Re: real marketing or just catchy slogans?

[Claus Schwarm <c schwarm gmx net>]

On Mon, 5 Dec 2005 20:15:24 -0300
Santiago Roza <santiago roza thymbra com> wrote:

> in the 5-6 months i've been here, i haven't seen much of "finding out
> what people want", and even less of "giving it to them", but 99% of
> "communicating that" (unluckily we don't even know what is "that", and
> who are "them").  in other words, i haven't seen much marketing in
> gnome-marketing:

This was the list's problem from the start; I believe. I was intended
to stimulate promotion -- not marketing.

We discussed your basic points shortly after the list started, and the
results were:

  * No 'exclusive' influence on developers or product decisions. Even
    the board is unable to do that. Maybe we could convince someone to
    add another keyword in bugzilla for 'our' bugs. Or we could start
    a wiki page. However, beside recording usual complains ('Kill
    spacial'  ;-) ) there's not even a way to gain a reputation for
    making good product suggestions.

  * There's no way to break to circle: No data -> No target (market) ->
    No data -> ....

> and this week we're thinking of catchy slogans (for the nth time)...
> ok that's necessary, but imho first we should try to find out what
> people think of gnome, what people want from gnome, what people like
> about gnome, what they dislike, what do we have (either real or
> imaginary) that other desktops don't... and btw who the heck are "the
> people" (do we want to target developers or decision makers or kde end
> users or win end users or who??).

The answer to your questions is simple: People want nothing from GNOME:
It's a desktop and the only benefit of a desktop is to be installed on
every computer in the world! That's the only way to make sure you could
switch your employer and still use computers at your new work!

And this will also (partially) solve your question concerning a target
market: A desktop is a good with positive network effects (like a
telephone): "All people" is our target!

The other half of the target questions is answered by constraints: We
clearly can't market to everybody right now. Thus we can pick any
proper segment. A segment in a network is defined by applications. Why
that? Because people just care about content, and the only way to read,
write, record, make, listen, move or delete content is with
applications.

Our target markets are thus defined by applications like

  * Semiprofessional musicians and composers
  * Science
  * Multimedia
  * Office
  * Business, etc. etc.

And we need to talk to everybody in a chosen segment: Developers,
Users, etc.

Concentrating on a segment is the reason that Apple still survived (ie.
without Adobe they would have been dead already). And we need to
concentrate on a segment to break the myth of 'Linux desktop not ready'.

I suggested 'science' as a proper segment already, see