by Gary Mintchell | Jan 13, 2026 | Design, Marketing
I downloaded Apple’s latest operating systems OS26, iOS26, iPadOS26 with the famous redesigns.
After hearing so much about their development and betas, turns out that they are, well, OK. Not good. Not better. Not that bad. Just different. I think different just to be different.
The first third of my career involved roles in product development. These were mostly consumer products. I learned about looking for things to change in products in order to provide a better customer experience.
Oh, and also how to describe those changes to marketing—hoping they would stick to the facts and not overhype the changes.
I suspect that was Apple’s downfall with the changes. They tried so hard to explain all the great changes with explanations about how they worked. Don’t believe it. Mostly it was change because someone in management thought it was time for a change. The animations are cutesy without any real value or meaning. The new icons fail to add visual understanding. After I learn them, they will be lost in familiarity and—just OK.
Reminds me of a magazine publishing company where I worked. They changed the font and color of the company name and added a funky logo. Since these were not self-explanatory (which they should have been), they sent a three-page memo explaining all the changes. You know, what the color symbolized, what the logo represented (since it was hardly intuitive).
Click on the Follow button at the bottom of the page to subscribe to a weekly email update of posts. Click on the mail icon to subscribe to additional email thoughts.
by Gary Mintchell | Nov 17, 2025 | Leadership, Manufacturing IT, Marketing, Software
Aras, a PLM developer, appointed a new CEO a couple months ago (see Aras Appoints Leon Lauritsen as Chief Executive Officer). Our schedules finally coalesced for a conversation.
I’ve been invited to two Aras community events over the past two years. Prior to that, my PLM market knowledge was dominated by three companies. To be honest, I’d never even heard about the company. With one visit and a few interviews, I knew there was something different and better here. (See this report from this year’s event Agentic AI, SaaS, Community—The Aras Community Gathering.)
Aras holds a smaller market position (based on conversations, not market research—something I shun), but it offers something that larger companies don’t. Enterprise and manufacturing software developers usually require users to change their operations systems to fit within the constraints of the software system. Aras provides a more flexible system—something that both Aras product people and customers have told me.
Lauritsen worked for a partner called Minerva for many years prior to its acquisition by Aras. He has held a couple positions within Aras mostly in sales leadership. His background also includes programming and product management—providing him with a background to lead the company in its next iteration.
Aras was a founder-led company until growth required someone to provide professional organization and systems. That leader was Roque Martin. After four years, the board felt it was time for the next step. Lauritsen told me this next step is to incorporate AI into the offerings. In fact, he looks to have the company “supercharge with AI.” He obviously didn’t get into the AI weeds, but I gathered the impression that his product people are working with a variety of approaches for the best fit for each application.
He starts with the customer as he defines his vision of the company. PLM defines the best ways of working for the customer. He has the company working in its labs to find innovative ways to implement AI for both within the organization’s development team and for best practices for customers.
Interesting given my recent work with organizations seeking data interoperability, Aras is seeking ways to coexist with current enterprise solutions.
Many times conversations with company spokespeople center on the product. I asked Lauritsen to define business values provided to customers. He told me about two customers at about the same stage of market development. One used the Aras PLM solution to improve systems to increase quality. The other had a different problem—product development time to launch. Aras provided solutions to fit the business need of the client.
While researching for the interview, I saw that Lauritsen had been on the Danish national Judo team and remains on the national Judo board. Judo requires as much mind training as physical training. So, I had to ask how Judo helps his thought process as a leader and marketer. He laughed, saying the other Aras folks on the call had probably heard enough about Judo. He gave an example from strategic marketing. The principle of Judo is to use the opponent’s force against them. When you face a larger opponent, you know you cannot directly engage, but you must look for the weak point where you can leverage their size agains them.
Click on the Follow button at the bottom of the page to subscribe to a weekly email update of posts. Click on the mail icon to subscribe to additional email thoughts.
by Gary Mintchell | Nov 4, 2025 | Marketing
I’ve noticed for many months, or even a couple years, publicist invitations to interview someone. I’ve accepted interview invitations for many years from publicists that resulted in the subject asking, “What do you want to discuss?” I go, hmmm, I thought you initiated the interview, because you had something to say or promote.
Listening to Dan Heath’s WorkLife podcast today, he discussed AI publicists. So, I’m not the only one! We receive an invitation to interview someone. The email begins with “we’ve noticed on a recent podcast (or blog post) that you’re interested in (x).” They then apply some torturous logic to go from that thought to someone who (according to the description) deserves a Nobel for being a genius. Usually there is no correlation to what I do. They obviously used some form of AI to scan for blog posts or podcasts and scrape a thought, then extrapolate.
I used to send a polite reply. But more of these came. Now I delete unopened.
I understand how hard it must be to make a living in PR these days. I’m guessing they get paid for the number of interviews or some such metric.
The old way is still the best way. Cultivate the respected writers who best fit the profile of the company/person/product. But try selling that to a small business owner or marketing director who is looking at the media stars with millions of hits. Give it up.
Click on the Follow button at the bottom of the page to subscribe to a weekly email update of posts. Click on the mail icon to subscribe to additional email thoughts.
by Gary Mintchell | Jun 24, 2025 | Marketing
I was on a Board of Education in the 1980s. Another member and I pushed for restriction of smoking on school grounds. Another member was a purveyor of tobacco products at the wholesale level.
That member brought a stack of documentation at least a foot high purporting to show the positive health benefits of smoking.
They thought they had the right of free speech to promote ideas contrary to nearly unanimous research about the hazards of smoking—both to the smoker and to others around them.
My wife and I were considering European vacations. People in many cities of western Europe are rebelling against tourists. It seems that people are buying many apartments at a premium price in order to rent them to tourists through AirBnB or equivalent companies. The unintended consequences include housing shortages for natives and increasing prices for property rendering them too expensive for locals.
AirBnB issued a press release saying the real cause was hotels, because that’s where 80% of tourists stay. (Hmmm?) Do hotels contribute to the situation by buying properties? Probably some. But let us not be duplicitous.
Some oil companies just sued under the First Amendment right to freedom of speech to be able to contradict overwhelming evidence garnered from scientific research conducted globally that show direct links to burning fossil fuels, air pollution, and climate change.
The men who wrote the original documents of the US government including the First Amendment discussed the necessary corollary to free speech—responsibility.
An entire industry exists to massage words such that a client can appear to be innocent even when not.
Many companies and people, on the other hand, have discovered the fruit of the moral value of owning mistakes and improving.
Let’s hope that you and I can avoid the temptation of lying in favor of honesty—even if it hurts. And calling out those who fail. Be aware of what you read.
by Gary Mintchell | May 14, 2025 | Generative AI, Marketing
Moira Gunn hosted a linguistics professor called Dr. Emily Bender on her podcast Tech Nation. Bender had released a book with Dr. Alex Hannah, The AI Con: How to Fight Big Tech’s Hype and Create the Future We Want.
My interest was piqued when they mentioned a 2021 paper by Bender, et. al., on language models called Stochastic Parrot.
As one of the thinkers attempting some common sense to cut through the AI hype, I love that term. Much of generative AI and large language models are simply probability calculations based on learned text. In other words:
Stochastic—a random probability distribution that may be analyzed statistically but may not be predicted precisely—plus Parrot—to repeat something said by someone else without thought or understanding.
There are writers on both sides of the hype divide—the doom sayers and the optimistic hype sayers—who have let imagination run amok. Shall we pull back a little and look for those applications where this will really help. Applications other than providing more words for marketers to stuff into a news release, that is.
by Gary Mintchell | Apr 29, 2025 | Marketing
One following on the heels of another, along came three press releases regarding company rebranding. Do you find a wee bit of humor for your day reading some marketing explanation for something that doesn’t particularly require explanation?
I worked for a company that sent a bunch of money to a branding consultant. They devised a new logo. The company published a two-page letter to explain the logo. I think the logo should be self-explanatory. Silly me. That’s why I’m not a marketing consultant, I guess.
Here are news items from Stratus Technologies, Zilliant, and Abnormal Security. If you are customers, you’ll need to know this in order to find them in the future.
Stratus—>Penguin
Stratus Technologies has officially rebranded to Penguin Solutions reflecting our expanded high performance and high availability compute infrastructure solutions and services. Our Stratus-branded products, such as Stratus ztC Endurance and Stratus ztC Edge, remain best-in-class high availability and fault-tolerant computing platforms for ensuring the continuous availability of your critical applications and data in data centers and edge locations.
Actually, Stratus was sold. The new company wants its own brand on the products.
Zilliant Unveils New Precision Pricing Platform to Transform Pricing Anxiety into Business Power
You can’t beat that headline for sounding great but telling us little. Oh, yes, new brand identity along with it.
Zilliant, the leader in pricing lifecycle management, announced the launch of its new brand identity and positioning focused on eliminating “Pricing Anxiety” for B2B manufacturing and distribution businesses. The relaunch includes a refreshed visual identity, updated messaging and the introduction of the Precision Pricing Platform, which helps organizations transform pricing from a source of confusion and conflict into a driver of growth and competitive advantage.
Zilliant was motivated by discussions with B2B manufacturing and distribution businesses on how many recognize pricing as a critical business process and how often executives don’t realize they should own this critical function. Through its new positioning, Zilliant aims to expose these oversights and demonstrate how unlocking the power of pricing as a core business driver can transform company performance.
The company’s new website, visual identity and simplified product portfolio reflect Zilliant’s bold approach to solving the universal, unspoken pricing crisis affecting businesses worldwide.
Abnormal Security Rebrands to Abnormal AI; Returns to Original Name as It Continues to Protect Humans From Cybercrime with AI
OK, we tried something new only to discover the old name was better.
Abnormal Security, the leader in AI-native human behavior security, announced it has rebranded as Abnormal AI, a move that reflects its evolution into a broader AI-native security platform designed to protect humans across the enterprise.
The change marks a return to the company’s original name—Abnormal AI—which it operated under following its inception in 2018. The name eventually shifted to Abnormal Security, as the market at the time wasn’t ready to embrace the idea of artificial intelligence as the foundation of enterprise security. But as AI now reshapes industries, attacker tactics, and enterprise technology alike, the timing has never been more appropriate.
The transition to Abnormal AI signals the company’s expansion beyond email security, as it builds a behavioral AI platform to secure people across the enterprise, from collaboration tools to cloud applications. The name change also reinforces the company’s position as one of the few truly AI-native security platforms—designed, built, and operated with AI at the core.
As part of the rebrand, the company’s legal name has changed from Abnormal Security Corporation to Abnormal AI, Inc. Its new website domain is now abnormal.ai, though existing email addresses, customer contracts, support channels, and product access will remain unchanged for the immediate future.
