What was Agilent thinking?

Posted on January 31, 2008 by Dave J.

We used to use Agilent (and before that, HP) as a guide for marketing. If they were in a publication or show, that means they had judged it as a quality investment, and we could join in confidently.

Kinda like how Burger King doesn’t have to spend as much finding a location when McDonald’s has already done all the hard work. (Agilent’s products are complementary to ours, so maybe selecting a site for a gas station or convenience store is a better analogy.)

And over the years, Agilent’s website has been top notch, even publishing (gasp) prices for all to see.

One of the things they do is publish an annual general catalog. It might be a little antiquated in its approach, but certainly worth doing for them. Someone there must have been a little self-conscious about the ‘antiquated’ part, which is the only reason I can explain this:

New Agilent T&M paper catalog on the web using NxtBook technology.

Don’t get me wrong. NxtBook isn’t that bad. Redoing a paper catalog this way is okay, up to a point. But were talking about a 600 page catalog. Engineers are either going to go Agilent’s regular website, or to the real paper catalog, but who in-the-heck is going to use this?

The only thing dummer, is the five trade publications willing to post Agilent’s press release announcing this doozie. You can email a colleague a specific page from the catalog? Really.

I suppose that Agilent already has a contract with NxtBook and this didn’t cost them much to do. And they are at least trying out new things. But this just ends up looking silly to me.

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  • Marcus Grimm

    Hi Dave,Nice blog! Great content. I stopped by because I’m the Marketing Director for Nxtbook Media.We work with a few hundred publishers so I’m not familiar with Agilent’s specific reasons for using Nxtbook. In many cases where publishers have large printed catalogs, they feel that the added expense to create an online one justifies itself in printed catalogs they won’t have to mail. Depending on your distribution strategy, printing and mailing a large catalog isn’t nearly as cheap as it used to be, and an online catalog can be delivered instantly.Whether or not this strategy makes sense for your industry’s is something you’d know better than I, but world-wide we get more than 1 million readers every month so for the right publisher, it’s the right product.As important, it’s a product that we’re constantly evolving to make sure we’re staying up with the latest Web trends.Thanks,Marcus

  • Marcus Grimm

    Hi Dave,Nice blog! Great content. I stopped by because I’m the Marketing Director for Nxtbook Media.We work with a few hundred publishers so I’m not familiar with Agilent’s specific reasons for using Nxtbook. In many cases where publishers have large printed catalogs, they feel that the added expense to create an online one justifies itself in printed catalogs they won’t have to mail. Depending on your distribution strategy, printing and mailing a large catalog isn’t nearly as cheap as it used to be, and an online catalog can be delivered instantly.Whether or not this strategy makes sense for your industry’s is something you’d know better than I, but world-wide we get more than 1 million readers every month so for the right publisher, it’s the right product.As important, it’s a product that we’re constantly evolving to make sure we’re staying up with the latest Web trends.Thanks,Marcus

  • Dave J.

    Marcus–Wow, that was fast! Figured someone from Nextbook would chime in sooner or later. You are right, there probably are good economic and customer-service reasons for doing the catalog this way. It just looks silly from the outside.Now that I think of it, just having an online copy that is the same as the catalog on my desk may be handy to have when I am traveling and KNOW that I saw it in the paper catalog back in the office.Thanks for dropping by and commenting!

  • Frank Elsesser

    Hi Dave,A colleague here at Agilent just shared your blog entry with me and I couldn’t resist replying. Actually, I was tickled to see someone blogging about what we’re doing – good or bad!I’m the eMarketing Manager at Agilent Technologies and I’m responsible for Agilent’s adoption (and experimentation) of Nxtbook’s online digital publishing solution.We decided to generate an online edition of Agilent’s Test & Measurement catalog for several reasons. First, we simply wanted to experiment with converting an extremely large (over 700 pages and hardbound) and expensive catalog to digital and see what kind of customer response we received. To date, customer feedback has been generally positive.Second, Nxtbook offers an arsenal of tools which bring traditional hardcopy documents to life, and facilitates greater customer engagement, usability, and satisfaction. Features such as embedded video, audio, flash forms & surveys, etc. Although we didn’t include items like this right out of the gate, the possibilities are intriguing. Third, publishing a hardcopy catalog of this size is not only expensive, but requires significant natural resources – so, it’s a much “greener” solution for all of us longer-term.If you have time, I invite you to take a deeper look into Nxtbook’s offering. In my opinion, digital publishing solutions like Nxtbook’s forces marketers like us to re-think how we create, publish, and deliver information to our customers.Keep on blog’n!- Frank Elsesser, Agilent Technologies

  • Frank Elsesser

    Hi Dave,A colleague here at Agilent just shared your blog entry with me and I couldn’t resist replying. Actually, I was tickled to see someone blogging about what we’re doing – good or bad!I’m the eMarketing Manager at Agilent Technologies and I’m responsible for Agilent’s adoption (and experimentation) of Nxtbook’s online digital publishing solution.We decided to generate an online edition of Agilent’s Test & Measurement catalog for several reasons. First, we simply wanted to experiment with converting an extremely large (over 700 pages and hardbound) and expensive catalog to digital and see what kind of customer response we received. To date, customer feedback has been generally positive.Second, Nxtbook offers an arsenal of tools which bring traditional hardcopy documents to life, and facilitates greater customer engagement, usability, and satisfaction. Features such as embedded video, audio, flash forms & surveys, etc. Although we didn’t include items like this right out of the gate, the possibilities are intriguing. Third, publishing a hardcopy catalog of this size is not only expensive, but requires significant natural resources – so, it’s a much “greener” solution for all of us longer-term.If you have time, I invite you to take a deeper look into Nxtbook’s offering. In my opinion, digital publishing solutions like Nxtbook’s forces marketers like us to re-think how we create, publish, and deliver information to our customers.Keep on blog’n!- Frank Elsesser, Agilent Technologies

  • Dave J.

    Frank, thanks for filling me in on your reasons for doing the catalog. All makes sense and I applaud you for ‘pushing the envelope’. If you don’t try you don’t learn. I’m just a critic looking at it from the outside. *Nxtbook on!*

  • Dave J.

    Frank, thanks for filling me in on your reasons for doing the catalog. All makes sense and I applaud you for ‘pushing the envelope’. If you don’t try you don’t learn. I’m just a critic looking at it from the outside. *Nxtbook on!*

  • Dave J.

    Marcus–Wow, that was fast! Figured someone from Nextbook would chime in sooner or later. < />< />You are right, there probably are good economic and customer-service reasons for doing the catalog this way. It just looks silly from the outside.< />< />Now that I think of it, just having an online copy that is the same as the catalog on my desk may be handy to have when I am traveling and KNOW that I saw it in the paper catalog back in the office.< />< />Thanks for dropping by and commenting!