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This is a crossposting. I'm crossposting this to the marketing list, because it concerns marketing more now. >> Great Software > > I mentionned that before and I still have an issue with it. We can't > tell people what they should think is great. We have to convince them > it is and tell them why it is. Really good point! Didn't think about this at all. But yes, Sebastien is totally right and his argument just fits the alternative marketing approach i proposed to the marketing list recently. OpenOffice.org marketing shouldn't go meaningless bubbly thin air slogans like everyone else does. And true, "It's great." is one of them. BTW: "Great software" is a waste of a word space. Everyone knows already that it's software. No need to mention that. Better use a noun that incorporates another value we want to promote...i.e. "experience" is better. > If you reply "Well because it's Open, it's easy to use and it's free" > you've got valid argument and most importantly "facts". Actually, "open" is a thin air buzz word as well. Can anyone tell me right away why open is so good? Ok, yes, you can. But does someone have a notion of that who is not already attracted to open software? And by good i don't mean in a not a bad thing way, but in an actually really adding value way? I think most of the people who never really got involved with the open source spirit - and those are the ones we want to address - "open" means basically nothing else than just something they read in the net about here and there and got the notion that some IT-people consider it a good thing. Openness is not the benefit, it is the cause for some of them. And it would be a wasted wordspace as well...the product is called "OpenOffice.org" already, remember? ;-) So we should break that down to something that actually makes "open" a good thing. I like the "legal" claim a lot, because it contains more than just the alternative to buying a MS product. It also contains the freedom to do whatever you like (well, almost) with the piece of code you get. Maybe there would be another term that embodies that even more, something like "empowering" (which is still to vague) or maybe something like "It's yours.". Or maybe "liberating" would be a nice adjective, for it not only covers the benefit of opensource, but also the matters of compatibility with different formats and platforms - and in a sense even standards compliance and multilanguage capability. Another approach could be to come up with something that makes people think about it. Something that is not already a washed out marketing buzz word. This might be ridiculous, but just to give you an example..."It's blue." The mouseover text on the left could explain that it's blue in the sense of the open sky and go on about the advantages of openness. Also, the "easy to use" is one of the worst marketing claims ever, if you think about it. Nothing is in itself "easy to use". If you come from Microsoft products, you will not find OOo easy to use. You will be confused by the simple matter that the icons look different already. This is Sebastiens point again...we tell the user that it's simple, he downloads the software, he doesn't find it all that simple straight away. So either we lied or he can consider himself just being too stupid. Both not very nice prospects. Replacements for that claim could be "empowering" or - what i'd like even more - "rewarding". Because in fact it is rewarding once you made the effort to learn it. But you have to make that effort first and we shouldn't deny it. After all the why page is all about why someone should make the effort to change to OpenOffice. We are offering people an answer to the question "Ok, so why should i make the effort?" and then we tell them that it isn't an effort? Doesn't really work for me. I really think OpenOffice.org can live without the same marketing crap that everyone else does. Let's not just repeat the crap, let's be both creative and user oriented...not only on the development side. Sorry, getting a little polemic here, again. ;-) Anyway, my proposal: - - welcoming - - liberating - - rewarding > I was going to point that out too. In this particular page we want to > target markets. I don't know how those icons I made before would fit > in there. We should probably work on other ones. Can you send me a link to them? Think i missed it, i only recognised placeholders in the page sketches of the issues. André. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.2 (MingW32) iD8DBQFEbUr4EOp8fsnyxsQRAshQAKCw1qyumvdH8xZo4FHI77x7TaLDXQCgzoGG mm2eiD1lgv/VfBQhoMrvlXo= =2NN3 -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
