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Avid Launches “New Thinking” Campaign, Cuts NLE Pricing
Published by Matthew Jeppsen March 17th, 2008 in News 
Last week I was part of a teleconference with Avid CMO Greg Estes, in the discussion Greg outlined what Avid is calling their “New Thinking” campaign. With new leadership across the board, they are re-evaluating and re-focusing the energies of the company with the intention to better serve their customers. In addtion to new community and end-user support and training initiatives, they are slashing pricing on Media Composer. To put it in cliché movie terms, Avid is standing outside your edit suite with a boombox, belting out a sappy love song. Here are a few of the initiatives outlined in the call:
* Last fall, the decision to skip NAB 2008 came right about the time that ALL Avid executives read 150-pages of customer feedback. I noticed that this was one prevailing note across the entire conversation…they appear to be sincerely interested in listening to the end user. Instead of a presence at NAB, they will be holding scheduled meetings and two customer events at the Hard Rock Hotel on Sunday and Monday. There will be no new product announcements in that timeframe. Edit: Apparently there will be product announcements during the NAB timeframe.
* A specific community and user-focused initiative is being extended at community.avid.com. Plans are to include tutorials, tips and tricks, blogs, a video exchange and other social networking-related tools. Additionally, they pledge to continue investing in workshops and presentions that put pros and industry leaders in touch with independent media artists and up and coming talent. These are all Good Things.
* Today they are announcing a 50% price slash on Media Composer, bringing it down to $2495. In addition, they will be offering a Student Academic version of Media Composer (sans bundled 3rd party tools) for $295. XPress Pro is being phased out and will not be offered for sale beyond Q2. XPress Pro users will be offered a $495 upgrade path to Media Composer. This also appears to be a prevailing theme…simplifying the Avid product line. While Greg stated no specific plans or changes for their higher-end offerings at this time, I personally anticipate that this simplification and possible price-restructuring will extend to those higher-end Avid solutions. There appears to be an understanding that the Indie market has been overlooked by Avid to some extent, and lower-cost robust solutions need to be made available to remain competitive in that userspace.
* The Avid phone online customer support system is being revamped to provide faster and better help to users, and over 10,000 online documents and self-support resources have been reviewed and updated. This was in direct response to customer feedback. In the call I also suggested that they consider providing feedback and even perhaps an update schedule in response to user-submitted bug reports. One common complaint I hear voiced is that bug reports and feature-change submissions seem to disappear off into the ether, with no feedback or suggested schedule for fixes and updates. Greg agreed it could be a positive thing and suggested that they would look into possible answers. Another questioner pointed out Avid’s inconsistent support for the Mac platform across the product line. Greg made it clear that they are fully aware of the need for better Mac and Leopard support/updates and while he didn’t elaborate anything specific, stated that they understand the need.
Overall I think these announcements are a positive direction for Avid. The Academic Media Composer pricing for Students will help them make necessary inroads into the edu market, and cutting 50% off the full version can’t hurt sales of that NLE. Sure, Apple’s Final Cut Studio 2 still offers a full-featured software solution with a lower initial investment, but this is still progress. It appears that Avid is still counting on the perception that their platform is more robust than FCP to justify the remaining price difference. In my opinion, this could be a small misstep, and one reason they are currently in this situation. I personally don’t see the independent market flocking to a NLE that is still about twice as expensive as the arguably very capable Final Cut Studio. And that’s not even talking about the impact and inroads that Adobe’s Production Suite has been making as of late. Users simply have more professional options now, and I believe that Media Composer will have to come down even more in price to regain footing in the low-to-mid end markets. At any rate, I frankly see these changes at Avid as just a small first step to make the platform more competetive. As someone that firmly believes more competitive offerings drive innovation and are ultimately better for us grunts working in the field, here’s hoping that these changes bring end users more features, options, and robust solutions for their media creation needs.
6 Responses to “Avid Launches “New Thinking” Campaign, Cuts NLE Pricing”
- 1 Pingback on Jul 31st, 2008 at 1:00 am
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I agree the price cut is a step in the right direction, but for MC to really be competitive with FCS pricing, the $2500.00 should include MOJO SDI for I/O. For $2500 anyone can buy an FCS and 3rd party vendor solution for I/O. For $5000 (the approximate cost of a MC and a MOJO SDI combined) an editor can buy FCS, a hardware I/O and a Mac Pro to install it on. Maybe Avid will get it right next time…
Man…I was invited to that phone call, but had to work thru the day to get a cut out…so I missed it.
Thanks for posting the questions and answers.
Man… it seems like a lot of people still don’t think Avid has done enough. My feeling is that a lot of the harsh words that are still coming down are from people who wouldn’t use Avid anyway even if they halved the price of MC Soft again. They have said this is a first step and there will be more in this “New Thinking” campaign. One thing that Greg said that I really liked was that we should “check later and see if we’ve improved our Mac support.” That is good news in my world.
Let’s give them more time and see what else they come up with …. turn-arounds don’t happen overnight.
I’m glad that the price of MC has been cut in half. However, unfortunately not enough. I’m in the process of evaluating FCP Studio and MC. The only thing I’m holding me back buying FCP Studio right now is because I have invested a lot of money on my PC system. But for the price of $5000, I might be able to buy both. For one feature that MC does not have and FCP does have is secondary color correction. For the half price slash, MC should be able to have secondary CC.
“A step in the right direction” is what Avid’s “new thinking” is being called. I thik Avid’s new team is too new to judge, yet, but these moves are hardly earth shattering and will probably notmake a huge difference in Avid sales or penetration into new markets (education and indie) that will drive Avid’s future sales. Avid is an old school, big iron dominant company because the old school, big companies that still buy their products use editors with 10-15yrs+ experience. These editors are Avid guys. The new crop of editors are FCP guys. Why? It’s the bundle, baby! And, it’s te availability of comparatively low priced FCP compatible hardware for uncompressed SD and HD.
Maybe around NAB Avid will announce the release of a new Aja I/O HD-like box that gets Media Composer get to DNxHD for around $3500. Maybe avid will announce that Pro Tools and an MBox or better will be bundled with Media Composer, and/or the academic version at $295 will not be stripped of the 3rd party software that makes it more useable (Heck, match FCP at $599 but keep the 3rd party stuff. Why do you always find a way to shoot yourself in the foot, Avid?). Maybe Avid will price Isis within the reach of mere mortals (Who has really bought that thing at that price, anyway?)
Dear Avid, if you’re going to compete, then go for it. Don’t make moves that make it look like your trying to do something on the surface, when a closer look tells says it’s still business as usual.
You’re a great company with great products for video and film editing, sound, and 3D. Get your synergy going for gosh sakes. Your better in some areas, but not that much better. Obviously your sales are telling you that. You’ve cherry picked a few easy suggestions from your customer base. You cut the price of an obviously overpriced software. You started a new community section of your website (When you should’ve better leveraged ALEX. Try offering THAT to schools.). Oh, and marketing? Go head to head. Don’t just rely on your “community” to provide “tps and tricks,” post tutorials that show specifically how your software is better than the competition in workflow specific ways. Call out the competition. Take them on. Show what makes Avid better.
Now it’s time for the hard decisions. Figure out how you are going to combine the abilities of Avid, Pro Tools, and Softimage to connect with your customers of today and those of tomorrow. You still have to put yourself in their shoes. Get outside the ivory tower mindset. If you had $5K to get started, what would you buy, Avid or FCP? If you had $15K? $25K? What gives you the best ROI? Check the capabilities vs. price. Do the math. You might not like it, but the numbers still don’t lie.
Avid, you’ve taken a step it the right direction, but you still have a long way to go.