[advocacy-discuss] The OpenSolaris "Attitude"

[Fauzia Saeed]

I can talk about this a bit with reference to Solaris.
Typically a brand has two components:

-   Functional- what it does and hopefully a superior element of 
performance.
-   Emotive- The attitude and the emotions related to it.  The best 
known brands for this are Energizer, Absolut Vodka, Coke, Sungapore 
Airline, Sony, Dior, Versace, etc.

The entire rationale behind having an emotive appeal is that  it lasts 
longer than a functional advantage because it is based on perceptions.  
Typically engineering companies do this very badly.  The reason may be 
that they are so focused on the functional side. I remember the effort 
it took my team to buy into the idea of the "cute cars" campaign with 
Techron.  Chevrons senior management argued that that soft, friendly 
edge was unnecessary since they had a performance advantage.

I also feel that it is a quirk of the engineering mind that it does not 
recognize the emotive part of the value proposition.

In the SuperG (mainly ES customers) I attended Solaris had that appeal.  
It is difficult to articulate it but I will try:

-   Technological edge, a certain greatness which goes beyond the 
functional advantage it delivers.
-   A "mineness", I own this great innovation.
-   A combination of modernity with a great legacy. 
-   A tremendous sense of " this is a friend I can rely on who will 
never fail me".

It is difficult to articulate this without running a focus group 
targeted at it but Solaris did have a lot of emotional nuances attached 
to it in our customers mind.

I remember the a German Beta site made the following comment, "thank you 
for not changing the name of Solaris to Java OS" and the whole room 
stood up and applauded. 

I remember thinking that the real brand behind the Sun Sun brand in the 
ES space is Solaris.

This is from 2004!



Jim Grisanzio wrote:

>I just read this post about NetBeans:
>
>NetBeans vs. Eclipse, this time with attitude
>http://blogs.zdnet.com/Burnette/?p=387
>
>This guy brings up a really interesting point about NetBeans. So, I was 
>wondering, what's /our/ attitude? What does OpenSolaris stand for?
>
>Jim
>  
>