[Mageia-dev] Identifying Target Markets

Fri Oct 1 14:30:19 CEST 2010

On Saturday 02 Oct 2010 01:14:36 Frank Griffin wrote:
+> I'm not sure what's going on with this ML.  I responded to a post by
+> Graham Lauder, and it ended up going to him but not the ML.  He then
+> responded to me privately, and we both agreed to repost to the ML.
+> According to the gmane archives, he did, but I never received his
+> repost, so I can't place my reply in the correct branch of the thread.
+> I'll post it here, just so that it's *somewhere* in the thread...
+> 
+> Graham Lauder wrote:
+> > 42 for me, I started with NCR in August of 1968 and went on to be MD of
+> > my own company for eighteen years, these days retired on my little
+> > country estate, wonderful lifestyle, bloody awful internet connection. 
+> > :)
+> 
+> Congrats, we're both old farts :-)
+> 
+> > And this is not economics this is Marketing 101
+> 
+> No, sorry, it's not marketing when you frame it as you did:
+> > We do this because at the end of the day infrastructure costs, marketing
+> > 
+> > > costs, a whole pile of things cost.  One day some patch or application,
+> > > which is essential but completely non-sexy could require us to pay a
+> > > dev on contract and so on and so forth.
+
+The context of the above was talking about how we do have a sort of a 
+commercial model and I probably shouldn't have mentioned it because it's 
+pushed things off the focus of this process, but I happened to be thinking 
+about it at the time, I'm a chaotic thinker so sue me..
+
+> 
+> That's economics, pure and simple.  Marketing is trying to make
+> something attractive to potential purchasers.  A distro doesn't have any
+> of those.
+
+No, you're talking about advertising completely different, sure marketing 
+makes decisions that will affect advertising, but at this point we don't have 
+any desire or need to do any advertising, that's a long way off.
+
+> 
+> >> You make my point exactly.  The infrastructure costs are fixed, and the
+> >> donor pool will be larger if the user base is larger.
+> >> 
+> >> 
+> >> [....]  If MDV had trumpeted itself as a KDE-only Family (or Education,
+> >> or whatever) distro, and reinforced that by excluding packages and
+> >> infrastructure support for other stuff, I wouldn't have given a dime.
+> > 
+> > And you miss my point entirely, there is NO trumpeting, that's
+> > advertising, there is no exclusion, rather inclusion of a missed market
+> 
+> Oh, come on.  Trumpeting and advertising are essentially the same thing,
+> at last in the context of this discussion. 
+
+Um, that what I said:  That the trumpeting IS advertising... we're not 
+advertising, we are trying to figure out branding, that means trying to figure 
+our target markets so that we can make our branding attractive in that market.  
+that's marketing, not advertising  
+
+> And what you're advocating
+> is certainly exclusion; you're saying that we should design and promote
+> the distro as a <fill-in-the-blank> distro in order to capture the
+> mindset of a specific market share, to the implicit exclusion of other
+> aims if resource limitations encroach.
+
+You're reading a hell of a lot more in there than I put. You seem to be 
+talking at cross purposes.  When I say inclusion I mean inclusion of another 
+market that hasn't been catered to before.   You're talking about packages, 
+I'm talking about people. 
+
+[....]
+> 
+> > I am wondering why you are trying to convince me, this is not my
+> > decision, I am merely an idea generator.  I give reasons as to why I
+> > believe that this target market is a good one and I foster debate.  My
+> > goal is simply to establish criteria for branding, nothing else right
+> > now.
+> 
+> I'm not sure how seriously to take this.  You post an opinion about
+> channeling the distro to a specific audience, and when I respond, you
+> wonder why I'm trying to convince *you* ?  Frankly, I doubt if I *could*
+> convince you, and it was never my intention to try.  I know an
+> enthusiast when I read one.   I'm simply participating in the debate you
+> initiated and want to foster.  Which includes the issue of whether we
+> need branding at the distro level or not.
+> 
+> My opinion is that we do not.  Our infrastructure costs will be
+> relatively fixed, and will be dwarfed by the cost of developer and other
+> contributor time it will take to maintain Mageia.  The community
+> resources we will discourage by advertising ourselves as a niche distro
+> will cost us much more than the infrastructure budget.  So, while I
+> would concede that your branding argument would make sense if we were
+> embarking on a commercial venture, I'd have to say that it is pretty low
+> on the priority list for a community distro.
+
+Now I'm convinced we're not talking about the same thing.
+
+You seem to think we are wanting to embark on some global advertising campaign
+
+And all I want is to decide what colour pallet  our logo and webpage should 
+use.  By figuring out what a primary target market is we can then figure out 
+the colours that will suit that demographic.  That's it Simple!
+
+-- 
+Graham Lauder,
+OpenOffice.org MarCon (Marketing Contact) NZ
+http://marketing.openoffice.org/contacts.html
+
+OpenOffice.org Migration and training Consultant.
+
+INGOTs Assessor Trainer
+(International Grades in Open Technologies)
+www.theingots.org
+