[Mageia-discuss] Mageia logo proposals and selection

Wolfgang Bornath molch.b at googlemail.com
Sun Oct 17 19:10:03 CEST 2010


2010/10/17 andré <andr55 at laposte.net>:
> Romain d'Alverny a écrit :
>>
>> Hey everyone,
>>
>> so, to re-frame a bit things and cool down.
>>
>
> Excellent.  Agree 100%.

Same here.

Drawing back from a fruitless stage of the discussion I took my time
to dig out all the advertizing by the Big Ones I saw on tv and on the
street during the last years.

Apple:
All computer related ads were technical, showing the product and
talking about the product.(like the campaigns for the "thinnest
laptop" and the current ads for the ipad). None showed any people
except a middle.aged man playing with his Apple laptop.
All ads about the real income generator of Apple are showing people
all age, mostly single persons on the screen, either only the shadow
with the white strips of the ipod earphones or as dancing teenagers.
No families, no special target.

IBM:
All ads by IBM are technical. There's the empty server room with a
manager asking where all the servers were gone. Somebody tells him all
the work is done now by that one server running Linux. Another one
features 2 older guys watching basketball where that one guy names
"Linux" is better than all the others, one spectator tells the other,
"The best thing about this guy, he's for free!".
Current ads by IBM show CPUs and the IBM staff (people all age)
singing the IBM jingle.
No families, no special target.

Ubuntu.
Now I haven't seen any tv ads for Ubuntu but all advertizing Ubuntu
does aims at the average user.
Again no families.

But:
Almost all consumer goods (cars, washing machines, butter, meat, even
clothing, furniture, etc.) show families in their ads and talk to a
special target group: the young couple with kids, good income,
managing their life with joy and as easy as a pie.

What does that tell us?
If anything it tells that the big ones do make a difference between
marketing for computers and marketing for any other consumer goods.


Next: Linux <-> Mageia.

Yes, there is this car ad where Volkswagen tries to make people think
"VW" as a synonym of "car" (VW, The Car). They don't succeeded. People
still think about buying a car first and then they think about the
brand and then the model (except hardcore gasoline junkies who think
Porsche even while they are cleaning the dishes).

Why should we think "linux" first and then "Mageia"?
Because Linux  - as Mageia spelled it out in the "values" - is not a
competition *against* other distributions, it is a competition while
*collaborating* with other distributions as being said by in "values"
page. So how can I strive to place "Mageia" on the same level as
"Linux", ignoring that there are other Linux flavors which are using
the same stuff as Mageia uses, which are always welcome to take from
Mageia as Mageia is welcome to take from them?

Isn't what Ubuntu tried (and succeeded in some parts of the world) in
contradiction with the spirit of the Open Source community which
Mageia committed itself to keep up and maintain? I'd not take Ubuntu
as a good example for anything, except for good documentation and PR.
I wrote about that lack of PR repeatedly in the Mandriva forum, some
people may remember.

Only some thoughts from a guy who always has been and always will be
first a Linux user and advocate, then the user and contributor and
advocate of a distribution.

Now go on with marketing.

-- 
wobo


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