[Marketing] Advertising Age: How Firefox Gets Grass-roots Marketing Right

[Sean DALY]

You are correct David, marketing always implies a target. A big part
of marketing involves identifying a group, then tailoring a message
for that group, while maintaining the "general" message at the same
time. Although some use the term "mass marketing" to mean sending a
common message to everyone, it really means segmenting targets
efficiently where each target can contain millions of people. Here's
Dell for example, marketing to "Digital Nomads":
http://www.digitalnomads.com

Often, an effective marketing technique is through "prescriptors" -
the classic example is marketing to kids who will bug their parents
for the new breakfast cereal or videogame. So the target in this case
is children. This is of course very controversial. It's clear today
that tobacco companies shouldn't target teenagers, but Saturday
morning timeslots in the developed countries are still full of ads for
games and toys...

Kids are the original buzzmeisters and the successive waves of crazes
such as Pokémon, Yu-Gi-Oh, My Little Pony, Beyblades, DragonBall Z,
MMOGs such as Dofus etc. (not to mention social networking sites)
spread in the schoolyard. The incredibly profitable videogame industry
has this down to a science, which doesn't preclude creative marketing
- witness the Wii, positioned beyond kids as both "fun for the whole
family" and "fitness for grownups"... this is a strategy called
"addition of targets", and is the preferred way for companies to seek
growth at competitors' expense.

Getting a handle on a marketing message means identifying groups,
choosing priority key groups, while maintaining/developing a general
message for all groups (the public). For example, we consider that
teacher buy-in is essential for Sugar's success, and as a way of
opening direct lines of communication for feedback; this is a
different orientation than OLPC which has traditionally been more
"top-down". As recently as SugarCamp Paris we decided we need to
narrow the priority "teachers" group to "technically adept teachers"
for now, in the hope that they will not get stuck by common but easily
fixed problems and so provide technical feedback as well. The
challenge is how to target that group. Of course, we could shift our
priorities if reasons were compelling enough; for example, an OEM deal
could persuade us to place priority on education departments and
ministries, like OLPC. An Ad Council endowment for advertising would
mean that we could target parents widely for trying Sugar and
soliciting small donations, etc.

Let's start by describing our target groups as:

* Learners
* Teachers (K-8 general)
* Teachers (K-8 technically adept)
* Teachers (high school/secondary/other)
* Parents
* Education technology buyers
* Education departments/ministries
* Developers/Contributors
* Ecosystem software partners
* Education product/service providers
* OEMs
* Corporate sponsors/funders/partners

(We could regroup or split further; Learners and Parents could
generate additional categories too.)

OK, let's imagine how each group could speed adoption of Sugar:

* Learners
Could try Sugar online, or at a library or kiosk, and tell parents or
teachers about it. Older Learners could tinker with code, older still
could contribute as developers. (The aged can certainly be Learners
too, when the time comes we could certainly consider them a group!)

* Teachers (K-8 general)
Could use Sugar in the classroom and provide valuable feedback. Could
encourage home use with SoaS for each child.

* Teachers (K-8 technically adept)
As above, but could also provide more precise technical feedback. Less
likely to be blocked by technical glitches, able to solve some
problems with command line interface (CLI) solutions.

* Teachers (high school/secondary/other)
Could mobilize classes to aid with Sugar testing, deployments, and development.

* Parents
Could encourage use of Sugar in the home. Could tell their kids school
about Sugar. If technically adept, could provide precise feedback or
contribute in other ways. Probably good source of small funding.

* Education technology buyers
Could add Sugar to plans involving classroom hardware, backend
servers, support. Could contribute valuable technical feedback.

* Education departments/ministries
Could make recommendations with the "stamp of authority", easing
widespread use in a district, state or country.

* Developers/Contributors
Could assist in coding, debugging, packaging, testing, or any of the
non-dev ways: translating, marketing :-)

* Ecosystem software partners
Distros, solution aggregators such as Framakey, content creators such
as GCompris, applications such as OOo, could lower barriers to Sugar
adoption and increase the attractiveness of the Sugar offer.

* Education product/service providers
Could recommend Sugar solutions to schools, provide feedback (in
particular feedback about all the times Sugar is not chosen and why -
supervaluable for identifying misconceptions to be countered in our
marketing)

* OEMs
Could include Sugar in hardware offer (netbooks...) for parents and
classrooms. This would have a huge impact, since the
installation/configuration barriers would be eliminated.

* Corporate sponsors/large funders/partners
Could support Sugar Labs directly or open doors to other
funding/support candidates.

Having identified groups (and this should be a dynamic, not static
list by the way, critiques/suggestions welcome), now come the hard
parts:
* how to reach them
* how our message should be tailored to them

Most developed countries have one or two magazine titles for teachers.
Ads in these publications would be extremely effective in reaching the
target... but such ads are expensive... so we need to reach them in
other ways, such as websites they frequent, education sector
newsletters, etc.

Concerning tailoring our message, the idea is to repeat our usual
message (Sugar best K-8 platform, also happens to be free,
collaboration built-in, big numbers (a million kids are using Sugar in
26 languages and 40+ countries), Sugar Labs is alive and kicking, we
need testers and funders) with interesting points for the target:
Teachers will be interested in Activities and stretching old PCs in
the class, education buyers in costing, support, and servers,
Developers/Contributors in our techno, tools and organization, etc.
Ecosystem software partners are a special case: there aren't millions
but only a few dozen of those, so our best bet will be materials
adapted for them delivered directly by networking and making contacts.
This is actually my motivation for attending LinuxTag.

In my first 100 days I have placed a priority on getting our main
message out: underlining our many differentiators through widely
distributed press releases, new version of Sugar / new version of SoaS
(shows we are alive & kicking), building a press/education
dept-ministry mailing list now at 500+ contacts, making it very easy
for the press to reach us, easing website navigation for first-time
visitors, always associating "Labs" with "Sugar" for better search
engine indexing, not overpromising.

The next step will be to accompany our launches and partnerships with
grassroots marketing materials: flyers, getting started docs, T-shirts
and swag with an online store, banners and balloons. In each of these,
our message will be reinforced, and in particular these will aid the
new Local Labs in establishing their presence and reaching out to our
target groups.

Local Labs will provide invaluable coordination help for a great way
to demonstrate Sugar's collaboration: Learners sharing Activities with
Learners not just in the class or in school, but across a country or
even across the ocean. Such events will generate massive positive
publicity and interest.

It's traditional for marketers to do what is called in the jargon a
SWOT analysis: Strengths/Weaknesses/Opportunities/Threats. I won't go
into that today in detail but suffice it to say that one of our key
weaknesses is the absence of GNU/Linux on desktops (under 2% market
share worldwide in even the most optimistic measures). Installation of
a new system is feared and avoided by most computer users and
Microsoft in particular does all in its power to discourage even
dual-boot systems. Service providers have countered with running
applications in browsers, but that doesn't really help us now (it will
though when we can simulate/demonstrate Sugar online). Our response is
Sugar on a Stick which provides a solution for classrooms with older
hardware, but also seizes the opportunity of netbooks - it's easy to
boot a USB stick in GNU/Linux even if WinXP is installed, netbooks are
the only industry growth category, they are well-suited for children,
etc.

One final note: big-budget corporate marketers spend lots of time and
energy studying the market and trying to identify trends, demographic
shifts, etc. Although we are sorely lacking consolidated feedback from
the field for now, we ourselves don't need advanced market studies
because the theoretical underpinnings of Sugar are long-established
and we are the challengers setting the trend. That said, an OEM will
likely not consider preinstalling Sugar without market studies
demonstrating its effectiveness in the classroom - that's where the
value of scenario testing comes in.

I walk around thinking through this stuff in my head all the time and
I appreciate the opportunity to express it. I am just as capable of
making mistakes as anyone and discussing this can only refine and
sharpen it.

Thanks.

Sean
Sugar Labs Marketing Coordinator

On Fri, Jun 12, 2009 at 7:52 PM, David Farning<dfarning at sugarlabs.org> wrote:
> On Fri, Jun 12, 2009 at 11:55 AM, Sean DALY<sdaly.be at gmail.com> wrote:
>> http://adage.com/digitalnext/article?article_id=137197
>>
>> An interesting analysis in one of the world's foremost
>> marketing/communications titles.
>>
>> If Mozilla is a "tiny nonprofit" (by corporate standards I imagine),
>> we must be REALLY tiny.
>>
>> That's fine -- nowhere to go but up!
>>
>> Sean
>
> When I have been thing about marketing, I have been using the term
> rather broadly.  I have been thinking about reaching out and engaging
> three particular segments:
>
> End Users.
> Developers/Contributors.
> Ecosystem partners.
>
> Is this the correct terminology?  Or is marketing more narrow with
> engaging developers and partners complementary yet parallel
> activities?
>
> david
>