On Monday 21 January 2008, Dan Kegel wrote: > On Jan 21, 2008 11:12 AM, Aaron J. Seigo <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > All those brands you mention already have excellent > > > products which are immediately familiar to all > > > consumers. > > > > you're mixing up cause and effect here. you don't get good branding from > > a well known product, you get a well known product in (large) part due to > > good branding. > > Not what I meant. The horse that comes before the cart is a *good* > product. We don't yet have any excellent Linux-based consumer products. > We're oh-so-close, but none really pass the bar yet. Maybe this year.
it is not necessary to have a consumer product to build an image brand. and building an image brand now might actually help to produce better consumer products in the (near, even) future. there is a focus here on "finished product" that sort of misses what Linux itself is. > > > Linux should not do such advertizing > > > until it similarly has concrete, excellent products > > > that everyone knows about. > > > > heh. don't market things until people know about it? well, at that point > > you don't need to do marketing since you've achieved it's end goals > > without doing any. ;) > > Not true. The products might be well known, but the fact that they're > Linux based might not be. The branding campaign would help > transfer the good vibe from the well-known excellent products > to the common name Linux. ah, you're talking about "marketing Linux by associating with the products other people create around it". i see. ... this assumes the people who created that well-known excellent product are then willing to share some of that goodwill. given that Linux would not have addressed its unsavoury PR characteristics by that point, i'd be doubtful of that. Linux could well be perceived as a detrimental element to their PR (and for many CE devices, i'd agree with that sentiment at this point) and thus something they'd wish to distance themselves from. it also assumes that we would want to connect Linux with these products in the first place. particularly over the long haul. you've already discounted some of the current products for various reasons. how long do we wait for the product we're willing to associate with? an additional consideration is both the difficulty of leeching another's success PR wise (hello, Webkit) since it's really hard to get after-the-fact recognition; and what does such an approach says about the Linux product itself (it's soul is actually not its own, they had to wait for Company Z to bring out Product X to find it). while recognizing partners and building a coordinated communications channel are all Must Haves, putting one's image future in the hands of others is, at least imho, a dubious strategy. we can lay claim to our own destiny here and not live at the whims and successes (or lack thereof) of others. we can actually state our own purpose for being that is innate to our technology and not just someone else's use of it. and by doing so we can help create the successes we are currently in idle mode waiting for. i'd also note that promoting Coke Rocks Because It Uses Linux! is a nice way to discourage Pepsi from joining the fray. that whole differentiation thing. so while trumpeting partner successes is a great thing, waiting to base a campaign around the advent of such successes is not a great idea. concrete thought experiments: consider a strategy where one tries to leverage Google's success with Linux or an EEE PC type device (e.g. one that is heavily branded and does well in the market). -- Aaron J. Seigo humru othro a kohnu se GPG Fingerprint: 8B8B 2209 0C6F 7C47 B1EA EE75 D6B7 2EB1 A7F1 DB43 KDE core developer sponsored by Trolltech
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