[Marketing] targeting journals from countries where sugar is used

[Tomeu Vizoso]

On Mon, Oct 19, 2009 at 12:01, Sean DALY <sdaly.be at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi Tomeu
>
> In fact, it's not an either/or approach; although the wire services
> (AP, AFP, Reuters, Bloomberg) and international broadcast media like
> the BBC have a fantastic reach, "seeding" both the general and
> specialized press, of course they cannot go into the depth print can,
> especially within a country where deployments exist.

In my experience reading technology-related articles in the general
press in non-english-speaking countries, the journalists reproduce the
articles that they find already in their language, don't go to the
original in english. So if a news piece didn't got translated to their
language by some intrepid journalist, the whole news remains
unpublished in that country. This has also effects that translation
mistakes remain uncorrected.

> I'm hampered by not speaking Spanish... who can help us build a list
> of publications in Latin American OLPC countries?

Maybe any of the local labs we have in the region (cc'ing Rafael)?

> Ideally, we could start with both the general press and tech press of
> each country which has published articles on OLPC. Most of these
> articles will be online.
>
> Then, we could complement the list with whatever general and tech
> publications have wide reach within the country but have not published
> OLPC articles.
>
> Next, we could add education-themed specialized publications; many
> countries have glossy monthlies read by teachers.
>
> Finally, we could identify influential bloggers or columnists, ideally
> oriented to education.
>
> In all cases, the work to do is the same: identify article authors,
> find their e-mail address if possible, add the general news-item
> submission e-mail of the publication, add them to the mailing list I
> maintain with the two-lettter ISO-639 language code. If a press
> release is available in the tagged language, journalists get the PR in
> their language. PR launches generate coverage, and often bubble up
> awareness, meaning that if a journalist or editor doesn't write that
> day, they may make a note to follow what we are doing.
>
> It's important to note if any journalist has been very unfair to
> OLPC/Sugar; there are unfortunately some biased viewpoints and these
> cases need to be handled carefully. Sometimes it's worth correcting
> the record, as we did recently with teleread.org; other times it's
> best to add information in an article comment; occasionally, it's best
> to suffer in silence and see if the journalist evolves over time.
>
> Approaching publications is the publicist's job, and beyond marketing
> I do this for English and French publications, but as I say I can't do
> Spanish. It would be great if we could find someone to do that, and of
> course for other non-English languages too. I mentioned that I want to
> grow the marketing team; finding contributors to help us with that is
> on top of my list of skillsets to seek. It's time-consuming work, but
> has a direct impact on the effectiveness of our launches which boost
> Sugar awareness.

Sounds good, as you said we need help from local people.

Regards,

Tomeu

> Of course, there is another issue: we can't speak for OLPC, and they
> haven't expressed any interest in working with the press. However,
> I've seen some recent changes at OLPC which are encouraging, they may
> be willing to make efforts in that regard. It's a pity, because we
> could do extremely effective joint marketing about Uruguay, the
> XO-1.5, and so on which could transform their bad press.
>
> thanks
> Sean
>
>
>
> On Mon, Oct 19, 2009 at 12:20 PM, Tomeu Vizoso <tomeu at sugarlabs.org> wrote:
>> Hi,
>>
>> wonder if it has already been discussed to put special focus in
>> journalists from countries where Sugar is being used (mainly OLPC
>> countries)? We may assess which journals have published most about the
>> XOs, then approach them.
>>
>> I would say that they should have a more direct interest in Sugar
>> than, says, BBC.
>>
>> If the governments in those countries realized how much they could win
>> by participating in the development of Sugar, we could get some
>> resources. Some public discussion about what Sugar is and how it is
>> developed might help get us there.
>>
>> Regards,
>>
>> Tomeu
>>
>> --
>> «Sugar Labs is anyone who participates in improving and using Sugar.
>> What Sugar Labs does is determined by the participants.» - David
>> Farning
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>> Marketing at lists.sugarlabs.org
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>>
>



-- 
«Sugar Labs is anyone who participates in improving and using Sugar.
What Sugar Labs does is determined by the participants.» - David
Farning