Re: real marketing or just catchy slogans?

["Murray Cumming" <murrayc murrayc com>]

>
> Hi,
>
> Murray Cumming wrote:
>>>getting information is the start - when their
>>>information retrieval contributes to technical decisions in a project,
>>>our marketing will begin to be more successful.
>>
>> Fine. But when that "getting information" is obviously stalled then it
>> can't be allowed to stop us.
>
> Momentum is important, I agree.
>
>> We do know what our users want, and we do know what they are like.
>
> Sure we do, in general. And we're making good software, in general. And
> yet, there are a bunch of points which have come up repeatedly as
> annoyances (and thus a usability issue) in GNOME reviews and articles -
> having a preference in Nautilus to change to the browser view, having
> Nautilus places and GTK+ bookmarks be shared, etc. I don't know what
> progress (if any) is being made on some of these things. I don't know if
> they're considered priority items at this stage.

They are done. They were done as quickly as possible.

> To consider Ubuntu's marketing as unfocussed would be wrong. They
> woprked very hard early on to get community involvement, and in effect
> turned the Debian and GNOME projects into their marketing department.

They went totally against the grain of most debian development,
thankfully. Just because they used what they had doesn't mean that their
developers were their target users. But we're splitting hairs here, I
suppose.

>> - Firefox also have a very wide market with a very generic product, and
>> marketed successfuly to that wide market.. They didn't decide to target
>> scientific users or educational users. (Yes, I know they had a slightly
>> easier delivery method.)
>
> Have you forgotten that Firefox/Mozilla was an early-adopter fringe
> product for years before jumping the chasm?

Everything has to start somewhere. We have early adopters (and users too).
What's next?

[snip]

>> I have zero way to get the information that people seem to be asking for
>> before they'll get moving on marketing
>
> What information do people seem to be asking for? And who is the "they"?

The several people on this thread who are basically saying "Stop, this is
not the best way".

>> I'll hold off for another month in case people suddenly come up with
>> some
>> strategy for getting this information or moving on without it. If not,
>> I'll try again to get things moving anyway.
>
> No, don't hold off, carry on. Bring the slogan idea to a head, though -
> we should pick some, and be done with it.

I'd prefer to push that when people can support it. If nothing improves
after a month then it should be easier to support.

Really, the slogan is not very interesting - it's just good to have one.
I'm far more interested in a simple emotional campaign that let's people
show their support and feel good about doing it.

Murray Cumming
murrayc murrayc com
www.murrayc.com
www.openismus.com