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List:       kde-promo
Subject:    Re: [kde-promo] A GNOME bloke on key messages
From:       Wade Olson <wade () corefunction ! com>
Date:       2005-11-30 15:31:49
Message-ID: a42b7670511300731x7176cac9pc805b46b5b78327 () mail ! gmail ! com
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On 11/30/05, Tom Chance <tom@acrewoods.net> wrote:
> Ahoy,
> 
> Here's an interesting little tidbit:
> http://www.murrayc.com/blog/permalink/2005/11/30/simple-gnome-marketing
> 
> What do people think? I noticed a few grumpy comments about the
> marketing-speak that sneaked into the KDE 3.5 announcement. But then he's
> talking about targetting a different audience to news web site trolls. His
> experiences are also from events where you have the personal touch -
> personally I'd just ignore a message about software being "beautiful" if I
> read it on the web, it's such an overused throwaway term.
> 

A few blunt thoughts:

1) KDE 3.5 Marketing speak: You will always, always, always have a
technical contigent that think people are using too much marketing
speak.  Probably falls under the category of "Trying to please
everyone and pleasing no one."  Now, this makes it tough to internally
try to learn from people's comments and improve and refine.  Difficult
to filter useful feedback.

Some people want a changelog or a code diff and think think anything
more is wasteful (ok, that's probably being too rough).  I think that
the release language was quite clear and devoid of cliches.  The
adjectives used were pretty accurate and descriptive.

2) Target: Yes, he's definitely taking specifically about "introducing
newcomers," so the target audience is a bit different.

3) Beautiful: Now, I like the idea that they internally are focusing
on a few key words.  Any good, strong brand does that.  Very
consistent message aid.  Unfortunately they chose a bad word. 
"Beauty" is both pointless, and in this case IMO, wrong.  Sounds to me
like they're trying to hypnotize the newcomer:

 "Isn't this beautifully beautiful desktop beautiful?"
"No.  Do you mean bland?"

They're, again in my opinion, choosing a deceptive word that's also
overused, to try to turn a weakness into a strength.  They'd be much
better off using "Elegant" or "simple" or "Intuitive" to better
discuss how Gnome is "Beautiful."

4) Message:  But let's not forget their consistent message. 
Regardless of recent events, KDE still has the dominant market share. 
Therefore, KDE *defines* itself and Gnome has to *differentiate*.  If
they choose the word "Beautiful" to use for a year and Oxygen and
Plasma come out, they've just wasted a complete year with the wrong
message.

Conclusion: We, throughout the next several months, need to come up
with similar repeatable terms for our brand as the leader, and they
can spin-doctor a differentiation or unique selling proposition.  This
will be done through our marketing plan.

So I like their aim and process a lot, just not their results.

/Done ranting, overgeneralizing.

> Regards,
> Tom
> 
> --
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> 
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