As a marketeer, I think that "Safety Critical" is Ada's strongest possible
position in the market and this should be stated explicitly in the tag line.

Safety critical is a compelling and justifiable position relative to other
languages that Ada is uniquely qualified to fill.

It's a position that is likely to become more compelling as Y2K anxiety builds
in 1999 and afterwards as inevitable snafus do occur and greater
accountability in programming is demanded.

Safety critical also works as an umbrella description that implies other
favorable characteristics, e.g., safety critical will be reliable, etc.

Repetition is important for establishing a position.  And a position should
last for a long time, not just be a theme for a year.

I realize it's not sexy, but how about "The Safety Critical Language" as a
top-level tag line:

"Ada, the safety critical language"

Other slogans can still be used, but they should all complement safety
critical as the principal market position.

For example at SigAda '99 something like

"Teach Ada
The Safety Critical
Success Critical Language"

could be used to support the educational emphasis of the conference.

Or for different market segments like those Tuck mentioned:

"Ada, the safety critical language for real-time applications."

"Ada, the safety critical language for distributed computing."

etc.

It's a simple strategy, but often simple works.


Jeff

P.S.  Pardon me if this has already been discussed.  I'm jumping into the
middle of this thread.

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Jeff Burns, Director of Marketing
GrammaTech, Inc.
One Hopkins Place
Ithaca, NY 14850
ph: 607-273-7340
fax: 607-273-8752
e-mail: [log in to unmask]
www: http://www.grammatech.com
Team Ada
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