Re: [ubuntu-marketing] The future of the Marketing Team
I would draw attention to the nature of much of the marketing creative and effort resource - it certainly has a central objective. Canonical and the wider set of volunteers have strongly overlapping objectives. However, the factors of geographical location, local culture and circumstances, and local flavour of motives, are all key factors which will fuel the effort at ground level, in the 'wild', the wider world. I believe the work will be done by self motivated volunteers. My experience of volunteers is that they will go a long way to do what they want to do, and not nearly as far to do what somebody else wants. This is the niche I believe a Marketing Team has to fill. Autonomy should exist at the local level, but if someone new wants to start or gain access to a local chapter, then the Marketing Team should be there to fill the niche with information and kits about how to get started. I really think the use of bumper stickers would be very effective in UK from about now. I am fascinated to find that the only bumper stickers which seem to be available are way too big for most UK (European?) vehicle bumpers. I have had to cut somedown fo rmy own use, but a cut sticker can look poor quality unless great care is used. Alan brings up an interesting point, and this is a firm example of why I feel somewhat listless in the direction of Marketing the project. http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=738134 : This is a simple vinyl sticker I made that obviously mimics the white logo of another hardware and software manufacturer. Virtually everyone who chose to look at it felt that it could be worthwhile to produce for evangelists of Ubuntu. Unfortunately, I have tried several times to contact someone at Canonical to seek approval of this type of usage to no avail. We could be out there scanning the bumpers of cars during rush hour, looking for that secret handshake that shows we are all a part of something we love...instead I get dead air from our commercial sponsor who needs to have input on the matter. Marketing needs leadership. We need people responsible for working with Canonical to establish coordinated marketing efforts and to ensure the grassroots movement is armed with easily accessible material to make launching a LoCo a snap. In essence, we need to stop treating the Marketing group as a hobby full of buzz words and promises and start treating it as seriously as product releases. Thanks, John -- ubuntu-marketing mailing list ubuntu-marketing@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-marketing
Re: [ubuntu-marketing] The future of the Marketing Team
On Tue, 2008-05-27 at 18:49 +0100, alan c wrote: Restrain the oCo??? Heaven forbid If anything, I would like to see them empowered much much more :-) RJ wrote: Hi folks, I'm quite new in ubuntu-marketing list but I'd like to get my two pennies worth feeling in. If I'm of topic or redundant, just slap me and forget. If you find my english awful, just know I'm French and English isn't my native language. I'm the CEO of an advertising and printing company, and that's how I would describe it if you'd ask me : A simple way to get ideas on paper while being the referee between the customer, the supplier and the funding organisation (which is often the customer himself, in my case). The main purpose of the marketing team should lay here, in my opinion. Getting ideas together, getting the most skilled group of volunteers to work on those picked ideas, and funding it from whatever supplier possible. To get it clear, marketing team should be able to get a job done like that : 0) Establishing a How to contribute : step-by-step manual to get a marketing project on its way. Before creating this how-to, the marketing team has to create some guidelines : ending a printing project on RGB colours while you need to print it (CMYB) is of no use, for example. You have to put everything like that on a paper, so everyone knows what's an useful job and what's not. That had to be done prior we start working on any marketing project. 1) Picking up best ideas on how to promote ubuntu from LoCo's, lists, contributors ... and centralizing them. Maybe we could even get a group of users voting for the one they'd like to see coming up first. 2) Getting together a member of each LoCo. A sort of link between marketing team and the loco itself. His job is to report what's currentmy ongoing - marketing wise - in his LoCo while sending feedbacks from his LoCo to the marketing team. He could browse forums from his LoCo and get in touch with new ideas owners to bring the idea to the marketing team. 3) Getting a group of skilled volunteers to work on some of the picked up ideas to get them on a professional stage. Let's call them Creating Group. Those people have to work following the guidelines established by the marketing team (1). 4) Getting a group of volunteers to help the Creating group doing his work. Their task is mainly to comment on the project, a sort of brainstorming. Let's call them Brain Group. 5) Getting a group of people working on the funding way. As said by John Vilsack, Canonical should be involved in my opinion. Ubuntu is more and more depending on their company, even if it's a community distribution. They don't need to fund 100% of marketing issues, they maybe don't need to hire somebody to lead the marketing team, they maybe don't need to allow each marketing project, but they have to be involved on a way or another. Maybe a person from this group (let's call it Money Group) could be in charge of communication between the marketing team and Canonical, depending on the activity degree of the marketing team. Anyway, Canonical isn't the only way to get a project funded, and that's the point of this workgroup. 6) Writing reports on each project with FB (Features and Benefits). Each project has pros cons, the idea is to get the best out of each. Maybe each project could have a project manager (like a company would) who's the guy to write it, beside managing every step named before. That's just my idea on how I would organize the marketing team. This template on how to manage a project has to be worked and adapted to each type of project (press releases, posters, whatever) ... we could had luch more since marketing and much more than that (laws on each countries / LoCo, suppliers, etc ...). I could go on for hours, but I'll end here and see how you guys welcome the idea. I go along with much of what you say, and it is great to have the experience of a professional. I would draw attention to the nature of much of the marketing creative and effort resource - it certainly has a central objective. Canonical and the wider set of volunteers have strongly overlapping objectives. However, the factors of geographical location, local culture and circumstances, and local flavour of motives, are all key factors which will fuel the effort at ground level, in the 'wild', the wider world. I believe the work will be done by self motivated volunteers. My experience of volunteers is that they will go a long way to do what they want to do, and not nearly as far to do what somebody else wants. So however crucial it is to have a clear central vision with some boundaries and guidance, and maybe some funding, it is equally crucial to enable and encourage the LoCos - in doing what they want. Or at least
Re: [ubuntu-marketing] The future of the Marketing Team
John V., What a perfect segue to something I wanted to propose, but was waiting to see if more members of the group chime in: My talents and experience are not in the programming area. far from it! I am a writer and a blogger. So, the other day, when Ronnie Tucker of FCM came on with the draft of the new issue of FCM, I contcted her about helping with the mag. And in looking over the magazine, I noticed that there is NOTHING about marketing Ubuntu. I asked Ronnie about contributing some sort of regular marketing column and she felt that that was something I needed to talk over with the team, which makes sense. How do you all, and hopefully this post will get responses from more people, about a regular column in FCM? Something geared towards new people or even geared to converting non-Ubuntu people into Ubuntu users? FCM could be very useful as a marketing tool. It is very attractive, informative and quite professional. And it is pretty representative of the whole community. We can hash out the details on what the column each month should be about, bt I am offering to do the actual writing. And I would submit a draft to the team for their inpit and approval each month before sending it to Ronnie. What do you all think? Peace! John Botscharow On Tue, 2008-05-27 at 13:12 -0500, John Vilsack wrote: I would draw attention to the nature of much of the marketing creative and effort resource - it certainly has a central objective. Canonical and the wider set of volunteers have strongly overlapping objectives. However, the factors of geographical location, local culture and circumstances, and local flavour of motives, are all key factors which will fuel the effort at ground level, in the 'wild', the wider world. I believe the work will be done by self motivated volunteers. My experience of volunteers is that they will go a long way to do what they want to do, and not nearly as far to do what somebody else wants. This is the niche I believe a Marketing Team has to fill. Autonomy should exist at the local level, but if someone new wants to start or gain access to a local chapter, then the Marketing Team should be there to fill the niche with information and kits about how to get started. I really think the use of bumper stickers would be very effective in UK from about now. I am fascinated to find that the only bumper stickers which seem to be available are way too big for most UK (European?) vehicle bumpers. I have had to cut somedown fo rmy own use, but a cut sticker can look poor quality unless great care is used. Alan brings up an interesting point, and this is a firm example of why I feel somewhat listless in the direction of Marketing the project. http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=738134 : This is a simple vinyl sticker I made that obviously mimics the white logo of another hardware and software manufacturer. Virtually everyone who chose to look at it felt that it could be worthwhile to produce for evangelists of Ubuntu. Unfortunately, I have tried several times to contact someone at Canonical to seek approval of this type of usage to no avail. We could be out there scanning the bumpers of cars during rush hour, looking for that secret handshake that shows we are all a part of something we love...instead I get dead air from our commercial sponsor who needs to have input on the matter. Marketing needs leadership. We need people responsible for working with Canonical to establish coordinated marketing efforts and to ensure the grassroots movement is armed with easily accessible material to make launching a LoCo a snap. In essence, we need to stop treating the Marketing group as a hobby full of buzz words and promises and start treating it as seriously as product releases. Thanks, John -- Peace! John You do have choice on what operating system you use: http://www.ubuntu.com/ I am an Ubuntu user! My profile: https://launchpad.net/~jbotscharow My wiki: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/JohnBotscharow -- Read my blog: http://hbotscharow.com John Botscharow: Reflections on Religion, Politics Life -- ubuntu-marketing mailing list ubuntu-marketing@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-marketing
Re: [ubuntu-marketing] The future of the Marketing Team
John Botscharow wrote: John V., What a perfect segue to something I wanted to propose, but was waiting to see if more members of the group chime in: My talents and experience are not in the programming area. far from it! I am a writer and a blogger. So, the other day, when Ronnie Tucker of FCM came on with the draft of the new issue of FCM, I contcted her about helping with the mag. And in looking over the magazine, I noticed that there is NOTHING about marketing Ubuntu. I asked Ronnie about contributing some sort of regular marketing column and she felt that that was something I needed to talk over with the team, which makes sense. How do you all, and hopefully this post will get responses from more people, about a regular column in FCM? Something geared towards new people or even geared to converting non-Ubuntu people into Ubuntu users? FCM could be very useful as a marketing tool. It is very attractive, informative and quite professional. And it is pretty representative of the whole community. We can hash out the details on what the column each month should be about, bt I am offering to do the actual writing. And I would submit a draft to the team for their inpit and approval each month before sending it to Ronnie. Yes - for FullCircleMag it would probably go down well as 'spread Ubuntu' or similar. Not much theory but a lot of 'let us do this' - or that, or good idea of the month, the bumper stickers project, or etc etc. Not just limited to marketing news which was created by others, that is. When a newcomer reads something which assumes they are part of an enthusiastic group, then the newcomer feels good about joining in? -- alan cocks Kubuntu user#10391 Linux user #360648 -- ubuntu-marketing mailing list ubuntu-marketing@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-marketing
Re: [ubuntu-marketing] The future of the Marketing Team
On Tue, 2008-05-27 at 18:50 -0400, Cory K. wrote: John Vilsack wrote: This is the niche I believe a Marketing Team has to fill. Autonomy should exist at the local level, but if someone new wants to start or gain access to a local chapter, then the Marketing Team should be there to fill the niche with information and kits about how to get started. This is kinda what was talked about at UDS. A team made up of people in each LOCO (local level) who want to promote Ubuntu. Along with ties to the artwork team. I also suggest a name change since this marketing team is confusing since it has no real ties to the Canonical marketing dept. Maybe Ubuntu DIY Promotion team? -Cory K. OR we could leave the name and change the lack of ties to Canonical's marketing dept. :-) I would like to explore that possibility to at least see what would be possible in that area. Let's not dismiss the idea so readily. -- Peace! John You do have choice on what operating system you use: http://www.ubuntu.com/ I am an Ubuntu user! My profile: https://launchpad.net/~jbotscharow My wiki: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/JohnBotscharow -- Read my blog: http://hbotscharow.com John Botscharow: Reflections on Religion, Politics Life -- ubuntu-marketing mailing list ubuntu-marketing@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-marketing
Re: [ubuntu-marketing] Marketing from early adopters...
On Tue, 2008-05-27 at 23:45 +0100, Tiago Vieira wrote: Hello all, I'm really sorry if I write something wrong here ( and using the sentence of Jonathan If you find my English awful). I would ask to apologise for that. I'm Brazilian (Portuguese as native language), living in UK for 2 and a half years and I never touch a book of English's Grammar... I know a lot of Americn native speakers of English who never pick up a book of English grammar either! LOL No apologies are necessary. Your English is considerably better than my Portuguese!! Or Spanish! Or French!! Only my German comes close to your English - and German is my native language- the one I learned first as a child. I was born in Stuttgart in 1948 and we moved to the USA in 1953, so I grew up in the American school system. I've received through email today: http://blogs.zdnet.com/hardware/?p=1906tag=nl.e539 I will be following his posts with a great deal of interest, since I did what he is doing a couple of months ago and I am VERY glad I did. You can read about my experienc here: http://jbotscharow.com/ Enter Ubuntu in the search box. Using Marketing theory (more specifically, a High Tech Marketing Model), let's say that this kind of article comes from the second level, the early adopters... a good way to do marketing without a penny, and the best way to get the majority users... If you have a favourite application that comes with Ubuntu 8.04, send a message to him and help his 4 parts article to be 10 parts! :) I will send you my thoughts and I may very well do a post or two on my blog in response to what he says!!! He hasn't mentioned about the GnuCash Accounting, which is really useful to me. I've sent an email to him to have a look at that... GnuCash is VERY nice app. I used it on Mandriva a few years ago im first Linux incarnation. I have it installed but have not yet had the time to set it up on my Xubuntu yet, but will soon. Cheers! -- == # [Tiago Vieira - United Kigdom] # #tvieira on irc.freenode.net # #tvieira_at_jabber.org on Jabber # #email: tvieira79_at_gmail.com # #blog: http://blog.tvieira.com # == -- Peace! John You do have choice on what operating system you use: http://www.ubuntu.com/ I am an Ubuntu user! My profile: https://launchpad.net/~jbotscharow My wiki: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/JohnBotscharow -- Read my blog: http://hbotscharow.com John Botscharow: Reflections on Religion, Politics Life -- ubuntu-marketing mailing list ubuntu-marketing@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-marketing
Re: [ubuntu-marketing] The future of the Marketing Team
On Tue, May 27, 2008 at 7:18 PM, John Botscharow [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Tue, 2008-05-27 at 18:50 -0400, Cory K. wrote: John Vilsack wrote: This is kinda what was talked about at UDS. A team made up of people in each LOCO (local level) who want to promote Ubuntu. Along with ties to the artwork team. I also suggest a name change since this marketing team is confusing since it has no real ties to the Canonical marketing dept. Maybe Ubuntu DIY Promotion team? -Cory K. OR we could leave the name and change the lack of ties to Canonical's marketing dept. :-) I would like to explore that possibility to at least see what would be possible in that area. Let's not dismiss the idea so readily. The problem with this is that people start expecting things from Canonical. Why doesn't Canonical do this, why don't they do that. Its already evident in this thread. We should definitely work with Canonical coordinating events. But expecting Canonical to hire someone to help us do marketing is not realistic. Like people have suggested, we need to get LoCos involved. Cory's suggestion of working with the Artwork Team is dead on. We should engage them to help us create promotional and marketing material that LoCos can use. If any entity needs paid support, customization, or any kind of guarantee, they need to contact Canonical or one of its partners, not the community. nick -- http://boredandblogging.com -- ubuntu-marketing mailing list ubuntu-marketing@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-marketing
Re: [ubuntu-marketing] The future of the Marketing Team
On 28/05/08 07:18, John Botscharow wrote: I also suggest a name change since this marketing team is confusing since it has no real ties to the Canonical marketing dept. Maybe Ubuntu DIY Promotion team? -Cory K. OR we could leave the name and change the lack of ties to Canonical's marketing dept. :-) I would like to explore that possibility to at least see what would be possible in that area. Let's not dismiss the idea so readily. I agree with John. To me it seems a large step backward to sever ties with the organisation that has a large investment in the success of Ubuntu. Within the ubuntu-server team there are processes being enacted where we are getting ready to roll out a survey to: In an effort to better understand, support and further the Ubuntu Server Edition we would like to ask you to take this survey which should take between 10 to 20 minutes to complete. The information provided will help us determine where we can improve support, where to add additional resources and to generate a better understanding of the community which we work within. During this process I've added my limited radio and publicity experience to the effort in the form of a release and a list of people to release it to. One of the major challenges I had (and still have) - is the visibility of this particular group of individuals - the Marketing Team. I think that if the team and Canonical can work together towards mutually beneficial aims - because I recognise that they may not always be the same - then I think that is a good thing. I'm loathe to hijack this thread to start a discussion about other ideas and comments, so I won't, but I think it would be inappropriate to reference a marketing effort (in the form of a survey) without providing a URL. Note that this is still embargoed. The ubuntu-server team will be meeting in 22 hours from now and I'm expecting to bring this survey up there. * https://wiki.ubuntu.com/ServerTeam/Survey/Launch -- Onno Benschop Connected via Optus B3 at S31°54'06 - E115°50'39 (Yokine, WA) -- ()/)/)()..ASCII for Onno.. |?..EBCDIC for Onno.. --- -. -. --- ..Morse for Onno.. ITmaze - ABN: 56 178 057 063 - ph: 04 1219 - [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- ubuntu-marketing mailing list ubuntu-marketing@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-marketing
Re: [ubuntu-marketing] The future of the Marketing Team
Nick Ali wrote: The problem with this is that people start expecting things from Canonical. Why doesn't Canonical do this, why don't they do that. Its already evident in this thread. We should definitely work with Canonical coordinating events. But expecting Canonical to hire someone to help us do marketing is not realistic. +1 Like people have suggested, we need to get LoCos involved. Cory's suggestion of working with the Artwork Team is dead on. We should engage them to help us create promotional and marketing material that LoCos can use. I completely think this is what this list should be. A place to spread the Ubuntu brand through DIY methods. Using the LoCos as street teams and the artwork community for resources. If I see this happen I know I would work on the art effort. But if the team continues in it's current state, I personally don't see the point of it. Considering the history and lack of real man-power. -Cory K. -- ubuntu-marketing mailing list ubuntu-marketing@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-marketing
