Re: Avid says No to NAB 2008

[Ben Holmes] "I know many companies who do a great deal of business at NAB, millions of dollars every year."

I just spoke with one of my friends yesterday who is in this class. He does millions of dollars a year in sales at NAB, when tracking the leads out over the next few months of follow-up.

That's a good thing.

Especially for him, he says. ;o)

But he was quite blunt with me when I reminded him that millions in sales is not millions in profit.

That's when he admitted to me, that he's not sure that he'd be able to afford it were he not being subsidized by the many manufacturers whose products he represents. He told me how he splits his cost across a bunch of co-op ad programs and that is what makes it palpable.

My point with the article is that Avid is arguably one of the deepest -- if not the deepest -- nonlinear editing and content production and management technologies on the planet. You don't "pitch" it against FCP in 10 to 20 minutes on a loud show floor -- if you make a decision on your tools that way, there is no guarantee that you got it right.

What some people are missing in this is that Avid stayed away from IBC for years and yet Graham Sharp, the guy who is now leading Avid Video, turned in some of the highest numbers in Avid when he headed the European region.

I think that Avid has merely made a decision that basically comes down to this: They can take $2 million and apply it to the kinds of strategies that Graham used in Europe; strategies that involve taking Avid directly to those whose demographic is likely to appreciate the depth and breadth of the kind of media management and file sharing prowess that is at the heart of what Avid does. That kind of story doesn't play well on the battlefloor of NAB. But it does play well when presented to the engineers and key personnel at major broadcasters, film studios and others that make up the vast majority of Avid's customer base.

Best regards,

Ron Lindeboom
creativecow.net
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