Hi Sanne, On Fri, 2010-02-12 at 15:10 +0100, Sanne te Meerman wrote:
Hi, I was triggered by this conversation as I have recently approached several companies to sponsor Guadec. One of the companies that declined, was Cap Gemini and I got some interesting feedback that relates to branding as well. They told me that large system integrators like themselves mostly do support and training on whole distributions like Ubuntu and Suse etc.
That doesn't surprise me at all. Remember that when you approach a company to sponsor an event, for them there should be a business possibility implied. It's distro's that give them money, not normal software packages. No business possibility, not worth investing. Which doesn't mean that other companies in the same marker segment can have opposite positions. In this cases, it would be advisable to launch the same challenge to all, and make sure they know that their competitors might be present there.
The marketing challenge with regard to branding would probably be then to associate one brand with another, like Intel has so succesfully done by having the 'Intel'inside ' logo on hardware and having joined TV commercials with software and hardware vendors.
The marketing challenge with branding in my opinion is somewhere else, a set of values that our brand should imply. My laptop has "ATI Premium Graphics" sticker. I chosed ATI because it's GPU didnt went above 60C under heavy load, because I do give importance to thermal designs. The reason that make me go this way was because my previous laptop had one of those wicked G86 based nvidia cards operating the GPU at 81C in idle. I won't ever buy nvidia. Consumer choice. Regarding the brands again, we don't need stickers. Our product, GNOME is distributed in digital format, therefore most of our marketing should around digital formats. We should associate the brand GNOME to brands who distribute us, who support us and who share the same ideals behind GNOME. It's more of a ideological set of ideas you want people to recognize about you.
Just felt like sharing this. Hope it's useful and hopefully I'll see the 'Gnome inside' logo flickering on my next mobile phone ;-). regards, Sanne, Guadec organisation
You touched a sensible thing. If we look into the market, as Brian said in another thread, the industry is changing quickly. We're going into the netbook/tablet æeon (era), for reference, see the efforts being made by Ubuntu on this field. Their option to replace openoffice with googledocs... the reaction of the community... They went back on that one, but still, from a marketing point of view, such replacement would please either netbook vendor (indirectly association with google) and possibly breaking grounds amongst users. About Guadec, have you contacted Vodafone? or any other big Mobile operators? I would assume that pushing the right keys, they would tag alongside with Guadec. Also try to have small local business present, and push hardware manufacturers into it aswell. Tryed BenQ ? it's a Benelux based company, should be interest from them. Having a company like BenQ with us could help. ;) -- my 2 cents, nelson.
Nelson Marques schreef:Brian, I can provide some documentation regarding Brand Management if you need. This is actually a complex subject. If you need help I can help with it as well. There's a very good publication from Philip Kotler (currently the top personality in Marketing) named "Brand Management", there is also a chapter in "Marketing Management" (the bible of Marketing) which covers some points. I have a large collection of books which I can share with whoever wants to take a look. Meanwhile I'll just compile some stuff that I have from my university which might be useful. Anything you need, just ask. Nelson. PS: I would assume GNOME is going to be taken as an "Umbrella brand", correct?On Thu, 2010-02-11 at 09:23 -0600, Brian Cameron wrote:Hello, my name is Brian Cameron and there is some information about me here: http://live.gnome.org/BrianCameron I have worked for Sun Microsystems (now becoming Oracle) for over 10 years, over 8 of those years on the GNOME project. I am on the GNOME Foundation board of directors and acting as the secretary. I am really more of a developer than a marketing person, but I have been involved with marketing-related discussions for the past few years, and attended the last Marketing hackfest in Chicago. Any board member often deals with marketing topics and opportunities, and one of the reasons I participate is because I think the GNOME marketing-list is one of the more important GNOME forums for board members to be involved with. I also tend to work closely with the GNOME legal team, and I tend to get involved with marketing issues that involve working with the legal team. For example, one marketing related task I am currently working on with the legal team is to put together more comprehensive trademark agreements so that GNOME is better prepared to license the GNOME brand to organizations who want to sell GNOME branded merchandise. Brian
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