Re: real marketing or just catchy slogans?

[Tom Chance <tom acrewoods net>]

On Friday 09 December 2005 22:12, Gezim Hoxha wrote:
> On Fri, 2005-12-09 at 12:10 -0500, Dan Winship wrote:
> <snip>
>
> > 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.
>
> I agree that the next step would be to install Linux, however when they
> are greeted by a different desktop, be it KDE or whatever, they're going
> to want to know what happened to the nice looking lovely desktop (gnome)
> and they'll ask their local LUG or someone who supplied the distro for
> help.

How many people will have this reaction? Where's your evidence? What makes any 
of you think that your personal experiences are a good guide to understanding 
GNOME's target markets?

In my limited experience with friends and family, they've really not been too 
bothered whether it was GNOME or KDE. I've had people try the Ubuntu LiveCD 
and be perfectly happy when they got SuSE installed, and likewise happy when 
they saw Kubuntu on my machine then got Ubuntu installed (pre-Kubuntu ;-). 
Most of my friends are philosophers or activists and show no interest 
whatsoever in the software I use, except for when I talk about the freedom 
part because it's novel. Does my limited experience really count for 
anything?

What proportion of GNOME's target markets who receive a LiveCD will know what 
a LUG is, where to find one and who will actually go and ask them (and get a 
good answer to) the question: "How do I replace this with GNOME?" How would 
you find the answer to this question?

My girlfriend immediately started changing the look of KDE because she found 
it boring, but found GNOME even more so. In KDE I use the Lila icon theme 
(originally made for GNOME) and my panels are arranged in a similar way to 
the GNOME default, but I find the GNOME icons ugly as hell. What does that 
say about the discussions of beauty as a substantial marketing frame?

I find KDE more usable than GNOME. Am I wrong, do I need to check into a 
clinic? (Don't answer that one ;-) What makes you think that the majority of 
your target market will disagree with me there?

Without some prior analysis of GNOME's target markets it makes no sense to 
talk about people who will ask their LUG or supplier; it makes no sense to 
even talk about people wanting "the nice looking lovely desktop" instead of 
whatever they get in the end, because you have no evidence to suggest that 
(a) that's why they liked GNOME and (b) they won't think the desktop they got 
wasn't also a "nice looking lovely desktop".

You're all going to tie yourselves in knots with this "my granny says / I like 
GNOME because" discussion. Put some weight behind the suggestions of Santiago 
Roza, Marcus Bauer, Alex Hudson, Thilo Pfennig & co who want analysis before 
discussing slogans, LiveCDs, etc. Don't stop promoting GNOME, but at least 
admit that any diagnosis behind slogans will be flawed until you do that hard 
background work.

</lurk-cloak back on>

Regards,
Tom

-- 
I'm aware that e-mails to me may be blocked by my host
because they are mistaken as spam. If this happens, 
please e-mail me at: telex4 yahoo com