Have you seen this ad?

If you've seen this ad, it could have only been in one place: MSDN Magazine July 2005 Edition.  The above text was the entire contents of the full-page ad in MSDN magazine.

If you saw the ad, the question is, did you do it?  Did you go to www.ShipSoftwareOnTime.com?  If you did, you were one of the hundreds of people who visited the site during the month of June and early July (the July edition of MSDN magazine actually hit the streets on June 5th).  As you might have guessed by now, the ad was one of Axosoft's ads.

We normally run a much more informative ad in MSDN magazine (and some other magazines), but we wanted to break with tradition and try something new.  We wanted to see if a “curiosity” ad would generate even more interest than the typical “informative” ad.  To prepare for the ad, we created a satire site based on the daily events of Project Managers, Developers and Testers.  We also created (my favorite page) OnTime Facts.  The site was a fun little marketing test.  At the very least, we can tell you exactly how many curious readers read the July issue of MSDN magazine :-)

Was it all worth it?  The jury is still out, but now that the visitors to the site are starting to taper off, I wanted to start sharing this ad with my blog readers.  What do you think?  Is it a fun site?  Should we do more stuff like this or stay with the traditional informative ads?

Now, why did I title this blog entry “Bug Tracking Software or Project Management Software”?  Well, this is something we've been struggling with: do we position OnTime as a bug tracking software or as a project management software?  The answer to this question might seem obvious...OnTime helps software development and test teams ship software on time by keeping track of all the activities of each team member.  Therefore, it's a Project Management Software.  But, when people think of project management software, they think of MS Project - a product we almost never run into as a competitor to OnTime.  We do, however, run into other “bug-tracking” software.  So positioning in the wrong space might hurt us, rather than help us.

We need to answer this question before the PDC as we'll have a number of marketing materials that will have to position us one way or the other...the struggle continues...