[Marketing] Reflections on advertising

[David Farning]

On Tue, Mar 24, 2009 at 5:25 PM, Sean DALY <sdaly.be at gmail.com> wrote:
> Dear Marketers,
>
> The day may come, this year or next, that a government or corporation
> will be willing to fund us generously.
>
> After the champagne corks are popped, the realization will set in that
> we can go much further in spreading our message.
>
> David kindly suggested to me I share some thoughts about advertising with you.
>
> Television ad spend is sort of like brute-force search: the more
> power, the more reach, up to the point where people groan "oh no, not
> *that* commercial again". The original spam!
>
> Rest assured I would never suggest we get to that point... we will
> have a duty to carefully measure ad spend against results and only the
> biggest spenders (car companies, consumer goods) ever hit that
> saturation.
>
> As a nonprofit, however, some avenues will be open to us:
>
> http://www.adcouncil.org/default.aspx?id=319
>
> In the USA, the Ad Council provides a framework for nonprofits to get
> a "good" message out.
>
> Today, YouTube etc. has made it ridiculously easy to get a TV
> commercial (or "TVC") in front of people. But that reach is multiplied
> when the ad is shown - even sparingly - on network television.
>
> And, TVC is a very effective way to communicate a URL, where all the
> information is and where we can shape our presentation as we see fit.
>
> Print ads in magazines and newspapers are a very cost-effective way to
> reach a target market. I say target because smart marketing means
> going to where your prospects are. If we want to reach teachers in the
> USA, it might be Teacher magazine (http://www.teachermagazine.org). If
> you want to speak to US government IT buyers, Government Computer News
> (http://www.gcn.com) would be a better bet.
>
> The next traditional alternative is "OOH" or "Out-of-home", a term
> which covers billboards, public transport, that little plane that
> flies over the beach trailing a flag.
>
> Often, nonprofits can arrange for an ad agency to donate time to make
> "creative". It's often a good way for an agency to enhance its image,
> support something they believe in, and pehaps help junior staff get
> experience on a noncritical account.
>
> The way it works is, the marketer sits down with the agency and
> outlines the goals: the product, the target market, short-term goals
> (increased sales), long-term goals (brand building). And, problems to
> be overcome ("we're getting clobbered in marketshare", "we need to
> look more modern", "people are upset with us but we can't fix the
> product quickly, what do we do?"). After the goals, the marketer
> mentions non-negotiables: "the product has to appear fullscreen in TVC
> for at least 3 seconds, and a quarter of the page in a print ad." Or,
> "we need our logo in overlay for at least 5 seconds during the spot,
> and 3 seconds at the end, taking care to avoid the corners where the
> TV station bug (logo) lives, and mentioned at least twice in the VO
> (voiceover)". Or even "we have a contract with a celebrity and we can
> do a shoot with him 4 days per year and he is filming in the Bahamas 3
> weeks from now, so we need to set the day quick before he leaves."
>
> A good agency will understand the marketer's problems and goals... and
> come up with an idea which will hopefully attract attention, generate
> buzz, build the brand values and awareness, and so on.
>
> That said... even good agencies can mess up. I am astonished at how
> bad Microsoft's ads have been as they burn through 300 million USD
> (!). It's easy to see why: nobody at Microsoft has a handle at what
> good advertising is, and the agency got overcreative, completely
> skipping over the products in a bid to seem "relevant".
>
> Here's a thoughtful guide which shows how nonprofits can waste
> precious Ad Council grants on ineffective advertising:
>
> http://www.agoodmanonline.com/pdf/bad_ads_high_res/BadAdsHi.pdf
>
> The guide outlines an excellent methodology for measuring the
> effectiveness of print ads, which of course have to fight against
> cars, beverages and meds for mindshare.
>
>
> Big-budget advertisers do lots of market studies and usually rely on a
> key metric: brand recognition, either aided or unaided.
>
> here's an example I am making up:
> ****************
> 1) Can you name three or more types of computers which are distributed
> to children for education?
>
> 2) Of these, can you name three or more software systems or interfaces
> which run on them?
>
> 3) Which of these education computers for children do you recognize?
> * Everex Cloudbook
> * One Laptop per Child XO-1
> * Intel Classmate
> * Apple Macbook
> * PC
>
> 4) Of these, can you name which system or systems run on which computer?
> * Windows XP
> * GNU/Linux
> * Sugar Learning Platform
> * OSX
> * gOS Rocket
> ****************
>
> Any of you will see problems in the way these questions are phrased.
> Yet, a marketer knowing nothing about computers or software would
> learn a lot about the "unaided" versus "aided" brand awareness, and by
> sifting the answers would learn how to better phrase the questions.
>
> A typical media campaign starts with a market study likes this, runs
> the campaign to improve brand awareness or positioning, then does the
> market study again to see if there has been a measurable impact.
>
> Our goal as marketers could be resumed as the following answer, when
> asked of teachers:
> 4. "Sugar runs on all of them".
>

Thanks Sean,
You are right, getting out the message will become a larger and larger
part of SL.

SL has spent the last year developing the Sugar Platform.  The next
step is getting Sugar into the hands of users.

Getting Sugar into the hands of users will involve three separate yet
critical components:
1.  Distribution  -  How do we get a working hardware/software
combination in front of users?  The packing teams at Fedora, Debain,
Ubuntu, Mandriva, and OLPC among others have been hard at work.
2.  Support - How do we provide the support necessary to make the
users experience positive.  Again we turn to the existing distros and
OEM to funnel issue report to the bug squad.
3.  Marketing - Finally, how do we spread the word about what Sugar is
and how usefull it can be.

david

> thanks
> Sean
> Marketing Coordinator