This is one very interesting thread. Instead of an open letter to President Obama, how about an open letter to Joe Public? Something like the Mozilla Foundation's advertisement placed in NYTimes through community and enterprise donations? See http://www.mozilla.org/press/mozilla-2004-12-15.html. More than the eyeballs that the ad will garner, the interest would be in the incremental news inches that can be generated through such an effort and the greater legitimacy that a mainstream news channel can garner.
Would this take forward Graham's idea of a definable target for the overall community to rally around? If we expand this idea, can we look at doing the same in key newspapers in key markets such as China, India etc? Of course, this needs to be compared against the impact of spending the same amount of money on online ads, outreach campaigns, conferences etc. For example, can a study be conducted like this: http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/12/21/mozilla-gets-freaky/ This campaign could tie in with Graham's idea of "A memorable date like 9/9/09 and go for 99 million hits" and could also generate further interest through country specific targeting: for example Orkut being more popular than Facebook in Brazil and India, advertisements in Mandarin or regional Indian languages. The campaign would also grab government and business eyeballs especially if designed well enough to highlight some points that Alexandro raised, namely * Economic reasoning * Document format * Productivity * License costs * Support Look forward to more discussions on the same thread Regards, Sagar On Sat, Jan 31, 2009 at 2:57 AM, Graham Lauder <yori...@openoffice.org>wrote: > On Fri, 30 Jan 2009 20:44:24 John McCreesh wrote: > > On Fri, January 30, 2009 01:16, Graham Lauder wrote: > > [snip] > > > > > The Obama administration is not going endorse any product. So in terms > of > > > raising brand awareness such a letter would be a non event. While the > > > Obama > > > Administration may endorse the _philosophy_ of Open Source they are not > > > going > > > to endorse specific brands and that after all is our problem. > > > > The Obama campaign could teach us a thing or two about creating / raising > > brand awareness - "Obama" is now one of the biggest brands on the planet. > > > > John > > True enough, the parallels are interesting. He and his team (and let's > not > forget the team) motivated a grassroots campaign driven mostly by > volunteers. > > It's true he had the big campaigns but the campaigns used money raised by > that > army of volunteers. However the critical point to us, is the cost of > raising > that money was minimal to his organisation. > > The lessons I think for us are: > > He built a groundswell over time using his permanent staff, the internet > and > social networking. Change "Permanent staff" for MarCons and you have the > first makings of a groundswell. He had community groups at local level > donating a little bit of their time and energy. If every MarCon could > contact five or ten LUGS for instance and then get them to work with other > local community groups to assist, then you have the start of a groundswell. > The trick is to make people feel part of this global message. > > Secondly he had a goal, one considered to be almost impossible and a > specific > timeframe so that the grassroots had a very specific vision in their head. > This is one thing he had in his favour which we don't; a very specific, and > this is important, single focus and a _high profile_ target, (the man > himself > in the Whitehouse). To make the same thing work we would have to create a > focus, a concrete target. That is a little harder for us to identify. > > "Google: Why OOo" gives us a target, not quite as lofty as the whitehouse > it > is true, but a target nonetheless. That target hits on the Why OOo page. > > I don't know what a reasonable number would be and still be a challenge: > 500 > million hits in a week perhaps. > > Then we define a date, say a month for the campaign and an end date. > (A memorable date like 9/9/09 and go for 99 million hits?) > > To do this there would be two campaigns, one to grow the grass root > support. > > That could be something like > "Let the world know about OOo" (It even rhymes! :) ) > > This message we deliver to the "Choir" as John calls them. That is to get > them to participate in the campaign and then > > The second campaign is the one we get the Choir to deliver: > > "Google OO.o" > > We back this all up with Facebook, Twitter and Youtube content. > > Cost: Not a lot, in terms of cash, whether it succeeds or fails and in > fact > whether we reach the goal or not, we still would have raised brand > awareness. > Hell, it's a Win:Win. > > Cheers > G > > > -- > "The Best Things in life are 3" > http://why.openoffice.org > > ISO 26300 compliant > > Graham Lauder, > OpenOffice.org MarCon (Marketing Contact) NZ > http://marketing.openoffice.org/contacts.html > > INGOTs Assessor Trainer > (International Grades in Office Technologies) > www.theingots.org.nz > > --------------------------------------------------------------------- > To unsubscribe, e-mail: dev-unsubscr...@marketing.openoffice.org > For additional commands, e-mail: dev-h...@marketing.openoffice.org > >
