Re: GNOME 2.24.0 promotion

[Thilo Pfennig <tp pfennigsolutions de>]

Vincent Untz schrieb:
> Hi,
>
> Does the marketing team have any plan for promoting the 2.24.0 release?
>
> I guess we should work on the usual stuff (ie, at least a new wgo
> splash), but I'm pretty sure we could do more than that :-)
>
>   
I like to remind that there is still the open question if GNOME wants to
do a new slogan on every new release. I suggest that there will be long
term marketing focus with a stable slogan and maybe something like a sub
slogan to summarize what the release was focusing on it . So something like:

1. GNOME /Logo
2. Stable Slogan: "Simply Beautiful"
3. Sub Slogan or Quotation: "bla bla bla"

The stable slogan could also be part of the logo. And maybe the sub
slogan could be also the name of the release.

I just say that because I tink switching the whole slogan every 6 months
does not make sense. I am also not sure if it makes sense to celebrate
each new release. That is because the releases are not made to get
people excited, rather it is a continous process.

I would suggest to rather take attention by making announcements of new
exciting features and rather try to also do a continous marketing effort
inline with the release process. The problem is that on release day no
user will get a stable GNOME besides on Foresight Linux maybe - but
again thats a distribution.

I have witnessed a lot of release processes and thought a lot about
that. I also have often seen that the marketing IRC channel was empty
during the immediate release days - so I think besides those new
splashes, announcements and translations of the announcements and a new
slogan not much happens during a release and there is generally not much
excitement because most developers already have the latest code and the
general user might have still to wait some months to get the experience.
Thats not a timely LAUNCH or so - so one could do all the promotion at
any time before or after the release because the release and the product
are not directly related.

Another point is that I think only very few users really care about some
new features. Those who use a stable GNOME will update maybe when Ubuntu
updates - and those who do not know and use GNOME need to know ALL about
GNOME - they do not need to know about minor improvements - they need to
know why they should use GNOME at all.

I think it is important to do effective marketing - and fact is that
GNOME is managed different to other releases like new iPods or a new
Macos or a new Windows. I think the whole release announcement process
and marketing actions do not yet reflect that - defacto they do - but
the question to who you communicate and what message you want to
transport seems to be nebulous - or better - there is  rather  a "lets
do it like every year and dont ask why". I encourage to find new answers
to those questions if you do not only want to communicate with yourself.

Regards,
Thilo

-- 
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