Re: real marketing or just catchy slogans?

[Santiago Roza <santiago roza thymbra com>]

> Gnome is not like Firefox. End users can see an ad for Firefox, decide
> that it's cool, download it, install it, and go. But end users can't
> download and install "Gnome".

i agree 100%; that's why i always say we have yet to agree on our
target markets, and our marketing strategy.



> How would we tell users to install
> GNOME if we had a New York Times ad? Would we pick a preferred distro?
> We can't sell ourselves directly to end users. We need to sell ourselves
> to Linux distros, and get them to sell *themselves* to end users.

we can't sell ourselves directly to NON-LINUX end users, because linux
end users can just "install gnome" (so we can sell directly to them).

if we want to sell ourselves to non-linux end users, we'd have to
market it as "linux desktop" (not as gnome), working together with kde
and the distros (but that would be a whole new different marketing
operation).



> We're
> not like Firefox, we're like Intel! [Cue "Intel Inside" chimes]

that would be great.  i mean, having ubuntu and fedora post a little
"gnome inside" (or "powered by gnome") logo in their websites.

do you guys think we could nag them about that (with the kind
collaboration of our gnome celebrities)?  ;)



> We could apply the same technique: convince end users that GNOME is
> better for them, so that they will preferentially install distros that
> use GNOME, so that distros (our real customers) will use GNOME as their
> preferred desktop.

yes, if you mean linux end users.  non-linux end users will not demand
gnome, because they don't know what gnome is...  and if they did, that
knowledge wouldn't be so strong to cause a "demand".  it could be, but
only if we had the millions to push our brand to that level  :)



> Intel only markets itself to end users because its
> products *aren't* any better than its competitors'. If their chips were
> unambiguously better than AMDs, then the PC manufacturers wouldn't need
> to be convinced to stay with Intel, it would just be the obvious choice.

that doesn't apply to us: there are objective ways to measure which
processor is better, but a desktop's quality is something very very
subjective.  so we have much more things to do, other than just
"convincing" anyone.



> (And what are we going to convince end users of anyway? ... GNOME isn't a whole story unto
> itself. "Desktop Linux" is the story, but that's not a story we can tell
> on our own.)

and there's the key to our marketing strategy... we're not exactly a
(non-linux) end user product, so if we market ourselves to (non-linux)
end users, we should be very careful.

imagine we convince a windows user to try gnome; can we actually
deliver?  we could with vmware player (but we still don't have
images), we could with colinux (if it just worked), we could with live
cds (if the distro detected all the hardware and could play a simple
mp3).

as we can see, we depend on many others to deliver to windows
end-users, so we either fix those many problems ourselves (and/or
working alongside with those other parties), or don't make end users a
promise we can't keep (i repeat: in marketing a false promise is a
brand killer).

marketing ourselves to other audiences is a whole new issue, so maybe
we don't want to discuss it here  :)



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