Re: Marketing Brief
This looks good! I especially like how it's formulated. I guess the paper should serve as an overview to others? I have three suggestions for improvement (two my typical ones): 1.) Mention GNOME's different products. At least, the desktop and dev platform should be mentioned. We might also add mobile platform and GNOME applications, that is: applications owned by GNOME. Sure, they are all somehow connected. But it's an mistake to create the impression that these are all one thing since each needs it's own appoach of marketing. 2.) Explain the relationships between stakeholders. The relationship GNOME Distribution OEM Customer is very similar to the one of a typical sales chain: Producer Wholesale Retail Customer. This has also implications for marketing. Strictly speaking, we'd need to segment each part of the chain. It's also important that some of our products can bypass parts of the chain: applications, most importantly. [1] (Side note remark: Good thing to mention OEMs. We didn't very often yet. Wouldn't it be cool to have a GNOME x.0 special edition laptop one day? :-D ) 3.) Explain the diffusion process [2] People are different in their reaction to new technology. Additionally, nearly all are risk-averse, some just less then others. This has important implications for our marketing, since the GNOME desktop is best suited for the Late Majority and Laggards but it's hard to reach these groups (they are not accessible to us). Best regards, Claus [1] http://live.gnome.org/GnomeScienceCD for a potential example [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diffusion_of_innovations On Sat, 2009-06-13 at 14:27 -0500, Paul Cutler wrote: I'd like to preface this email with a couple thoughts. I'd like to apologize for not continuing the brainstorming discussion in recent weeks, but something John said made me take a different approach. John's right - a lot of this has been discussed before. With that thought, I decided to write a Marketing Brief. I used content that was in the wiki, on the web, and my own thoughts and opinions. I'm currently at a docs conference, and one of our keynote speakers said something, that basically sums me up. Doc writers are perfectionists, and don't like to send stuff out until it's complete. Well, as you'll see, the Brief is only 75% complete. You will see comments and questions I have in parantheses and brackets, and whole paragraphs are missing, and a few more citations are needed. I should know better about harnessing the power of community! You can review it here: http://live.gnome.org/MarketingBrief2009 - It's on the wiki - so edit, review, and give feedback. If you disagree with any points I have, let's talk about it here on the list. Additionally, on Tuesday when I return home from this conference, I will send out to the list 2 marketing campaign ideas for GNOME 3.0. In addition to Claus' campaign idea he posted on the list last month, I think we can have some good discussion about that. Thanks. Paul -- marketing-list mailing list marketing-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/marketing-list -- marketing-list mailing list marketing-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/marketing-list
Re: promoting good gnome apps via news.gnome.org
On Sat, 2009-06-13 at 11:01 -0700, Sriram Ramkrishna wrote: Actually, the original idea I had about this is to do away with our platform (eg the apps that make gnome.. after all the whole thing is a distro decision these days anyways) Instead we would promote them via adsense and drive traffic to these apps thus using them as marketing tools. That might make people work harder to get themselves into compliance in a particular niche. I agree to the idea that we would not need an default GNOME applications package. A list of suggested apps would be sufficient. But spending money on an Adsense campaign would be wasted. Look at the Rhythmbox homepage, for an example: From a sales point of view, the page is simply bad. It mentions no benefits. It triggers no curiosity to find out more. There's no social proof. There's no call-to-action. Even if there would be a call-to-action: What would it be about? Download the tarball and compile yourself? As long as application developers fail to understand how important a decentralized installer is for marketing, promoting their apps or even improving their homepages is basically just a waste of time. Sorry if that sounds harsh, but that's just the way it is. Best regards, Claus -- marketing-list mailing list marketing-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/marketing-list
Re: promoting good gnome apps via news.gnome.org
On Sun, Jun 14, 2009 at 5:34 AM, Claus Schwarm clschw...@googlemail.comwrote: Sorry if that sounds harsh, but that's just the way it is. I can always depend on you to get to the heart of the matter, Claus. :-) I don't think your comments are harsh, but does reflect a reality behind my suggestion. Yes, I agree that perhaps driving people to developer websites might have the opposite effect if a product web page is lacking. There is of course the branding and consistency of a GNOME supported app. Perhaps that means we create our own product page I don't know. So maybe a modification is to create our own product page for each promoted app with a link to the original page? I still think the foundation of the ideas is sound which is to drive interest in products that compete with others on more popular systems. sri -- marketing-list mailing list marketing-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/marketing-list
Re: promoting good gnome apps via news.gnome.org
On Sun, 2009-06-14 at 08:02 -0700, Sriram Ramkrishna wrote: So maybe a modification is to create our own product page for each promoted app with a link to the original page? I still think the foundation of the ideas is sound which is to drive interest in products that compete with others on more popular systems. sri Yes, the basic idea is sound. That's why I suggested to have a better apps directory back in February 2004. [1] Thus I also argued to have a separate projects.gnome.org to manage project homepages more easily.[2] Good apps drive adoption of the underlying platform. If there's a decentralized installer for an app -- which could simply be LSB-complient DEB that installs into /opt --, marketing is no problem. Just put a large button Download Now on the homepage, improve its content, and people would use it. Whenever a new version is released, there's lots of media to spread the word and drive traffic to the project homepage: * Twitter and other microblogging tools * Blogs and planets * Forums such linuxquestion.org, etc. * Linux sites such as LinuxToday, LWN, etc. * Download directories such as gnomefiles, etc. * Social sites such as Reddit, Digg, etc. With a little bit of SEO, one could maybe even make it into the top ten of search results for generic keywords such as audio player. No need to pay Adsense. But even Adsense would make sense. Additionally, the new version could be distributed directly: * CoverCDs of Linux journals * Self-burned CD to be distributed on schoolyards, etc. When Firefox 1.5 was released, two major German PC magazine had it on their CoverCD. That meant 1 million people in Germany alone got it for free, including an article describing how awesome it is. The Firefox crew didn't really need to promote it back then, journalists did it for them. In other words: It's easy when there's an installer. Without an installer, however, most of the word-of-mouth advertising fails. Most users will have to wait a few months for the new version, anyway, before it's packaged and distributed by their distribution. Then, why waste time being informed today? Why talk about a new version to your friend, if he or she is not able to download and install it? Why read a blog about it? Or blog about it? Why visit gnomefiles each week? Makes no sense. Because doing so is boring. As a result, there's no hype when a new version is released. And good applications are being ignored. But I have no clue how to change the lack of installers. It would be the job of developers, wouldn't it? Best regards, Claus [1] http://mail.gnome.org/archives/gnome-web-list/2004-February/msg00025.html [2] http://mail.gnome.org/archives/marketing-list/2006-July/msg00169.html -- marketing-list mailing list marketing-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/marketing-list
Re: promoting good gnome apps via news.gnome.org
Am Sonntag, den 14.06.2009, 20:11 +0200 schrieb Claus Schwarm: Thus I also argued to have a separate projects.gnome.org to manage project homepages more easily. This has happened in the meantime. andre -- mailto:ak...@gmx.net | failed http://www.iomc.de/ | http://blogs.gnome.org/aklapper -- marketing-list mailing list marketing-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/marketing-list
GNOME 3.0 Roadmap - Promotion/Marketing
Hi all, We're working on the roadmap for GNOME 3.0 now. The idea is to have a more concrete set of goals for 3.0 and bring more clarity and transparency to the 3.0 general plans. Instead of doing a current per-module roadmapping process, we're trying to use a more topic-based approach. One of topics I'm including on our roadmap is Promotion/Marketing. So, here's the information I'm looking for: 1. Summarize in one sentence/paragraph the goal(s) for Promotion/Marketing in GNOME 3.0 2. What are the goals for Promotion/Marketing in GNOME 3.0? Some general guidelines: - For 2, I'm expeting a simple bullet list; - The items should be as concise and concrete as possible; - Ideally, the goals listed here should have a good level of feasibility. Try to avoid blue sky type of ideas with no people actually backing them; - Try to split those in two milestones: 2.28 and 2.30; - It would be nice to have the roadmap by June 19. We can include the result of our discussions about GNOME Marketing Brief[1], GNOME 3.0 marketing[1], bringing more focus to apps[2], website revamp[3], Friends of GNOME drive[4], etc. Other ideas? Suggestions? Anyway, I think it would be a good exercise for us to try to come up with a concrete plan for 3.0. Who volunteers to organize that? Let me know if you have any questions. Cheers! --lucasr [1] http://live.gnome.org/MarketingBrief2009 [2] http://live.gnome.org/ThreePointZero/Plan [3] http://live.gnome.org/GnomeWeb/TwoPointTwentyseven [4] http://www.gnome.org/friends/drive/ -- marketing-list mailing list marketing-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/marketing-list
Re: GNOME 3.0 Roadmap - Promotion/Marketing
Lucas, thanks for the email. I had been taking a slightly different approach, but I think we can figure it out. For the BoF Stormy and I are giving at GUADEC, my hope had been to be able to share out our plan with the community at that time based on discussions on the list. I sent the Brief out yesterday, and there are some things that need to be finished out. I was going to send out 3 campaign ideas on Wednesday (2 of mine, and Claus') for discussion, and next weekend I was going to send out a calendar of events and marketing vehicles built in an OOo spreadsheet that I was going to attach to lgo. In this calendar, it lays out a number of marketing activities, including (off the top of my head without looking at the doc): * Creating presentations for volunteers to give at conferences / LUGs (they have a base to start from) * Blog strategy (similar to FoG where we have a schedule of volunteers blogging once a week about FoG) * Press kit (we can send journalists information about our new product release) * Video campaign (This is an integral part of a marketing campaign I have) * Interviews (Make members of the GNOME community available for interviews with the press, provide speaking points) And a couple others. All are zero cost. In the spread sheet, the column headers are weeks, and I was shading the cells with 3 colors, one for planning, development, and implementation. There are a number of marketing vehicles that we can deploy over time, as opposed to a press release which is released on a certain day and you're kind of done with. This is probably a much more complex answer to your question than you wanted. The goal of the marketing brief sent out yesterday is to answer some of these questions. Paul On Sun, Jun 14, 2009 at 1:34 PM, Lucas Rocha luc...@gnome.org wrote: Hi all, We're working on the roadmap for GNOME 3.0 now. The idea is to have a more concrete set of goals for 3.0 and bring more clarity and transparency to the 3.0 general plans. Instead of doing a current per-module roadmapping process, we're trying to use a more topic-based approach. One of topics I'm including on our roadmap is Promotion/Marketing. So, here's the information I'm looking for: 1. Summarize in one sentence/paragraph the goal(s) for Promotion/Marketing in GNOME 3.0 2. What are the goals for Promotion/Marketing in GNOME 3.0? Some general guidelines: - For 2, I'm expeting a simple bullet list; - The items should be as concise and concrete as possible; - Ideally, the goals listed here should have a good level of feasibility. Try to avoid blue sky type of ideas with no people actually backing them; - Try to split those in two milestones: 2.28 and 2.30; - It would be nice to have the roadmap by June 19. We can include the result of our discussions about GNOME Marketing Brief[1], GNOME 3.0 marketing[1], bringing more focus to apps[2], website revamp[3], Friends of GNOME drive[4], etc. Other ideas? Suggestions? Anyway, I think it would be a good exercise for us to try to come up with a concrete plan for 3.0. Who volunteers to organize that? Let me know if you have any questions. Cheers! --lucasr [1] http://live.gnome.org/MarketingBrief2009 [2] http://live.gnome.org/ThreePointZero/Plan [3] http://live.gnome.org/GnomeWeb/TwoPointTwentyseven [4] http://www.gnome.org/friends/drive/ -- marketing-list mailing list marketing-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/marketing-list -- marketing-list mailing list marketing-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/marketing-list
Re: Marketing Brief
Hi, Paul Cutler wrote: I can understand that. There's just no quantitative information I can find. In general I don't think it's useful tp talk about market share of desktop environments on Linux, given that overall market share of Linux on the desktop is 1%. I didn't comment on any of the suyrveys when it was 60% KDE/30% GNOME, I'm not going to comment on any of the surveys where it's 55% GNOME/35% KDE. Cheers, Dave. -- Dave Neary GNOME Foundation member dne...@gnome.org -- marketing-list mailing list marketing-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/marketing-list
Re: GNOME 3.0 Roadmap - Promotion/Marketing
I'd love to hear the community's thoughts on Lucas' email. I would personally recommend for the objective: To introduce existing GNOME users to GNOME 3.0, including it's features, benefits and changes Why existing? I think we need to be aware of scope, and our first mission should be to help users adjust to the change from 2.x to 3.0, and as time goes on, build on that community to other target markets. Feedback? Too narrow? Suggestions and alternatives? Paul On Sun, Jun 14, 2009 at 2:18 PM, Paul Cutler pcut...@gnome.org wrote: Lucas, thanks for the email. I had been taking a slightly different approach, but I think we can figure it out. For the BoF Stormy and I are giving at GUADEC, my hope had been to be able to share out our plan with the community at that time based on discussions on the list. I sent the Brief out yesterday, and there are some things that need to be finished out. I was going to send out 3 campaign ideas on Wednesday (2 of mine, and Claus') for discussion, and next weekend I was going to send out a calendar of events and marketing vehicles built in an OOo spreadsheet that I was going to attach to lgo. In this calendar, it lays out a number of marketing activities, including (off the top of my head without looking at the doc): * Creating presentations for volunteers to give at conferences / LUGs (they have a base to start from) * Blog strategy (similar to FoG where we have a schedule of volunteers blogging once a week about FoG) * Press kit (we can send journalists information about our new product release) * Video campaign (This is an integral part of a marketing campaign I have) * Interviews (Make members of the GNOME community available for interviews with the press, provide speaking points) And a couple others. All are zero cost. In the spread sheet, the column headers are weeks, and I was shading the cells with 3 colors, one for planning, development, and implementation. There are a number of marketing vehicles that we can deploy over time, as opposed to a press release which is released on a certain day and you're kind of done with. This is probably a much more complex answer to your question than you wanted. The goal of the marketing brief sent out yesterday is to answer some of these questions. Paul On Sun, Jun 14, 2009 at 1:34 PM, Lucas Rocha luc...@gnome.org wrote: Hi all, We're working on the roadmap for GNOME 3.0 now. The idea is to have a more concrete set of goals for 3.0 and bring more clarity and transparency to the 3.0 general plans. Instead of doing a current per-module roadmapping process, we're trying to use a more topic-based approach. One of topics I'm including on our roadmap is Promotion/Marketing. So, here's the information I'm looking for: 1. Summarize in one sentence/paragraph the goal(s) for Promotion/Marketing in GNOME 3.0 2. What are the goals for Promotion/Marketing in GNOME 3.0? Some general guidelines: - For 2, I'm expeting a simple bullet list; - The items should be as concise and concrete as possible; - Ideally, the goals listed here should have a good level of feasibility. Try to avoid blue sky type of ideas with no people actually backing them; - Try to split those in two milestones: 2.28 and 2.30; - It would be nice to have the roadmap by June 19. We can include the result of our discussions about GNOME Marketing Brief[1], GNOME 3.0 marketing[1], bringing more focus to apps[2], website revamp[3], Friends of GNOME drive[4], etc. Other ideas? Suggestions? Anyway, I think it would be a good exercise for us to try to come up with a concrete plan for 3.0. Who volunteers to organize that? Let me know if you have any questions. Cheers! --lucasr [1] http://live.gnome.org/MarketingBrief2009 [2] http://live.gnome.org/ThreePointZero/Plan [3] http://live.gnome.org/GnomeWeb/TwoPointTwentyseven [4] http://www.gnome.org/friends/drive/ -- marketing-list mailing list marketing-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/marketing-list -- marketing-list mailing list marketing-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/marketing-list
