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List:       kde-promo
Subject:    [kde-promo] One Principle of Promotion
From:       Andreas Pour <pour () mieterra ! com>
Date:       2001-06-22 9:44:43
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Hi,

In light of some of the recent discussion on this list, I wanted to take
a few paragraphs to go over an important principle of promotion.  This
principle applies, I think, generally regardless of what it is you are
promoting, whether it be yourself to a person you want to know better or
it be KDE.

This principle, one of the very most important in promotion, is the
"don't hurt yourself" principle.  It's pretty simple, really:  when
promoting yourself (or something) don't do something that is quite the
opposite, namely, make a bad impression of yourself (or that something).

One very easy way to make a bad impression is to do something
controversial.  Things are controversial because some people are against
them and have an unfavorable view of that thing.  When you associate
yourself with that thing, you associate yourself with the unfavorable
view.  That is how the mind works, by association, and sometimes in such
a rote way you would think people are really stupid.  As an extreme
example, imagine putting the picture of a burning cross or swastika on
the cover of KDE-Zine.  Some/most people would quickly form unfavorable
impressions of you (as they now associate you with their very
unfavorable impression of those symbols).

But some marketing campaigns thrive on controversy.  Well, yes and no. 
Here you have to look at the target market.  Who are you promoting
yourself/something to?  For example, let's assume a person (A) does
drugs and lives in a society where doing those drugs is controversial;
many people are for it and many are against.  Yet when this person meets
someone (B) and wants to impress B, A may tell B about the drug-use. 
This candor is most likely due to the fact that A believes the target
audience (B) looks favorably on that fact and will therefor associate
favorable things with A; you can imagine this occurs in a social setting
where A has amassed some evidence to believe that B looks favorably on
this particular drug.  Now maybe when A meets B's parents (or goes in
for a job interview), A would be less likely to mention drug use, as the
parents may look unfavorably on drug use and thus unfavorably on A (by
association, stupid as it may be).  (By the way, those who were around
KDE some time ago, KDE faced a similar controversy when a wallpaper
which was distributed with KDE 1 had a marijuana leaf in it; after much
discussion about controversy it was decided to remove the wallpaper,
which according to this principle was the correct decision).

The same principle applies to selling products or ideas.  Look at your
target market.  Make sure you don't offend anyone in it.  Offend people
outside it all that makes sense, particularly if your target market
enjoys watching you offend those people.  (This is sometimes especially
true if you are targeting a youthful market which enjoys confrontation
with their parents in this indirect manner.)  But rarely would you risk
alienating a sizeable proportion of your target audience, except *maybe*
if the action would dramatically improve your image with the rest of
your target audience.

If you keep this "don't hurt yourself" principle of promotion in mind
you will undoubtedly be much more successful in promoting yourself and
anything else you choose to promote, including of course KDE.

Ciao,

Dre
 
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