Out With Geek - In With Sleek
Eric Ellis San Francisco

10/24/1998

In Silicon Valley, it's no longer chic to be geek - the recent but long-overdue downturn in the high-tech sector has seen to that.
While it may be premature to hail the end of the archetypal nerd millionaire, Silicon Valley's infamous nerdy fatboys are fast discovering it's no longer enough to parade their corporate jeans and t-shirt uniform, an attitude, techie buzzwords and a groovy company moniker to guarantee high-tech billions.
The new paradigm is all about marketing, and market share.
Take Apple Computer. For 20 years, the high church of high technology was considered to have some of the best products in Silicon Valley, and some of the worst marketing. Thus, Apple spent the past decade in the doldrums.

Then a year ago, with its share price at record lows, Apple was relaunched with a savvy advertising campaign that encouraged consumers to Think Different about the company. That was followed by the launch of the i-Mac desktop computer, a style-conscious machine for the style-conscious set.

It was a sleek departure from its clunky predecessors and came with the assurance that it was not available in beige. It debuted as the internet arrived in the Middle American psyche. Apple claims almost half its i-Mac sales are first-time computer users.

For Apple's Lazarus-like founder Steve Jobs, back in the chair as seemingly permanent acting chief executive, it has been a triumph that confounded the doubters who recall he was bounced because he was a boffin who didn't know the market.

Under Jobs' new strategy, Apple just posted its first full year of profits in the past five and the share price has almost tripled this year.

The new mantra on Silicon Valley is all about making technology accessible and understandable to the masses, something Bill Gates realised a decade ago at Microsoft.

Geeks, nerds and boffins are being pushed aside and replaced by people like Katrina Garnett, the Gold Coast-born chief executive of Crossworlds Software.

In full-page advertisements of Richard Avedon-photographed portraits of her in a revealing black cocktail dress, Garnett presents more as a Milan model than the millionaire owner of a hot valley start-up.

Moreover, Garnett eschewed traditional tech media such as PC World or Red Herring to spread her message. The campaign appeared in The New York Times magazine and George, making readers look twice to see whether it was an advertisement or a classy profile of a new model.

In a recent interview, Garnett said her campaign, which cost 2 per cent of her Crossworlds' $US46 million ($73.5 million) annual revenues, will encourage younger women who may have viewed technology as nerdy and unappealing. "I am trying to make a statement that you don't have to compromise your femininity -you can be who you are and still be successful," she said