[Marketing] Our message

[Sean DALY]

The current problem with our marketing/PR materials is one of resources :-/

Most of the hard stuff (vision, positioning, strategy, logo &
typography, contact info) is worked out

But, the legwork needs to be done:

* writing copy
* developing and selecting visuals
* arranging elements on the page
* translating

For the record, I promised Caroline I would do our first 2-page PDF
brochure at least a month ago

I'm behind since I've been putting out other fires: last Wednesday's
press release in two languages, the targeted mailings, manual
submissions to key sites & journalists; new contacts (we are over 400
now). But I have other emergencies: the Spanish version which hasn't
gone out yet... and no text of other languages received yet. After
that, I need to update last month's press release in the 3 additional
languages I have received (thanks translators)... and during this time
Christian has done a super job of making the pres page easier to use
(and more improvements coming)

The "shortcuts" to raising awareness are:
1. Have great product.
2. Get a respected journalist to rave about it.

That said, there is quite a lot of work behind the "shortcuts" (quite
a lot more in point 1 I daresay).

Although it's always interesting to look at good ideas, the dark arts
of communication almost always involve factors specific to a
company/project/individual/government. If it was easy, all projects
would be well-known :-) I like the example of Firefox: take the New
York Times ad which I had the honor to sign with 9,999 other people;
it was the first mass media marketing manifesto by a FOSS project.
And, Mozilla does a great job with multiplatform, pancake-button
one-click installers, branding and logo, differentiation, and
ecosystem with their add-ons. But, I would not for a moment want to
copy what they do in marketing/PR... because the target users are
different, the complexity level is different, and... they have tens of
millions of dollars in a foundation backing them up. Other FOSS
projects (perhaps most) are surely well-managed technically, but are
underwater in the PR sense and from whom we won't learn anything at
all.

What the Marketing Team really needs is more hands... like other teams
in the project :-)

Fortunately, I have ideas where to find volunteers. But recruitment -
just like funding, partnerships, distribution, and... an integrated
well-branded easy-to-navigate website (!) are all topics we need to
work on simultaneously while choosing immediate priorities carefully.
I've worked in a startup environment, and we're doing the right
things, so I'm not worried; but we do need to grow "headcount" to grow
our project, and Marten is absolutely right that we need marketing
materials to recruit :-)

thanks

Sean


On Thu, Apr 30, 2009 at 8:42 PM, Tomeu Vizoso <tomeu at sugarlabs.org> wrote:
> On Thu, Apr 30, 2009 at 20:07, Marten Vijn <info at martenvijn.nl> wrote:
>> On Wed, 2009-04-29 at 14:16 -0400, Caroline Meeks wrote:
>>> Marten
>>>
>>> +1 Can you organize this to happen?
>>
>> I am sorry but it is not where my talents are.
>> I am bad at languages and teaching. (dyslectic and impacient).
>>
>> My role morely is using SOAS, testing it on some hardware, getting it to
>> a localschool. And if possible getting people on board (+4 now). And
>> also (as most of us) my time very limited. I really focus on local
>> activities.
>>
>> >From this role I see a low acceptance by "normal" people. Normal is
>> defined here: Teachers, kids, parents who are none ict aware. They don't
>> know were to start to read and have short of time/attention span.
>>
>> If this kind of input is not wanted pls let me know (it would save a lot
>> of typing time).
>>
>> Actually floss is bad at doing their PR is general. If i need a
>> corporate firewall or storage device there are shiny flyers and
>> documentation. Vendors will come to me and sell me their solution.
>>
>> So if I want a *BSD or OpenSolaris to run my storage/firewall it really
>> is hard to convince my manager (and their directors) to use this FLOSS.
>>
>> To change this good materials are needed. So there is good reason to not
>> have me for this job.
>
> Wonder if there are FLOSS projects that are better than the others at
> PR and on which we could inspire?
>
> Regards,
>
> Tomeu
>
>> kind regards,
>> Marten
>>
>>
>>
>> http://opencommunitycamp.org         26th Jul - 2nd August
>>
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>> http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/marketing
>>
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