Re: real marketing or just catchy slogans?

[Dan Winship <danw novell com>]

Murray Cumming wrote:
> > 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". The closest they can come is to download
> > and install a Linux distribution that is *based on* Gnome,
>
> They can at least _try_ it easily, with a Live CD.

Yes and no. I agree that running the Gnome Live CD will give them the 
feel of Gnome, but technically, what they're trying is Ubuntu (plus some 
hacks), not "Gnome". And if they decide they like Gnome, then their next 
step is still to install Linux, not to install Gnome.

(And I'm guessing there will eventually be politics around the fact that 
the Live CDs are based on Ubuntu as opposed to [insert everything else 
here].)

> VMPlayer images could be even better.

Without conceding my earlier point that this doesn't count as trying 
Gnome, I agree that this is a great idea. :-)

> I'm not confident that we can make this work (though I want to try),
> because distros are currently removing almost all mention of the GNOME
> project from their GNOME-based products, apart from the About dialogs here
> and there. But we haven't really started to create a brand that they might
> want to use. Maybe it's not too late.

Differentiating yourself as a Linux distro is hard enough without 
explicitly acknowledging the fact that 95% of your software is the same 
as your competitors. :-)

"Create a brand that they might want to use" is key though. The distros 
aren't going to change their messages to include our brand just because 
we want them to. We'd need to have a brand that reinforced the stories 
that the distros were already telling.

> Recently I've (amateurly, probably wrongly) concluded that we need to
> create a simple positive brand association, not convince people of little
> details such as this program is better than this program, or that GNOME
> starts here and stops there. It's why we hate the Intel/Coke/Cigarettes
> marketing, but it's probably why the Intel marketing is successful.

Yeah, but do you want people in a few years to be saying "It's why we 
hate the Intel/Coke/Cigarettes/GNOME marketing, but ..."?

-- Dan