[Marketing] Reflections on advertising

[David Farning]

On Tue, Mar 24, 2009 at 11:11 PM, Mel Chua <mel at melchua.com> wrote:
>>> Our goal as marketers could be resumed as the following answer, when
>>> asked of teachers:
>>> 4. "Sugar runs on all of them".
>
> Oh... my gosh. I think my brain just exploded. Thank you for the braindump,
> Sean - you're making my world expand dramatically.
>
> Another brand awareness thing I'd personally love to push is "...and you can
> help." This isn't something to consume, it's something to help create. How
> to get that message across in marketing I'm not sure. We can have Newbie
> Welcome Days on IRC and/or in person (like "plan your own Firefox release
> party / Software Freedom Day festivities") after each release, but that's...
> not marketing, is it? (says clueless Mel.)
>
>> 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.
>
> Ooh, *this* would be a fun problem! Do we want to be able to market Sugar
> support services (volunteer, professional, ongoing, event-based, whatever)?
> Right now I think our support = "ask the developers," which... scales only
> up to a point. (This may be verging on offtopic - if you can think of a
> better list for it, please move it!)
>

I have never heard of support referred to as a fun problem:)

Support one of the most interesting areas in the Sugar ecosystem for
four reasons:
1. Support doesn't scale.
2. Support is a great on ramp for community participants.
3. Support is one of the most like sources of revenue for ecosystem partners.
4. Effective support is chance to receive feedback on the weakness and
strengths of Sugar.

david