visibility at the user level (was: How do we want to do GNOME Marketing?)

[Joachim Noreiko <jnoreiko yahoo com>]

--- Thilo Pfennig <tpfennig gmail com> wrote:

> On 12/24/06, Joachim Noreiko <jnoreiko yahoo com>
> wrote:
> 
> > --- Thilo Pfennig <tpfennig gmail com> wrote:
> > When a user boots Ubuntu, they see the Ubuntu
> splash,
> > the Ubuntu desktop background, and the Ubuntu logo
> on
> > the panel. And that's as it should be --
> otherwise,
> > they'd say 'Hey, I put in an Ubuntu CD, what's
> this
> > Gnome stuff?'
> 
> Sure, thats true. This is a a problem of marketing.
> I also think that
> we have to rethink the marketing strategy here.
> There are roughly two
> options (but also ways inbetween):
> 
> A. GNOME wants visibility at the user level and
> therefore has to
> implement a distribution mechanism that starts from
> the homepage. So
> this is abot: A user wants GNOME and can get it.
> B. GNOME does not care about visibility of its brand
> at the user
> level, instead we are working with ISVs and
> distributions,... .
> 
> I think currently we have something of both but
> without a clear
> strategy. if we do not want either "A" nor "B" we
> must define "C". 

Exactly, we have a bit of both: we are working with
ISVs and distributions, we have no distribution system
of our own, but we want to be visible at the user
level.

The first part we can't feasibly change even if we
wanted to: we don't have the resources to implement
our own distribution.
But for the second part we have a choice: do we want
to be visible at the user level? What are the
advantages to this?

> There may be other ways to circumvent the "brand
> problem". I see the
> way described above as a good way to move forward
> for future versions
> of GNOME. We can not solve this alone - we need the
> distributors to
> help us and they need us to make a better support
> and a better GNOME.
> And then we do not need to car so much about the
> visibility of the
> brand - we will then agree of how our brand and the
> distributors brand
> must or can be used.

I think we can learn from the way intel managed to
brand itself. They managed to raise the profile of an
internal component that most users barely knew about
and never came into contact with.

If we decide we want user-visibility, I would suggest
we devise our equivalent of the 'intel inside'
sticker. We have a plan to make branding easier for
distros [1], with documentation and perhaps an
automated tool. 
If we had this, we could leave one piece of Gnome
branding there, and say to distros: 'We're making it
easier for you to rebrand Gnome. In return, we ask you
to leave this particular bit of the Gnome identity
in.'


[1] http://live.gnome.org/GnomeMarketing/LinuxDistros

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