My Flex Ad Campaign Suggestions

So Ryan Stewart rightly flamed Adobe for a poor execution of an ad campaign they were running on some of the Federated Media sites. In one of the comments, Jeff Whatcott, Senior Director of Product Marketing for the Enterprise and Developer Business Unit at Adobe (I'm not sure his title can get any longer), not only acknowledged the execution gaffe, but further comments that the campaign has been pulled altogether. He then went on to challenge the readers as to what we think a better online advertising campaign should be:

So here's the invitation: please jump on this thread with your specific suggestions for what the Flex online advertising should say and what is should look like. What should the tone be (sophisticated, edgy, friendly, in your face, or what have you)? What should the catchy tag line be? What should the short product description be? What benefits, if any, should we mention right in the ad and what should be on the jump page? Should we bang directly on the competition (think Oracle ads) or should we focus on our own strengths? What creative concepts should we consider (code puzzles that convey a message, movies of Flex coding/results, what else)?

Here's the thing though... I'm a developer by trade, so actually designing something more than a stick figure (which is a challenge in and of itself) is pretty comical. Seriously, Photoshop/Fireworks and I just aren't friends. So I'm going to leave the "looks" part of his request to the pros. But that doesn't mean I can't put in my two cents on a couple of his questions. Specifically:

What should the catchy tag line be? What should the short product description be?

I spent a bit of time tonight just throwing down ideas. Here's what I've come up with so far...

Catchy Tag Line Ideas

• Adobe Flex 2: Why Wait For What's Here Already?
• Adobe Flex 2: Flash Reborn
• Adobe Flex 2: Rich Internet Applications Redefined
• Adobe Flex 2: The Web Like You've Never Seen It
• Adobe Flex 2: Free Has Never Been This Easy
• Adobe Flex 2: Set Your Data Free
• Adobe Flex 2: Unleash Your Data
• Adobe Flex 2 and You: Perfect Together

OK, the last one's awful, but I had to give a shout out to my New Jersey roots by paying homage to its successful 1980s ad campaign: New Jersey and You, Perfect Together. Feel free to ignore that one. Anyway, I think the other ones walk the advertising balance between piquing one's interest, conveying (albeit at a very high level) what the technology does, and taking a light jab at Microsoft (yes, I had Sparkle in mind in the first bullet.) I also had one that said "Adobe Flex 2: The Power Of Your Desktop On The Web," but that's really more Apollo-esque, so I left it out.

Short Product Description

This one's pretty tough too because you have several audiences that will potentially see the text, and you need to cater to all of them at some level. From hard-core C++/Java/.NET developers to designers to managers, the text needs to have something that will at least make them click into a more descriptive landing page. This is what I came up with:

Adobe Flex 2 delivers on the promise of Rich Internet Applications by fusing the power of the web with the familiar feel of your desktop. And because it runs in the Adobe Flash Player, the most pervasive plugin in the history of the Internet, it runs exactly the same on Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux. Leverage your existing Service Oriented Architecture by putting the interactivity of traditional desktop applications at your customers' fingertips. Oh, and it can be done in about 10 lines of code!

My thought process was to come up with something that describes what the product does, while promoting its competitive advantage in that it's cross-platform, runs in a familiar plugin, and doesn't require a complete rewrite of existing code. I'm still not that totally content with it, but I thought I'd throw it out there for feedback to see what others are thinking.

I stayed away from a couple of other people's suggestions and some of Jeff's questions intentionally.

1. I didn't put any code as a complement to the overview statement. One developer pool that I know Adobe is trying to pull from is the hard core C++/Java/.NET camp. As a long-time ColdFusion developer, there's still a stigma that tag-based languages, such as ColdFusion and MXML, are inferior because their abstraction takes away the developer's power and degrades overall performance. I would submit that the landing page should have the links to the code samples along with plenty of videos that point out how quickly you really can develop some pretty advanced behaviors. Also, the code examples shouldn't rely on third-party tools, such as Flickr. It's cool that you can do that, but I don't think you're going to see people rusing out to get their own Flickr API key just to run a sample. I actually think the samples are a big strength for Adobe, and they've done a good job of getting examples for all levels of expertise online.
2. I don't think Adobe should go the "Oracle route" and single out competitors. First off, it gives the competitors free press. Let them pay for their own airtime. Second, I think it's class-less and evokes a feeling of fear that their own product is inferior and they're just covering those shortcomings up.

What do you think? How would you improve on the current Flex 2 online marketing campaign? How'd I do? Remember, I'm a developer, so my thoughts are really just raw brain dumps...nothing polished.