What is it about marketing that leads people into flights of fancy?
More importantly, what is that allows other people to suspend their disbelief long enough to buy into those flights of fancy?
This isn’t rhetoric; I’m genuinely interested in hearing your thoughts.
I think of marketing as a, reasonably, sober management discipline. Fluttering around the edges, though, are candyfloss ideas, whose substance dissolves to nothing as soon as they’re subjected to critical thought.
So, why does marketing provide the cloak that allows the ill-conceived and banal to dress up as brilliant insight?
One of the big four ideas of marketing is distribution (or place, if you want to make the four ideas into four Ps).
How your customers get your product is crucial to its success. In response to a Newsforge article, which glances at some of the most obvious aspects of marketing communications, an anonymous commentator makes two essential points:
- “Marketing is not just promotion; it’s all decisions about price, product, placement, and promotion.”
- “One of the most important aspects for a software is ‘placement’ — in other words: its distribution.”
Ubuntu’s ShipIt scheme – where thousands of free CDs of the Linux distro have been given to anyone requesting them – has been key to its success. Similarly, when pre-Novell Suse gave LUGs free copies of their boxed Linux, they were buying mindshare.
I don’t agree with everything the commentator says but it’s great to see, although the main article was a disappointment, another free software voice stating that marketing isn’t all shouting yer mouth off.
The LugRadio community is amazing. I know each of us says that quite a bit, but it’s true.
One of the main aspects of the community is the ever friendly, often bizarre, #lugradio channel – that’s pronounced “hash lugradio”, not “pound” or any of that business. A pound looks like this “?” or this “lb”.
Now, the most dedicated #lugradio regulars – including our previous Community Hero, current and current deputy – have created the hashlugradio podcast. I love the idea of a podcast that gives an alternative view on some of the things we discuss on LugRadio. I hope that’s not because I’m being an egomaniac; I actually do think it’s good to get a second opinion on the stuff we ramble on about.
Nice work Xalior, Neuro, Aquarion, Dotwaffler and Mr … oh no, you couldn’t make it MrBen. That’s okay, we’ll be brothers in absence.
The past few weeks have been interesting for the Ubuntu Marketing Team. We’ve brought the mailing list to life, thrown a few ideas around and now begun to actually do things.
If you’re interested in marketing and free software, now is a good time to join. The team feels a little like the young Earth: a chaotic surface with churning lava but the first signs of order appearing. You’ve got a great opportunity to make your mark.
We need people who share our love both of free software and Ubuntu and, preferably, understand what marketing is or are willing to find out. Ideally, we’d love to have some professional marketers on board. This is a great opportunity to feed back into the community, learn and meet some cool people.
There is no grand structure to the team: it’s all about personal initiative – (s)he who does, wins … or something. That’s not to say that the wider Ubuntu community will accept all our efforts and suggestions. As a new and changing team, we have a lot to prove.
Current projects include:
We’re also discussing other ideas, including:
If you’re interested, join us in #ubuntu-marketing on irc.freenode.net and subscribe to the team mailing list.