On Tue, 2005-12-06 at 12:24 +0100, Murray Cumming wrote: > > There were criticisms in there of Nautilus, the menu editor, performance > > and usage of GNOME VFS (without specifics, it has to be said). Did those > > ever get sent back to the Nautilus developers? How about a proposal to > > include SMEG in 2.14? > > OK, but don't think it's going to help our marketing to have a discussion > about whether spatial nautilus is good or not, as long as this mailing > list remains as poorly informed about the user experience as the average > slashdot commenter.
As an outsider butting in :o), I would say it does, and being "poorly informed" probably helps this list more than it hinders it. I'm not sure what model most people have of marketing (in terms of, how does it actually work, and how do you seek to achieve things using it?), but for me the idea is that you're trying to get someone to draw a conclusion or make a decision based on the materials/information you give them - usually, a decision to buy (which may not be the case here). The most convincing argument you usually hear is the one you make to yourself. Now, you aren't able to do that by arguing the toss with someone: the customer is always right, no matter what the circumstance. If people don't like Nautilus, they're right, whether you agree or not. The goal of marketing wrt. Nautilus, then, might be to tell people about the cool stuff it does, so that they can draw different conclusions (and if they don't, well, that tells you something ;) This is similar to your organic food producer: going around telling people that they are slowly poisoning themselves and what they're eating is wrong is unlikely to win sales; telling people that organic food is totally natural and selling the lifestyle to them, on the other hand, seems to work wonders - in the UK, the market for organic food has grown 1000% over the last decade (confirming, in part, that choice of lifestyle is one of the largest factors in modern marketing: people have an ideal about how they live, and purchase products which match that ideal). So, going back to marketing, selling people on usability is more than "You're wrong, and here's my study which proves it" - most people wouldn't be convinced by that, and is a reason I think Microsoft's TCO advertising fails miserably (in contrast to their rather good WXP TV advertising). But, usability is a big feature of GNOME, and is surely relevant to all the sectors any marketing strategy would attempt to target. It has to be possible to market that in a way that doesn't say "We do this better than you". And also, before I relurk again, I would suggest not trying to do too much too soon - i.e., start small. Personally, I would attempt to hit developers: getting people enthused about the GNOME platform to build cool stuff for it. Developers build demand, users drive it IMHO - MS have been fantastic at that in the past. Beagle, dashboard, F-spot, that kind of app already generates buzz and excitement. There are surely some quick wins there. Cheers, Alex. -- marketing-list mailing list marketing-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/marketing-list