From: Ramon Chen
Sent: Tuesday, January 29, 2002 5:24 PM
To: *All MetaTV
Subject: Hot News Alert: MetaTV Platform – New market positioning and renamed product line
Hello all,
Thanks to the joint collaboration of all departments and all the research, reviews and meetings, we are delighted to announce that we will be issuing a press release shortly that will emphasize MetaTV’s new messaging and positioning to the marketplace.
Although the changes will at first appear subtle, we hope the impact will be significant, positioning us to continue our strong momentum throughout 2002 and beyond.
Timely shifts in messaging are important in order for a company such as ours to continue to adapt to an evolving industry such as iTV. In addition, it is an opportunity to continue to set the standard and pace for the industry as well as a high bar for any competition. We do this by building upon the incredible amount of value we are widely known for today and demonstrating the incredible new capabilities we have added since our last public announcement this past June.
Together with the new messaging and positioning there are also some product renaming impacts. One key shift is to extend our technology platform positioning beyond our previous “portal” emphasis and to key in on the automation and optimization of all iTV applications, services and content (for more details, see the section “3. How we got here and why the changes” below).
1. The New Stuff
Our single descriptive sentence for MetaTV is now:
• MetaTV is a global provider of software that enables the automation and optimization of interactive television (iTV) applications, services and content.
Our previous main product line name MetaTV Universal Portal Platform (UPP) is retired (goes away) and is replaced by 3 main groups of offerings:
• MetaTV Platform
• MetaTV Design Studio
• MetaTV Advanced Applications
Within each grouping there are product renames to remove direct references to the term portal and to better position the value of our technology in sales and marketing situations.
MetaTV Platform consists of:
• MetaTV Application Server (formerly MetaTV Portal Server). Within the MetaTV Application Server is the MetaTV Services Manager (Admin, Security, Self-Provisioning etc) as well as the Content Repository and Syndication Engine (formerly MetaTV Syndication Server)
• MetaTV Application Client (formerly MetaTV Portal Assistant)
• MetaTV Commerce Server
• MetaTV Advertising Server
Note that we are dropping from our external positioning and collateral the MetaTV Personalization Server, MetaTV Enhanced Server and MetaTV Content Manager product names
MetaTV Design Studio (formerly MetaTV Portal Studio) consists of:
• MetaTV Application Designer (formerly MetaTV Portal Designer)
• MetaTV Syndication Designer
MetaTV Applications consists of:
• MetaTV TV Assistant
• Any MetaTV deployed Portal, Virtual Channel, VOD/MOD app interface and additional apps to come
2. What now?
As mentioned, we will soon be issuing a press release. Our website has already been updated for an initial transition (more updates and changes will follow).
As with any product repositioning, messaging and naming there are several impacted areas e.g. collateral (hardcopy, web etc.), presentations, product interfaces, documentation, etc. We know we are all working hard to implement new capabilities and have many projects ongoing. Our goal should be to transition naming at the most externally visible points of contact first (for example product interfaces/help text/doc/splash screens) first. Internal terminology, documentation and references should evolve gradually over time as new work is done.
Thank you for taking the time to read this, I hope it gives you a base level overview our upcoming announcement. We will be going into more detail at our offsite annual company kickoff (MetaTV Global Summit 2002) this Thursday, Jan 31st. In the meantime, if you are interested, the next section provides further background on how our branding and positioning has evolved.
3. How we got here and why the changes?
When MetaTV first entered the iTV space there was a lot of noise. The excitement about this new emerging industry was competing withthe pre-existing negative stigma associated with iTV’s prior failures in the mid-1990s (FSN in Orlando, etc). As a consequence, MetaTV’s marketing and brand building task not only involved establishing a reputation among partners and customers, but also convincing the press that there were viable business models and demand from various customer segments for specific kinds of iTV offerings. The landscape consisted of companies such as RespondTV, Wink etc who were focusing on the advertising space as well as betting on the higher end boxes such as the DCT5000. There were also companies such as ICTV, WorldGate. CommerceTV who were potential competitors but also potential partners. Middleware providers such as Liberate, Microsoft and OpenTV as well as set-top box manufacturers such as Scientific Atlanta and Motorola were also key players which we had to influence and partner with.
MetaTV’s positioning was predicated on capturing a pragmatic segment of the market looking to deploy what was widely known as “portals”. i.e. the AOL model. To the skeptics in the press, this was one concept that had been somewhat validated in the Internet model (note that this was in 1999/early 2000 pre-dotcom implosion) as well as validated by deployments such as BskyB in the U.K. By reasoning that a simple, functional portal would form the core of a service that would enable a network operator to extend their branding, we positioned our technology to articulate the value of how we could address the significant cost and risk associated with developing and maintaining a portal. Our product line naming and outbound marketing messages focused on portals (e.g. Portal Designer, Portal Server and the Universal Portal Platform) and through everyone’s hardwork and efforts we were able to capture significant attention and mind share, building a strong reputation quickly.
This differentiated us from other players at the time to allow us to “own” the portal category. Other players such as AccelerateTV (subsequently acquired by RespondTV), Excite@Home, MSNTV, InfoSpace etc have all attempted to “enter our space”. None have been successful and through proven execution, good partnering and proactively influencing analysts and press, we established what could be considered an industry leadership “gorilla” position in the iTV portal technology segment with minimal marketing spend. By securing strong funding and backing from key network operators and contracts to build out custom branded TV portals for Cox and Comcast, as well as deploying implementations such as InnMedia, Ford/JWT, E*Trade, Cablevision, E! Online, Worldspan and Zap2IT we continue to strengthen our position and expertise.
One caveat of a portal focused positioning was that although it appealed to the basic needs of the network operators at the time. It did not resonate with TV programmers who viewed portals as being associated with non-broadcast programming, taking eye-balls away from their bread and butter programming. As we continued to add innovative technology to our platform, we presented those capabilities in depth to potential customers and have received very positive reception to the notion of MetaTV as “the” platform for automating and optimizing iTV (i.e. providing the development, management, distribution and execution of all applications, services and content on their environment and infrastructure). This positioning more strongly resonates with the value that network operators are willing to pay for (e.g. Rogers and Comcast’s VOD/MOD plans) and aligns with their thinking of what they need to have in place to effectively monetize iTV. The messaging also has met with excellent feedback from programmers (e.g. Golf Channel, Scripps) who feel that it allows them a path to distribute their content ubiquitously without significant upfront investments.
As a result, we feel the time is right to key in on the additional value we deliver and as a result some product renaming was required. The MetaTV Universal Portal Platform name has been dropped and now we refer to the MetaTV Platform, MetaTV Design Studio and MetaTV Advanced Applications. By transitioning the name of the Portal Server to MetaTV Application Server we align ourselves with an industry standard term that represents a lot of perceived value and allows us to emphasize that our solution is specifically architected for iTV. We have also tested the messaging with leading analysts who agree that our positioning outlines a grand vision of what is needed to allow iTV to be successful.
We would not even be able to begin to achieve this level of positioning and messaging, without everyone’s innovative efforts evolving our technology. Recent advancements include the suite of compelling service management functions that support the rollout of all iTV content, applications and services, continued maturation of our design suite, world-class applications such as MetaTV TV Assistant, new enabling technology such as the MetaTV Application Client (MAC, formerly MPA), our continuing ability to realize our promise of deploying optimized offerings to a wide variety of hardware and middleware solutions and many more.
As a result, we are able to adapt our positioning and messaging to align our development and sales efforts to the next phase of growth for MetaTV and look forward to continuing to amaze our customers, partners, the industry and ourselves throughout 2002.