[Marketing] active marketing => was Re: possible marketing plan

[Sean DALY]

Hi Marten, don't worry there's no personal attack :-)
although I think a couple of words were missing?

If you can participate in this afternoon's marketing meeting, we can
discuss this further

I certainly agree that a CD label is not necessary... just that a
clearly labelled CD will be more likely to be passed around. It's
about lowering barriers to trying Sugar, an ongoing effort at all
levels.

I'm sure you'll agree that getting a nicely labeled CD to magazine
editors... who may have the CD duplicated and distributed as in the
German magazine Log-In which was sent to 1500 schools... is a very
efficient way to reach hundreds or thousands of potential Sugar
ambassadors.... with an effort comparable to speaking with just a few
individuals. To reach thousands of teachers, hundreds of thousands of
parents, and ultimately millions of children, we need to do both.

Talking about Sugar to friends and colleagues is I think something we
all do; one of my son's friend's fathers came over, saw my XOs, we got
to talking about Sugar and an hour after, he promised to put me in
touch with his company's foundation and now I am talking with them.

A golden rule of marketing is: there will always be new ways to get
the message out more effectively... even if certain techniques are
known to be very efficient.

Let's look at the Dell education netbook media launch. They did:
* a press release (certainly under embargo, to maximize the impact of
the launch day)
* publicist work with journalists. I guarantee you that cultivating
journalists is not a "passive" activity ;-)
* targeted mailings to journalists, and no doubt to education contacts
through their sales channel
* a blog post
* a YouTube video
* a Flickr set

What I haven't seen yet is advertising, but if there is it will likely
be the first two weeks in September... because today's launch is
targeted at school buyers and tech journalists, whereas expensive
print and TVC will likely be targeted to parent buyers wanting to get
a netbook for their kids in the (northern hemisphere) back-to-school
mode.

The posts you did, the grassroots you are doing are working: one of
your images is in the top ten Google Image search results for "sugar
on a stick" (I am happy to say that SoaS is also the other nine, which
is bad for the sugar industry I guess :D ). But beyond that, talking
to people about Sugar is a very effective way to recruit new
volunteers to the project... there's certainly enough work for
everyone :-)

The best thing any of us can do is share what works (and what doesn't)
as we do outreach.

thanks

Sean


On Tue, May 19, 2009 at 2:17 PM, Marten Vijn <info at martenvijn.nl> wrote:
> Hi Sean,
>
> Thanks for your reply, for the following please do see this as personal
> attack. I am very about your response because it gives the opportunity
> how can we can reach a larger user base. It can be done now and we don't
> have to wait for anything.
>
> I would like introduce the term active marketing,
>
> Active marketing is an interactive proces, like talking, chatting,
> replaying to email.
>
> Passive Marketing is bulkmail, blogging, advertising, youtube
>
> Example:
> Asking a person you know to download Sugar, burn it and boot it. Being
> availbe in this proces (online chat / physical) will give a lot of
> feedback about Sugar.
> Asking their opinion by email show willingness to take a next step.
>
> It is creating results beyond awareness and gives very clear feedback.
> So we can learn to better and faster.
>
> being an example:
> Yesterday night in one hour time I had 4 people downloading sugar.
> I did it by using chat I did not leave my chair. Meanwhile I was doing
> other things.
>
> Having a label on the cd is good. However is not necessary.
> If I would have thought the label as a hard dependency, I would not have
> reached 6 people and get them to boot sugar.
>
> So in this case:
> The idea of needing a cd-label for marketing is limiting the mind set of
> people.
> A catch-22 should be avoided : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catch-22
>
>
> An approach of removing dependencies is imho very important. I would
> place actions before dependencies. Dependencies do not create results
> and action do. Regardless of the output doing an action gives energy.
>
> Taking an action shows dare and leadership. IMHO it shows wished
> behavior.
>
> I would to challenge every one of us with an easy to reach goal.
>
> in the next 24 hours:
> - ask 4 people to download sugar, burn it, boot it,
> - get their opinion
> - post your successes (creating more energy)
>
> cheers,
> Marten
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> On Tue, 2009-05-19 at 12:56 +0200, Sean DALY wrote:
>> Guerilla marketing is most effective... when there is an army of
>> people with time & energy available to make contacts :-) and as a
>> complement to:
>>
>> * Viral marketing, which we intend to do with DailyMotion screencasts
>>
>> * Blogging, which we sort of do with planet but it's not
>> well-referenced since blog posts are dispersed and often off-topic
>>
>> * The website, which has a serious navigation handicap between the
>> sections (but that will be solved very shortly)
>>
>> * Classic PR, which we are doing for cheap, only paying press releases
>> and which we can ease off on (fewer extra categories) since we have by
>> now succeeded in becoming well-referenced and easily
>> press-contactable. Our targeted press mailings and news submissions
>> are working, but we need more coverage by education bloggers (and more
>> translators for the press releases, and somebody to help me with the
>> translated PDFs)
>>
>> * Traditional advertising without which we likely won't build
>> awareness among educators. This last requires the most funds but can
>> have major reach... a single-page ad in a teacher-read publication
>> e.g. Education Week (see
>> http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Marketing_Team/Press_contacts) would have
>> an immediate major impact.
>>
>>
>> Handing out CDs is great but is not really guerilla marketing, where
>> you one-up the competition by doing something unexpected such as
>> having folks on rollerblades zipping about with samples or flyers or
>> you put a huge beer can on the roof of a city's taxis for a week. The
>> term is overused since guerilla marketing can actually be very
>> expensive (that army of students do want some money); it's grassroots
>> marketing that's the cheapest.
>>
>> To make the most of one-to-one CD distribution, we should try to get a
>> nice-looking CD label, either a jewel case insert or preferably an
>> actual disc label or lightscribe compatible or something. Caroline,
>> did you say you had worked on that a little bit with Christian?
>>
>> thanks
>>
>> Sean
>>
>>
>> On Mon, May 18, 2009 at 10:15 PM, Marten Vijn <info at martenvijn.nl> wrote:
>> > Hi all,
>> >
>> > Yesterday reffered to guerrilla marketing
>> > as a way to do effective marketing without a large budget
>> >
>> > see
>> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guerrilla_marketing
>> >
>> > for more background I suggest to read:
>> > http://www.amazon.com/Guerrilla-Marketing-Handbook-Seth-Godin/dp/0395700132
>> >
>> >
>> > My plan to do marketing:
>> >
>> > My goal:
>> > - create a local interest group:
>> > - 5000 people have heard about sugar in 3 month
>> >
>> >
>> > My means:
>> >
>> > Step 1:
>> > - talk to 10 people everyday about sugar
>> > - offer a free cdrom with the obligation to give feedback via email or
>> > phone.
>> >
>> > Step 2:
>> > If I get positive feedback I will ask for help.
>> > - burn some cdrom's
>> > - for one week talk to one person a day
>> > - offer free cdroms and ask for feedback
>> > - ask people to do the same.
>> >
>> > Step 3:
>> > - weekly meeting with purpose to share:
>> >  - knowlegde about sugar
>> >  - getting people involved
>> > - focus group to have dutch documentation, youtubes and so
>> >
>> > Costs:
>> > 100 cdrom's => 30 Euro's
>> >
>> > cheers
>> > Marten
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> > --
>> > http://martenvijn.nl                 Marten Vijn
>> > http://martenvijn.nl/trac/wiki/soas  Sugar on a Stick
>> > http://bsd.wifisoft.org/nek/         The Network Event Kit
>> > http://har2009.org                   13th-16th August
>> > http://opencommunitycamp.org         26th Jul - 2nd August
>> >
>> > _______________________________________________
>> > Marketing mailing list
>> > Marketing at lists.sugarlabs.org
>> > http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/marketing
>> >
> --
> http://martenvijn.nl                 Marten Vijn
> http://martenvijn.nl/trac/wiki/soas  Sugar on a Stick
> http://bsd.wifisoft.org/nek/         The Network Event Kit
> http://har2009.org                   13th-16th August
> http://opencommunitycamp.org         26th Jul - 2nd August
>
>