompr hot palm>

Hi, John,

I just read the little dust-up between Mentor and Synopsys in November on
the Wiretap and caught your little slap at EDA press releases.

You're right, of course.  Most press releases, especially in EDA, are crap.
What many people don't realize is that press releases are not written for
the purpose they are actually intended for.  You might think that a press
release is written for the media, but that's not true anymore.

Today's EDA press releases are written primarily by Sales (not Marketing)
people, or by Marketing people under the direction of Sales people.  And
the primary use of the press release is as a leave-behind by the Sales
people on sales calls.

Giving the press what they need to report is, at best, secondary in
consideration.

How have we come to this sorry state of affairs?  In 2006, InformationWeek
published a survey that found most engineers in the IT industry got their
news from press releases.  You can find them all over the web.  They are
published by lots of media sources and appear in Google news searches from
BusinessWire, PR Newswire, MarketWire and tons of other wire services.  The
wire services hit the top of the news searches because of relationships they
have with Google and Yahoo and because they are constantly updated.

And the reason they show up there is because there are fewer publications
and fewer editors to sift through the mounds of SALES RELEASES (there, I
said it) to find actual news.  And the reason there are fewer publications
and editors is because technology companies have been cutting advertising
budgets.

As the amount of true news coverage drops, it becomes harder for companies
to gain 3rd party endorsement (because there is less available) and so the
EDA companies cut their Marketing budget (including Public Relations) and
boost their Sales budgets.  As Marketing decreases in importance and Sales
infrastructure increases, you have Sales driving messaging, not Marketing.

EDA has some very good marketing minds.  (Milan Lazich at Magma immediately
leaps to mind.)  But they don't get a whole lot of support in the corporate
structure or in the budgeting process.

I know I've been critical of Marketing in EDA, but to be specific, there
really isn't much marketing in EDA.  It's pretty much all Sales.

If the EDA leadership wants to know why they don't get respect, they need
to consider how they got to this place.  A sales-heavy philosophy only works
for the short term.  Marketing is for growth, Sales is for survival.

    - Lou Covey
      VitalCom                                   Redwood City, CA