Macromedia Breeze Gets a New Name, And Boy am I Annoyed

Adobe Systems announced today that the Flash-enabled software service formerly known as Macromedia Breeze now has a new name: Adobe Acrobat Connect.

Well, that makes things just as clear as mud don't you think? For current Breeze users, like the organization where I work, this certainly comes as a slap in the face, and leads me to believe that Adobe thinks more about corporate branding and future revenue than they do about current customers. I can certainly understand why the Macromedia name is going away, but why would a company change a product name like this? Why not Adobe Breeze or even Acrobat Breeze?

Actually, I've known this was coming for a little while, and had some very pointed things to say to my friends at Adobe about this corporate decision. I'm over being mad about the change to a certain extent, but I'm certainly not past the sinking feeling that there will be more types of these decisions coming down the pike. What's next?

So why should I care in the first place? If you work in a large organization like I do, getting the word out and training people to use a service as fundamentally different as Breeze--oh, sorry, Acrobat Connect--is a big job. We started last year by creating demonstration projects that showed those in our own organization what Breeze is all about. When few people have ever been exposed to the kind of web conferencing that Breeze--uh, Acrobat Connect--allows you to do it can be an uphill climb to do the sort of internal marketing needed to expose your employees to what the software can do. Every week for the last year my team has been running an online training session in the afternoon meant to teach people about various software packages, tools, methods, and things that can be done with instructional technology. We dubbed this afternoon session the Palm Breeze Cafe and it's been hugely successful, both in the live sessions that we offer and the large library of recorded Breeze sessions, (sorry) that we now have available. And not least of all, we've built up a presence for Breeze and what it is capable of that now has teachers and staff developers clamoring for more information and training on how they can use it.

Now Adobe has pulled that rug out from under our efforts because they felt it was more important to re-brand the product and position it within the marketplace as part of the Acrobat "family". This without regard to their current customers and the extra work that (may be) required of them. Not to mention the fact that there really is very little inter-operability between the Acrobat reader and the new Acrobat Connect. Yes, there will be a new button making an appearance in the toolbar of Acrobat Reader, but beyond that there is little logical or natural connection between PDFs and Connect.

Lucky for us I was able to learn about this ahead of time, so today's announcement did not come as a shock. In fact, I've already decided that for the near future we'll simply ignore this name change and continue to market our Breeze services internally as just that--Breeze. We've invested too much time and energy in building a presence and name for Breeze to simply chuck the name because Adobe tells us to.

And for my friends at Adobe, I would ask that your current customers receive as much consideration as your plans for future marketing and branding efforts do. In this case the cavalier re-branding smacks of corporate arrogance on a level that I find very disturbing.

I hope that's not a trend for the future.