[opensuse-marketing] What is openSUSE and who does it target?
This morning, prior to the meeting in #opensuse-marketing, Bryen, Matt, some others and myself were talking about some of openSUSE's messaging; a discussion I feel should be taken onto the mailing list :) The original question I posed was: Who is openSUSE competing with? To which Bryen replied "Ubuntu for now", in my humblest of opinions, I feel this is slightly off-mark. It relies on Ubuntu converting Windows and Mac OS X users and then somehow wooing their users away. Reviewing Ubuntu's messaging, an end-user would likely never realize: what Linux is or that there are different flavors of Linux out there! Digging into Ubuntu's messaging they *never* refer to Linux as far as I can tell, but rather pitch the "ease of computing", etc. Additionally, Ubuntu really stresses a GNOME-centric desktop, which means one of openSUSE's core strength's (a great KDE setup) is moot. I don't claim to have answers or any good suggestions, I'm just curious about our current marketing messaging and how it addresses non-openSUSE users. p.s. when is Novell hiring a replacement for Zonker :P Cheers, -R. Tyler Ballance -------------------------------------- GitHub: http://github.com/rtyler Twitter: http://twitter.com/agentdero
On Tue, 2010-07-27 at 14:40 -0700, R. Tyler Ballance wrote:
This morning, prior to the meeting in #opensuse-marketing, Bryen, Matt, some others and myself were talking about some of openSUSE's messaging; a discussion I feel should be taken onto the mailing list :)
The original question I posed was:
Who is openSUSE competing with?
Actually this is the ongoing discussion going on with the strategy proposals as seen on the -project mailing list. Both AJ and I are on the Strategy Team and the outcome of what strategy is decided upon will greatly influence the direction of our Marketing Team. However, even with a decided upon Strategy, we, in Marketing are still tasked with rapidly responding to market changes and identifying new areas and markets to go after. Therefore, we will follow the wisdom of the strategy but can go beyond that depending on what opportunities arise before us.
To which Bryen replied "Ubuntu for now", in my humblest of opinions, I feel this is slightly off-mark. It relies on Ubuntu converting Windows and Mac OS X users and then somehow wooing their users away. Reviewing Ubuntu's messaging, an end-user would likely never realize: what Linux is or that there are different flavors of Linux out there!
Let me clarify that. The context of the question was, as I interpreted it, about whether we target new users to Linux or new users from other distros, and the names presented forth were Ubuntu, Windows and OSX. In that context, I referred to Ubuntu as our competitor, but I used Ubuntu generically. In other words, currently our competition is existing users of Linux that may not currently be using openSUSE. And therefore, Ubuntu == any Linux distro out there. Do i want to grow our efforts to target new users beyond existing Linux users? Absolutely! But even that is a very broad statement and we have to take the time to figure out what types of new users to target. Power users? non-techie users? Corporate users? Government users? The possibilities are endless and if we just simply say non-Linux new users, we shoot ourselves in the foot by going for big game without identifying specific targets. Those specific targets will be better clarified once we have our final strategy in place for the Project.
Digging into Ubuntu's messaging they *never* refer to Linux as far as I can tell, but rather pitch the "ease of computing", etc. Additionally, Ubuntu really stresses a GNOME-centric desktop, which means one of openSUSE's core strength's (a great KDE setup) is moot.
Not referring to Linux is a disservice in my opinion. Let me relate a story I heard from a fellow marketeer in the Fedora circle a few months ago. He showed his Fedora desktop to a person who never really saw Linux before, but had heard plenty of the name "Ubuntu." When that person saw it, he said "Yeah, that's Ubuntu!" The Fedora dude kept trying to say, No, its Fedora. But no matter how much he said it, this person was set in stone to call any Linux installation as "Ubuntu." Ubuntu did an awesome job of achieving mindshare. But doing that at the cost of dropping Linux from the name is fundamentally flawed in my opinion. We, the distros, are all competitors to each other yes, but we are also all collaborators. It's a wonderfully cool thing about FOSS where we work together even on opposite sides. To not recognize the contributions of the Linux community as a whole in order to promote your distro is a philosophy I personally can never endorse. With regards to GNOME and KDE... It is indeed an advantage of openSUSE that it does KDE so well and we should definitely promote this. But rather than just promote KDE, I think our bigger advantage is that we are a multi-Desktop Environment distro. We provide KDE, GNOME, XFCE, and now LXDE. This puts us at an advantage because now you can leverage the benefits of different desktops together in the same experience. You can use KDE and still use some GNOME apps that you find better, and vice versa. This is a message we should be including to the world.
I don't claim to have answers or any good suggestions, I'm just curious about our current marketing messaging and how it addresses non-openSUSE users.
In some ways we're in a building year. The marketing team as a formal team hasn't been in existence that long. Zonker did a lot of work to build up the team, but unfortunately, we became somewhat complacent and left him to do a lot of the grunt work. As a result, most of us didn't take the time to think about the message, because Zonker was doing a great job promoting us no matter what the message was. Now, we're here and the goal for this year is to really give the community the chance to drive the marketing efforts. This is why I am very proud of how we did in the 11.3 launch, simply because people stepped up. Results were not the most important goal for me, team building was, and we did pretty well I think. As a consequence of this year's building, people are learning to understand... What is a message? What is the message supposed to do? What are the ways we deliver that message? While AJ and I have encouraged the discussion and even given input to crafting a message, we also want to give the community the chance to formulate that message in its own time. We have no intention of dictating that message to the team outright. So I don't expect our message to be crystal clear in the very near future, what I expect is that the team will take the time to assess themselves and how they can best contribute and how they can best build themselves as a deliverer of message. Therefore, this thread you are starting is a great one, and I hope the rest of the team jumps in and offers their thoughts and visions for the future of our team.
p.s. when is Novell hiring a replacement for Zonker :P
Good question. Let's see if we can ask around and find out...
Cheers, -R. Tyler Ballance -------------------------------------- GitHub: http://github.com/rtyler Twitter: http://twitter.com/agentdero
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On Wednesday 28 July 2010 00:27:00 Bryen M. Yunashko wrote:
On Tue, 2010-07-27 at 14:40 -0700, R. Tyler Ballance wrote:
This morning, prior to the meeting in #opensuse-marketing, Bryen, Matt, some others and myself were talking about some of openSUSE's messaging; a discussion I feel should be taken onto the mailing list :)
The original question I posed was: Who is openSUSE competing with?
Actually this is the ongoing discussion going on with the strategy proposals as seen on the -project mailing list. Both AJ and I are on the Strategy Team and the outcome of what strategy is decided upon will greatly influence the direction of our Marketing Team.
And the strategy discussion also speaks about our competition. According to the definition, Fedora and Ubuntu and Mandriva etc are competition - but IMO there are differences: All of us compete against Microsoft and Apple. We position ourselves relatvie to e.g. Ubuntu and welcome everybody that joins us - but we're not going directly after e.g. Ubuntu developers or users. Getting aggressive against Microsoft and Apple is a different story, here I would suggest to use any marketing means ;) Andreas -- Andreas Jaeger, Program Manager openSUSE, aj@{novell.com,opensuse.org} Twitter: jaegerandi | Identica: jaegerandi SUSE LINUX Products GmbH, GF: Markus Rex, HRB 16746 (AG Nürnberg) Maxfeldstr. 5, 90409 Nürnberg, Germany GPG fingerprint = 93A3 365E CE47 B889 DF7F FED1 389A 563C C272 A126
Sorry for this blank post , I want to point this in general - So , it seems like we are moving from target to competitors . Which IMO is not the right path . If its about competition , I believe "Make yourself your greatest competition." :-) . Lets compare from our previous records , scores and act accordingly . About the target - To me its an objective which we need to First define (Good if its already done) and accomplish in order to achieve the Goal ;-) . P.S. Set of accomplished objectives leads/helps to achieve Goal Cheers Shayon -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-marketing+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-marketing+help@opensuse.org
On Tue, Jul 27, 2010 at 02:40:33PM -0700, R. Tyler Ballance wrote:
p.s. when is Novell hiring a replacement for Zonker :P
There was/is an open position for quite some time now. Ciao, Marcus -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-marketing+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-marketing+help@opensuse.org
On Tuesday 27 July 2010 23:40:33 R. Tyler Ballance wrote:
Additionally, Ubuntu really stresses a GNOME-centric desktop, which means one of openSUSE's core strength's (a great KDE setup) is moot.
Do I read that correctly as "one of our core strengths is irrelevant and to compete with Ubuntu, one would have to use the same desktop"? I can't believe that attempting to imitate a larger and better marketed competitor which directly invests more in desktop engineering could be a successful strategy. You can compete using a poorer product with a lower price, which is moot for us, or by out-marketing the competitor, which is unrealistic. Or you can compete with a recognisably different and better product. Will -- Will Stephenson, openSUSE Team SUSE LINUX Products GmbH - Nürnberg - AG Nürnberg - HRB 16746 - GF: Markus Rex -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-marketing+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-marketing+help@opensuse.org
Moin Will! Will Stephenson schrieb am Mittwoch, den 28. Juli 2010:
On Tuesday 27 July 2010 23:40:33 R. Tyler Ballance wrote:
Additionally, Ubuntu really stresses a GNOME-centric desktop, which means one of openSUSE's core strength's (a great KDE setup) is moot.
Do I read that correctly as "one of our core strengths is irrelevant and to compete with Ubuntu, one would have to use the same desktop"?
I can't believe that attempting to imitate a larger and better marketed competitor which directly invests more in desktop engineering could be a successful strategy. You can compete using a poorer product with a lower price, which is moot for us, or by out-marketing the competitor, which is unrealistic. Or you can compete with a recognisably different and better product.
That's not entirely the point I was making, the point I was trying to make is that it's harder to sell somebody on something so different, even if it is better (the classic "But I know how to use Windows" argument). I don't want to mire the discussoin on this point, I just think it's harder for an end-user to make a judgement call on "which is better" when comparing openSUSE KDE to Ubuntu (GNOME). Cheers, -R. Tyler Ballance -------------------------------------- GitHub: http://github.com/rtyler Twitter: http://twitter.com/agentdero
On Wed, 2010-07-28 at 08:05 -0700, R. Tyler Ballance wrote:
Moin Will!
Will Stephenson schrieb am Mittwoch, den 28. Juli 2010:
On Tuesday 27 July 2010 23:40:33 R. Tyler Ballance wrote:
Additionally, Ubuntu really stresses a GNOME-centric desktop, which means one of openSUSE's core strength's (a great KDE setup) is moot.
Do I read that correctly as "one of our core strengths is irrelevant and to compete with Ubuntu, one would have to use the same desktop"?
I can't believe that attempting to imitate a larger and better marketed competitor which directly invests more in desktop engineering could be a successful strategy. You can compete using a poorer product with a lower price, which is moot for us, or by out-marketing the competitor, which is unrealistic. Or you can compete with a recognisably different and better product.
That's not entirely the point I was making, the point I was trying to make is that it's harder to sell somebody on something so different, even if it is better (the classic "But I know how to use Windows" argument).
I don't want to mire the discussoin on this point, I just think it's harder for an end-user to make a judgement call on "which is better" when comparing openSUSE KDE to Ubuntu (GNOME).
Cheers, -R. Tyler Ballance
I don't think the selling point should be openSUSE KDE vs. Ubuntu GNOME but rather Ubuntu One desktop no choice (out of the box anyway) vs. openSUSE multiple desktops. I was attracted to openSUSE in the first place because I had choice. We seem to have lost this message over time and if we can ramp up this particular message, I think we'll gain more attraction, especially when people see how well-polished our multiple desktops are. Bryen -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-marketing+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-marketing+help@opensuse.org
On Wednesday 28 July 2010 17:05:26 R. Tyler Ballance wrote:
Moin Will!
Will Stephenson schrieb am Mittwoch, den 28. Juli 2010:
On Tuesday 27 July 2010 23:40:33 R. Tyler Ballance wrote:
Additionally,
Ubuntu
really stresses a GNOME-centric desktop, which means one of
openSUSE's core
strength's (a great KDE setup) is moot.
Do I read that correctly as "one of our core strengths is irrelevant and to compete with Ubuntu, one would have to use the same desktop"?
I can't believe that
attempting to imitate a larger and better marketed competitor which
Moin R Tyler! directly invests more in desktop engineering could be a successful
strategy. You can compete using a poorer product with a lower price,
which is moot for us, or by out-marketing the competitor, which is
unrealistic. Or you can compete with a recognisably different and
better product.
That's not entirely the point I was making, the point I was trying to make is that it's harder to sell somebody on something so different, even if it is better (the classic "But I know how to use Windows" argument).
That's exactly what I thought you might be trying to making, although I wasn't sure if you were making it to highlight a problem with "Ubuntu for now" because taking aim at Ubuntu underplays one of our "core strengths", but you've confirmed that you see one of our "core strengths" as a weakness. With the greatest respect, I feel you are wrong about "it's harder to sell somebody on something so different". If I rephrase my second paragraph above as "it's harder to sell somebody an inferior* example of the same thing as what they already have for the same money with worse marketing", do you see why?
I don't want to mire the discussoin on this point, I just think it's harder for an end-user to make a judgement call on "which is better" when comparing openSUSE KDE to Ubuntu (GNOME).
Neither do I, I'm sorry you brought it up to be honest since Stephenson's Law states that every *SUSE* thread since 2004 will degrade into a KDE vs GNOME slugfest if allowed to continue long enough, but neither can I stand by and let erroneous arguments go unchallenged, in case they become accepted as fact. In any case, and agreeing with the main point of your original post, I don't feel that aiming to become Ubuntu users' second distribution is a winning strategy either. cheers, Will * I don't actually think that our GNOME is significantly inferior to Ubuntu's implementation. However, Ubuntu is currently perceived by users as a GNOME Ieader and don't think we will be able to convince the masses that ours is no worse, let alone convince them that it is better enough to be worth switching. -- Will Stephenson, KDE Developer, openSUSE Boosters Team SUSE LINUX Products GmbH - Nürnberg - AG Nürnberg - HRB 16746 - GF: Markus Rex -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-marketing+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-marketing+help@opensuse.org
So time to start the first message .. Just to add one point for us, we also have what is needed to make a brilliant server in our distribution. Unbuntu need another cd to start it, and you loose the klinky gui ... for server, just the ncurses debian installer . They don't make any effort in those. We have "in my opinion" the best multi-purpose distribution on the market. It has been the case over the years, try keeping that. It's what openSUSE are now! We have lot's of work to make it better, polished, more useful. That's why we can try day by day user by user to convince them to contribute, making wiki article, reporting bug, trying to learn something, and transmit it to other. We offer choices, at install time, at usage time, in contribution forms. No one except debian offer this ! We constantly innovate (obs,moblin->meego,susestudio,wiki rebirth) but we also have to finish those hype project, they are our marketing force, the brilliant thing we can show to the world of news,dig,rss,twit ... With a open full of choice distribution, we can see in future a new market for people packaging it in a way a segment's market want it ( only desktop, no question at install, pure gnome, with those hyper hype application on it) on susestudio. When people will see the potential they can have, I hope the rest will follow. In the meantime, in the backyard, there's those "olds" hackers, administrators, developers who use openSUSE because it's rocks, can do all what they need. the way they need. I would never follow the trend about "all those people who need a desktop to communicate enjoy video on youtube" All of them are just consumers. You know what consumers just consume, and we don't sell openSUSE. We need real engaged people on it. Let that consumers consuming marketing,sales,support resources of our concurrents. You know what, we're really great, and we can only rejoice for the future ! woouah, just start typing a quick reply :-) There's always to much energy in a first message. Have fun. -- Bruno Friedmann bruno@ioda-net.ch Ioda-Net Sàrl www.ioda-net.ch openSUSE Member User www.ioda.net/r/osu Blog www.ioda.net/r/blog fsfe fellowship www.fsfe.org (bruno.friedmann (at) fsfe.org ) tigerfoot on irc GPG KEY : D5C9B751C4653227 -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-marketing+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-marketing+help@opensuse.org
On Wednesday 28 July 2010 20:58:07 Bruno Friedmann wrote:
So time to start the first message ..
Welcome ;-)
Just to add one point for us, we also have what is needed to make a brilliant server in our distribution. Unbuntu need another cd to start it, and you loose the klinky gui ... for server, just the ncurses debian installer . They don't make any effort in those.
We have "in my opinion" the best multi-purpose distribution on the market. It has been the case over the years, try keeping that. It's what openSUSE are now!
We have lot's of work to make it better, polished, more useful. That's why we can try day by day user by user to convince them to contribute, making wiki article, reporting bug, trying to learn something, and transmit it to other.
We offer choices, at install time, at usage time, in contribution forms. No one except debian offer this !
True, this is a strenght of openSUSE. However, from a marketing pov it is not very easy to sell. Ubuntu, as was said, has managed to position themselves as a Gnome based desktop leader. That is a strong and easy message. Saying you do everything will be perceived you do a lot but nothing particularly well. So there should be more focus. BTW this also benefits development - of course it should be open enough to let everyone do what they want but at the same time having a common goal, story, focus - it helps development. So that's why I think the strategic discussion going on is important, and we really need to finish it properly: there must be a clear message coming out of it. We must have a clear direction, and some of our wide focus will (and has to be) lost there. That is both good and bad - the bad is that some people might feel left out, but the good is that we will gain focus and new contributors.
We constantly innovate (obs,moblin->meego,susestudio,wiki rebirth) but we also have to finish those hype project, they are our marketing force, the brilliant thing we can show to the world of news,dig,rss,twit ...
Yep, these things must be advertised. And again - focus. We must create a common story, a 30 sec elevator pitch which explains how these hang together and what makes them so important to us.
With a open full of choice distribution, we can see in future a new market for people packaging it in a way a segment's market want it ( only desktop, no question at install, pure gnome, with those hyper hype application on it) on susestudio. When people will see the potential they can have, I hope the rest will follow.
I'm just afraid people aren't that smart... Those days people have a 10 sec attention span - you need focus focus focus for that.
In the meantime, in the backyard, there's those "olds" hackers, administrators, developers who use openSUSE because it's rocks, can do all what they need. the way they need.
We should obviously keep catering to them at some level. Ubuntu does that by relying on their debian foundations, btw.
I would never follow the trend about "all those people who need a desktop to communicate enjoy video on youtube" All of them are just consumers. You know what consumers just consume, and we don't sell openSUSE. We need real engaged people on it. Let that consumers consuming marketing,sales,support resources of our concurrents.
Agreed.
You know what, we're really great, and we can only rejoice for the future !
woouah, just start typing a quick reply :-) There's always to much energy in a first message.
;-)
Have fun.
and hugs! Jos -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-marketing+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-marketing+help@opensuse.org
On Tuesday 27 July 2010 23:40:33 R. Tyler Ballance wrote:
[...] p.s. when is Novell hiring a replacement for Zonker :P
Papers are signed, person is announced - countdown until his first day started, details: http://www.novell.com/news/press/novell-announces-appointment-of-jos- poortvliet-as-opensuse-community-manager/ http://news.opensuse.org/2010/07/28/the-opensuse-project-welcomes-jos- poortvliet-as-new-community-manager/ Andreas -- Andreas Jaeger, Program Manager openSUSE, aj@{novell.com,opensuse.org} Twitter: jaegerandi | Identica: jaegerandi SUSE LINUX Products GmbH, GF: Markus Rex, HRB 16746 (AG Nürnberg) Maxfeldstr. 5, 90409 Nürnberg, Germany GPG fingerprint = 93A3 365E CE47 B889 DF7F FED1 389A 563C C272 A126
participants (8)
-
Andreas Jaeger -
Bruno Friedmann -
Bryen M. Yunashko -
Jos Poortvliet -
Marcus Meissner -
R. Tyler Ballance -
Shayon Mukherjee -
Will Stephenson