On Fri, 30 Jan 2009 20:44:24 John McCreesh wrote: > On Fri, January 30, 2009 01:16, Graham Lauder wrote: > [snip] > > > The Obama administration is not going endorse any product. So in terms of > > raising brand awareness such a letter would be a non event. While the > > Obama > > Administration may endorse the _philosophy_ of Open Source they are not > > going > > to endorse specific brands and that after all is our problem. > > The Obama campaign could teach us a thing or two about creating / raising > brand awareness - "Obama" is now one of the biggest brands on the planet. > > John
True enough, the parallels are interesting. He and his team (and let's not forget the team) motivated a grassroots campaign driven mostly by volunteers. It's true he had the big campaigns but the campaigns used money raised by that army of volunteers. However the critical point to us, is the cost of raising that money was minimal to his organisation. The lessons I think for us are: He built a groundswell over time using his permanent staff, the internet and social networking. Change "Permanent staff" for MarCons and you have the first makings of a groundswell. He had community groups at local level donating a little bit of their time and energy. If every MarCon could contact five or ten LUGS for instance and then get them to work with other local community groups to assist, then you have the start of a groundswell. The trick is to make people feel part of this global message. Secondly he had a goal, one considered to be almost impossible and a specific timeframe so that the grassroots had a very specific vision in their head. This is one thing he had in his favour which we don't; a very specific, and this is important, single focus and a _high profile_ target, (the man himself in the Whitehouse). To make the same thing work we would have to create a focus, a concrete target. That is a little harder for us to identify. "Google: Why OOo" gives us a target, not quite as lofty as the whitehouse it is true, but a target nonetheless. That target hits on the Why OOo page. I don't know what a reasonable number would be and still be a challenge: 500 million hits in a week perhaps. Then we define a date, say a month for the campaign and an end date. (A memorable date like 9/9/09 and go for 99 million hits?) To do this there would be two campaigns, one to grow the grass root support. That could be something like "Let the world know about OOo" (It even rhymes! :) ) This message we deliver to the "Choir" as John calls them. That is to get them to participate in the campaign and then The second campaign is the one we get the Choir to deliver: "Google OO.o" We back this all up with Facebook, Twitter and Youtube content. Cost: Not a lot, in terms of cash, whether it succeeds or fails and in fact whether we reach the goal or not, we still would have raised brand awareness. Hell, it's a Win:Win. Cheers G -- "The Best Things in life are 3" http://why.openoffice.org ISO 26300 compliant Graham Lauder, OpenOffice.org MarCon (Marketing Contact) NZ http://marketing.openoffice.org/contacts.html INGOTs Assessor Trainer (International Grades in Office Technologies) www.theingots.org.nz --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [email protected] For additional commands, e-mail: [email protected]
