Re: real marketing or just catchy slogans?

[Alex Hudson <home alexhudson com>]

On Tue, 2005-12-06 at 12:24 +0100, Murray Cumming wrote:
> > There were criticisms in there of Nautilus, the menu editor, performance
> > and usage of GNOME VFS (without specifics, it has to be said). Did those
> > ever get sent back to the Nautilus developers? How about a proposal to
> > include SMEG in 2.14?
> 
> OK, but don't think it's going to help our marketing to have a discussion
> about whether spatial nautilus is good or not, as long as this mailing
> list remains as poorly informed about the user experience as the average
> slashdot commenter.

As an outsider butting in :o), I would say it does, and being "poorly
informed" probably helps this list more than it hinders it. I'm not sure
what model most people have of marketing (in terms of, how does it
actually work, and how do you seek to achieve things using it?), but for
me the idea is that you're trying to get someone to draw a conclusion or
make a decision based on the materials/information you give them -
usually, a decision to buy (which may not be the case here). The most
convincing argument you usually hear is the one you make to yourself.

Now, you aren't able to do that by arguing the toss with someone: the
customer is always right, no matter what the circumstance. If people
don't like Nautilus, they're right, whether you agree or not. The goal
of marketing wrt. Nautilus, then, might be to tell people about the cool
stuff it does, so that they can draw different conclusions (and if they
don't, well, that tells you something ;)

This is similar to your organic food producer: going around telling
people that they are slowly poisoning themselves and what they're eating
is wrong is unlikely to win sales; telling people that organic food is
totally natural and selling the lifestyle to them, on the other hand,
seems to work wonders - in the UK, the market for organic food has grown
1000% over the last decade (confirming, in part, that choice of
lifestyle is one of the largest factors in modern marketing: people have
an ideal about how they live, and purchase products which match that
ideal).

So, going back to marketing, selling people on usability is more than
"You're wrong, and here's my study which proves it" - most people
wouldn't be convinced by that, and is a reason I think Microsoft's TCO
advertising fails miserably (in contrast to their rather good WXP TV
advertising). But, usability is a big feature of GNOME, and is surely
relevant to all the sectors any marketing strategy would attempt to
target. It has to be possible to market that in a way that doesn't say
"We do this better than you".

And also, before I relurk again, I would suggest not trying to do too
much too soon - i.e., start small. Personally, I would attempt to hit
developers: getting people enthused about the GNOME platform to build
cool stuff for it. Developers build demand, users drive it IMHO - MS
have been fantastic at that in the past. Beagle, dashboard, F-spot, that
kind of app already generates buzz and excitement. There are surely some
quick wins there.

Cheers,

Alex.