Amazon Web Services (AWS) has begun to promote platform downtime as a way to draw attention to the ubiquity of their cloud footprint.
After the latest bout of platform instability within EC2, AWS launched a new ad campaign that has appeared across news outlets. The following wording appeared on a billboard in the embarcadero:
Remember when you couldn't buy anything online last week? Yeah, we're that important.
Marketing executives for competing public clouds have expressed split opinions about the effectiveness of this new strategy. "We've considered radical departures from typical messaging in the past but have thought better about where to allocate marketing resources," a representative from Google Cloud told The Journal. "Alphabet's committment to our customers precludes—" Mid-way through the interview the Google representative received a call from their superior informing them that any media interviews would not play a positive factor in their promo packet. The Google representative immediately presented an outstretched finger to the interviewer and left without any further comments.
IBM has met the new strategy with their own. "We can play in the big leagues just like anybody else," a marketing executive over the western US told The Journal. "Our platform can be just as unstable as AWS if customers just give us a chance to lose some nines." A paid promotion for their own campaign on LinkedIn includes:
Can't trade fartcoin in the Baltics on Saturday evenings? Yeah. That's our maintenance window.
An IBM marketing intern standing on a freeway offramp tried to clean my windshield with this copy:
You only have to scroll 50% on downdetector to notice when we go down.
Whether the similar tone of messaging resonates with decision-makers in critical roles remains to be seen.