On Tuesday 28 May 2013 21:07:28 Rob Weir wrote:
> On Tue, May 28, 2013 at 8:27 PM, Graham Lauder <[email protected]> wrote:
> > On Tuesday 28 May 2013 15:00:47 Jürgen Schmidt wrote:
> >> On 5/28/13 2:48 PM, Alphonso Whitfield III wrote:
> >> > I agree with Kadal looks like more of the same.
> >> 
> >> And that is not necessarily bad. We got feedback from 5000 users and it
> >> seems that the majority like the logo we have and why not simply keeping
> >> the main idea and do only some refresh.
> > 
> > Where is that data, I can't find it, it doesn't seem to be on the wiki
> > with the logo stuff
> 
> Hi Graham,
> 
> Thanks for checking in.  I'm sorry you were not able to be involved
> earlier over the several months that we've been working on a new logo.

Likewise, oh well those are the breaks, priorities must needs win out.


>  We had 40 proposals, did a survey and now we're refining the highest
> scoring submissions.  If you want to get caught up on what we've all
> been working on, a good start would be the blog post here:
> 
> https://blogs.apache.org/OOo/entry/results_of_apache_openoffice_4
> 
> Note also the link to the more detailed report:
> 
> http://survey.openoffice.org/reports/aoo40-logo-poll/

Excellent, thank you.  Why were Lucas Filho's concepts not included?

https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/download/attachments/27846912/Concepts_LucasFilho02.png




> 
> > When you say "Not necessarily bad", by what criteria do you judge this,
> > the
> > aesthetic sensibilities of 5000 random respondents.  I'm sorry I missed
> > the
> > survey so I have no idea of what was in it.
> 
> We prefer to call them "users", just like we call those who comment on
> the list "community members" rather than "random posters".

Without a specific demographic defined and no filtering on respondents then 
they 
are to all intents and purposes random.  You could define them as "Community" 
but concievably anyone who owns a computer could be called part of that 
community as soon as they make an effort to interract with the project. 

The only non-random element is that they all knew about OO before doing the 
survey which pretty much puts most of them outside the demographic that we 
need to reach.    


> 
> > People like it because it's familiar, however it fulfills none of the
> > requirements of a brand relaunch.   I doesn't signal a new beginning, just
> > says "same old, same old".  Besides which, choosing a logo by "Vote" is
> > going to purely subjective without any thought being given to the
> > practical needs of the brand, especially that of the marketing side of
> > things, without any thought to the Brand as a whole.
> 
> Since the respondents to the survey were primarily current OpenOffice
> users it is natural that the results would be biased toward
> continuity.

Indeed, so therefore from a marketing POV the survey/poll was meaningless in 
terms of the branding needs.  A number of us (Not just me as you seem to be 
inferring later in this reply) stated early on, that a Vote is a bad way to 
select a brand.  As I probably pointed out back then, we produce a consumer 
product. Our users are not developers or techs and the "User Community" is far 
larger than the "Project Community".  If we were to make a comparison with the 
High Street then we are a B2C operation rather than a B2B which most other 
Open Source projects, certainly those here in the ASF, tend to be.   


> 
> On the other hand "continuity" is a value just as "new beginning" is a
> value.   

Definitely, I agree that continuity is a value but mainly in a shrinking or 
static market.  We however are in an expanding market and to retain relevance 
in a growth market requires a brand that is fresh and dynamic.

>There is nothing wrong per se with expressing continuity by
> having a logo that is a more modern take on the classic logo.
> 
> .
 
If that were true, then the orb would be gone.  The Orb is not "classic", 
Stella knocked that one up as part of a refresh post Oracle takeover.  It's 
not classic in fact it just reminds me of the whole Oracle screw up. 
The "Classic" logo as I have pointed out in the past ad nauseam is 14 
characters in Camel case: OpenOffice.org, THAT is not available to us. The 
truly 
recognisable classic part of our branding has been stripped from us by short 
sighted Apache policies.    


> 
> <snip>

> 
> >   The PMC needs, like any good management team, to ignore the subjective
> >   and
> > 
> > make a decision on purely objective criteria: Impact, uniqueness, story.
> > 
> > If this was a decision being made by a marketing department run by me, the
> > toss up would be between Lucas's "Warpaint", his feather in orb, Kevin's
> > feather in Orb but with perhaps a more quill type motif.  I also would
> > look at Robin Fowler's feather motif in 16 as a quill, it's simple shape
> > has scaleability advantages.
> 
> It might make sense for you to express a preference for a single logo,
> or submit an alternative choice, and then argue for your "objective"
> criteria rather than merely asserting that you along are gifted with
> true insight here and everyone else is merely blindly following
> personal subjective taste.   Remember, each of us could call our views
> objective as well. But where would that get us?


Heh, not everyone else, there have been other voices of reason, but they're 
probably too polite and are easily ignored.  Those people with marketing 
knowledge on this list are few and far between and thus are easily drowned out 
by the clamour of those who see marketing as "Puffery" or just an annoyance. 

The Linkert scale is purely about subjectivity so any response generated by 
the survey is going to be subjective, that's not an observation, that is fact.

>From a marketing perspective, and purely about brand recognition if you were 
going to use the linkert scale as a guide then take out all the middle 
responses and throw them away.  For our purposes they are meaningless.  They 
are a non reaction, in other words boring.  You would be left with those that 
excited a reaction whether negative or positive.  

The data is then revealing:  For instance the respondents are negative types 
making 2.5 times more strong dislikes votes as strong likes. The logo that 
generated the most strong likes (No4) only got around ten percent of 
respondents voting for a strong like.  That tells me that few of these logos 
have any of the sort of impact that would be needed to generate significant 
increase in brand recognition.  

At the other end of the scale however No37 generated a strong reaction in 
close to 50% of respondents.  That's what I call significant.  However, it's 
red and orange, colours which are known to generate reaction and high 
interest.  37  was also square so it was more in your face given the 
previously mentioned inequities with regard to image sizing.  Given also the 
demographic of the respondents  it was also the one that was most unlike the 
present logo so there was always going to be a bias, as you've already noted 
above, toward the encumbent and also likely to generate the most negative 
response.

Most significantly however our present logo seemed to generate a "shrug" level 
of enthusiasm being 35th on the list for generating a response.  Very much a 
Ho-Hum response, with only around ten percent of respondents registering a 
strong reaction whether Like or Dislike.  This means our Brand doesn't even 
excite our own community which is the most significant indicator for the need 
for change and in fact in just under 4400 responses our present logo only 
generated 250 odd more Strong likes than 37 which has the most strong 
dislikes. 
 

Marketing's main goal should be to increase brand recognition amongst users 
outside the present user base.   To do this, one thing we should do is excite 
our present users, word of mouth is the best form of marketing.  If this 
survey highlights anything it is a disturbing level of indifference.


> 
> In any case, I'll be sure to put an "other" choice in the ballot for
> the vote, so you can express choices other than the ones on the wiki
> currently.

No real point, my preference is based on different criteria to the others, the 
survey used a linkert scale which is designed to be purely subjective.
As has been noted before, a vote is the worst way to choose a brand because it 
will always tend towards the bland.  No point in contributing to a flawed 
process.

Also I have in the past noted on this list the criteria that good branding 
needs to fulfill, at this point none of the above fulfill those criteria. 

Cheers
GL 


> 
> Regards,
> 
> -Rob
> 


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