[osol-mktg] OpenSolaris, branding & trademarks

[Claire Giordano]

Wow.  There's all sorts of interesting touchpoints in this thread.  I'll try to 
touch on a few.  Apologies for the delayed reply.  I leave tomorrow night (she 
says quite happily) for a 3 week vacation - with a brief 2-day detour at OSCON 
during the first week, so I feel like a juggler this week trying to keep balls 
from falling on the floor as I get ready to go!

First of all:

- You're dead-on right that we need to create a marketing community page and
   start sharing ideas and information about how-to-spread the word and slides
   and presentations and plans on the page - so that someone who wants to help
   promote OpenSolaris can do something more than participate in a mailing list.

   I like what you said in your latest mail, Tim, about needing a place to put
   the elevator-pitch information and

   Sara - can you volunteer to help get that started?

- I think there is *tremendous* value in having us all promote the same visual
   images - the current wordmark and fan buttons.  That way, when people see
   them, they'll recognize them.  If we all create different logos - well, people
   won't recognize them.

   So I'd like to encourage everyone to use the buttons, promote the buttons,
   tell your friends about the buttons, get other solaris and opensolaris folks
   to use the buttons.

   And - because size does matter - use the bigger buttons!  :-)

   And I'd really prefer it if people didn't create their own logos. It feels
   like we'd be working at cross purposes.

- I have not recently had the conversation with the TM people about whether
   community members can go create their own logos/wordmarks with the OpenSolaris
   trademark in the visual.  As I say above, I think it's not a good idea - and
   that we should all promote the buttons and the opensolaris wordmark.

   I can find out if you guys really want me to but I'd rather not.

- I get the sense that it would be useful if people could print their own
   posters or images to start spreading the word as well.   What do you think?

   So that if one of us is going to a college campus we could print up 50 posters
   of a size of our choice beforehand and then post them on campus.

   Thoughts?

- What do you guys think of streetmemes?  I'd love to have an OpenSolaris
   streetmeme.  Sara is friends with the guy who created Andre-the-Giant-has-a-
   Posse aka Obey.  And Hal recently pointed me to a streetmemes website, where
   people post photos and locations of streetmemes that they've seen - so the
   evidence that something is a meme gets collected in one place.

   It might be an interesting thing to do on college campuses...

- I can't wait til we have an online store!  We've got folks in the Sun field
   who would love to order shirts and stuff to give to their customers, for
   example.  And my mom and dad want to order stuff, too!  Sara is working on it
   (well, at least she will be once she gets back from OSCON.)

- I'm planning to get a windshield-sized cling made for my rear windshield that
   says OpenSolaris.  It costs about $200.  I'll take a photo and post on flickr
   and to opensolaris.org.  Then, if people like the idea, I'll try to find a way
   to make the large image available for other people to do it as well.  You have
   to go thru a local printer (and not all printers do this) because they need
   access to your car to install.  We'll see...

Cheers,
Claire

Tim Foster wrote:

> Hey Ben & Co.,
> 
> On Mon, 2005-07-25 at 08:18, Ben Rockwood wrote:
> 
>>Here is an example:  http://cuddletech.com/OpenSolaris-logos.png
> 
> 
> Hah, cool - so by using a different font, I can avoid getting sued ?
> Well, in *that* case[1]... :-) 
> 
> I had a few thoughts about interesting ways to promote the project. The
> main idea, is that since OpenSolaris is a code program and there's no
> definitive product to try to sell (except perhaps for promoting the
> distributions), something we can do, is get more developers interested
> in the codebase itself. The blogs have done very well with that, but
> here's a few more ideas :
> 
> http://www.netsoc.ucd.ie/~timf/opensolaris/milestone-opensolaris_small.png
> http://www.netsoc.ucd.ie/~timf/opensolaris/disk-opensolaris_small.png
> http://www.netsoc.ucd.ie/~timf/opensolaris/keyboard-opensolaris_small.png
> http://www.netsoc.ucd.ie/~timf/opensolaris/zx81-opensolaris_small.png
> 
> - okay, the colours need to be fixed a bit in some of them, but you get
> the general idea. I'm sure I could come up with more of these - the
> pattern is pretty much :
> 
> 1. Find an interesting bit of your computer to photograph
> 2. Locate some related source code on opensolaris.org
> 3. Play with Gimp, using layers, fonts, and a bit of cloning where
> appropriate
>  - rinse, repeat.
> 
> 
> The average man on the street won't get many (any?) of these ads, but if
> they serve to make a few people go to the OpenSolaris website to have a
> look at some of the source involved, then they'll have done their job.
> 
> Of course, they'd probably look a lot better with an official logo (and
> finding someone more artistic than I fix them a bit) but you get the
> idea.
> 
> 
>>http://cuddletech.com/img/codeos_frontpage.png
>>http://cuddletech.com/img/codeos_frontpageb.png (with tag)
>>http://www.cuddletech.com/blog/pivot/entry.php?id=229  (dtlogin 
>>replacment and desktop wallpaper)
> 
> 
> Nice!
> 
> 
>>>- sorry, I'm not trying to stir things up here, I'm just trying to see
>>>how I can help spread the word more effectively ...
>>>
>>
>>God bless you sir.  Stir away. :)
> 
> 
> Hmm, I'm expecting a lawyers letter any time now...
> 
> 
>>>A page on what could be done to help the marketing of OpenSolaris would
>>>be really useful for folks like me who have little clue as to where to
>>>start, but the willingness to lend a hand regardless !
>>> 
>>
>>If we had a community page for evanglism we could put up todo lists, 
>>resources for evanglists, etc.   We need to coordinate and empower
>>evanglists as much as possible to have a combined voice and impact
>>I think.  Lets see if we can get one.
> 
> 
> +1 I'm sure there must be some marketing material around Sun floating
> around that we might be able to get access to : being able to give
> OpenSolaris folks elevator pitches that they can use when accosted by
> heathen-non-opensolaris-using folks who trot out the same old
> "slowaris", "linux is cheaper", etc. lines would be really nice.
> 
> Marketing certainly isn't just about fancy graphics and nice logos -
> getting the message out there involves people talking about how good
> OpenSolaris is, and why you should run it. [ I had a go at that sort of
> thing a while back at
> http://blogs.sun.com/roller/page/timf?entry=solaris_on_the_desktop ] but
> some advice/hints/tips on how to sell it more effectively would be
> useful : with OpenSolaris, Sun could have access to a very large and
> enthusiastic sales force, in the form of geeks who like talking about
> OpenSolaris technology -- we should be encouraging this sort of thing!
> 
> Would love to be at the upcoming OSCon, but alas while diskspace is
> cheap, travel isn't at the moment (oh well).
> 
> 	cheers,
> 			tim
> 
> 
> 
> [1] Um, seriously please don't sue me Sun, - I really like working here
> and will happily remove those graphics if they're infringing anything...
> 
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