LOTUS GOES AFTER BIGGER MARKET
By Adnews Staff
Lotus Development Corp. is trying to expand its reach in the PC software marketplace. The company launched North American advertising last week that supports a marketing campaign targetting not just large corporations, but all businesses. The campaign is for Lotus' upgraded SmartSuite software that can be used with either Windows or OS/2 operating systems. Lotus is also holding seminars and demonstrations at retailers. The product came to Canada on March 1 and has been sold in the U.S. since January. The ad campaign, which focuses on low price, uses print and radio created by Hill Holliday of Boston. Doner Schur Peppler of Toronto localized the ads for Canada and did the media buy. SmartSuite is also being bundled with personal computers: the AST Advantage, Acer Aspire and Epson Action Note 910C laptop in North America, and IBM's Aptiva, ThinkPad, 300 and 700, worldwide. The SmartSuite Package includes the Word Pro word processor, the 1-2-3 spreadsheet, Freelance Graphics, the Approach database program, the Organizer personal information manager and ScreenCam multimedia tool. To nudge Worldperfect users over to its own software, Lotus has introduced the WordPerfect to Word Pro SwitchKit. This software installs directly into Word Pro to add a Help for WordPerfect Users option in the Word Pro Help menu. The software converts WordPerfect files to the Word Pro format and instructs users on how to do WordPerfect tasks in Word Pro.