Re: real marketing or just catchy slogans?

[Santiago Roza <santiago roza thymbra com>]

> not particularly. It's beautiful to a very strange niche.

a very strange niche... that seems to be a bigger userbase than ours  :(

anyway, i wasn't saying kde looks good (cause it doesn't imho), but it
does focus on "pretty with no other purpose", while we don't.  so we
shouldn't be pushing that concept, cause that would be suicidal
positioning  :)



> It looks to me like "Friendly" is the more popular of the simple themes,
> and one that clearly overlaps with various of the aims for our software
> and community.

why can't a theme have two words/concepts?  we could use elegant/cool
AND easy/friendly in our slogans, with many different combinations of
words (for example, "simple" reflects both concepts).



> Please do try to mention URLs when referring to something you've published
> previously. It gives us another chance to respond to it.

you're right; i was sure i had posted it, but seems like i hadn't. 
here it is anyway, just in case:
http://mail.gnome.org/archives/marketing-list/2005-September/msg00067.html



> I vaguely remember that I didn't bother responding because it seemed to be
> a very random sample of osnews-commenters pet gripes that weren't likely
> to be of interest to many other users.

well let me disagree; i found many of them to be valid suggestions,
especially the top 5.



> I'm sorry for
> not commenting on it at first.

i'm not saying everyone is obligued to comment on every single
message, but that "job" was asked in this list (by luis villa i
recall) and many people said "yeah, someone should do it"...
http://mail.gnome.org/archives/marketing-list/2005-September/msg00056.html

but when the requested results were there, we didn't do anything with
them (not even the people who asked for that info in the first place).



> There was a usability review team that did this periodically, but it's not
> very active now that it's fixed the big problems.

then we should do it; collecting (and transmitting) feedback is an
integral part of marketing.



> Very few people are doing anything, and very few people are offering
> leadership or strategy, so lack of coordination is not a problem at the
> moment.  Suggestions such as Dave's are a very good start and something
> worth helping with.

then let's come up with a strategy/direction, all of us together.



> At this point, I really think there isn't much wrong with the product
> (beyond new features that are being done as quickly as possible), and the
> users who discover it are loving it.

yeah i don't think there's much "wrong" with gnome either, but those
little things people gripe about should get fixed, and i'm sure there
are other things people want but we don't have (and those aren't
exactly bugs, but still...).



> I think we need to let the rest know
> about it. This is not a new product that needs a lot of analysis in the
> design stages.

we need to do that, and many other things i already said.  agree on
who's "the rest", how we could appeal to them, and design catchy
slogans based on that, and on what gnome is (elegant/cool and
simple/usable).



> If it's great, then you don't need to do much about that.

maybe it's great for you and me, but not for everyone.  then we need
to find out what they find not-so-great, and what to do about it.



--
Santiago Roza
Departamento I+D - Thymbra
santiago roza thymbra com