[Mageia-dev] Identifying Target Markets

[Olivier Méjean]

Le jeudi 30 septembre 2010 13:21:04, Graham Lauder a écrit :
> A group of the marketing and communication peoples got together to get our
> heads around Vision and  Mission Statement.  Everyone brainstormed what
>  they saw as the core values of Mageia to give a direction that the
>  Projects Vision and mission statement could head.
> 
> The reasoning behind this is it points a figurative arrow at our  primary
> target market and thus gives us a guide toward where our branding should be
> aimed.
> 
> A mistake that is often made is branding from an internal aesthetic when in
> fact branding should be more aimed externally to attract a new demographic.
> If the gods are in alignment then ideally it should point toward our
>  principle point of difference and again this influences our branding
>  choices in terms of Colour Pallet Logo and so forth.
> 
> The "feel" to me that came from the brainstorming was that Mageia could be
> marketed as the "Family Distro".   This being a principle point of
>  difference when a user makes a decision as to what operating system to
>  run.
> 
> Our principle competitor, MS competes against the Linux universe as a whole
> but other distros compete for the MS user base aimed at particular
> Demographics. For instance:
> OpenSUSE aims at the "Power User" Market
> Ubuntu aims at the young individual end of the market
> CentOS at Community enterprise and Not For Profits
> Fedora at the Computing Professional
> 
> Mageia could therefore aim at the Young Married professional market, being
>  the Distro that could be installed on the home computer and geared so that
>  the whole family could use it.
> 
> So for instance as well as the standard software, educational programmes
>  would be installed by default, be NetSafe (Dans Guardian), have OOo4Kids
>  installed as well as a full office suite, Tuxtype, TuxPaint and so on.
> 
> Documentation added to show parents how to set up accounts for the kids and
> how to make it Net safe.
> 
> I think that this is an untapped market right now and something that the
> project could leverage into a marketing campaign and guide us in terms of
> branding.
> 
> Comments?
> 
> Cheers
> GL
> 

Shouldn't we consider that instead of thinking which target markets are to 
define, we should consider that Mageia will fit many target markets ? 

It does not means that we must develop one speech. Of course not, we must 
develop several speeches according to target markets. 

Mandriva is proved to be suitable for many uses, home computers, enterprise 
desktop, servers, netbook, it could be used by developers, web designers, 
secretaries, lawyers, kids, grandparents, ... The ease for configuration is 
really a plus while letting the user configures with editing text files (either 
using GUI or command line). Mandriva failed to show it and is stuck (sticked?) 
with its reputation of being a distribution for newbies but not for advanced 
users

Mageia will mainly inherit this reputation, so let's prove that Mageia will fit 
all users' needs, newbies like experiented users, developers like lawyers, 
kids like parents.

So it means having different speeches. So maybe should we try to create several 
categories of users and then try to find the right message to give them.

-- 
Olivier Méjean
Président de l'Association des Utilisateurs Francophones de Mandriva Linux
http://mandrivafr.org
twitter : obagoom
identi.ca : goom