[OT] TV, Internet, and Democracy

[Evan Leibovitch]

Scott Elcomb wrote:
> All advertising - by word of mouth, "strategic partners," radio and/or
> television, the web, etc. - is risky.  Get it right and you make
> money.  Get it wrong and you face loosing business.
To a point. Sometimes the purpose of advertising is to get you to
remember something, regardless of whether the method to get you to
remember was clever or annoying.

Anyone heard of "Head On (apply directly to the forehead)"? The
commercial doesn't even say what it does, because then they'd have to
put in disclaimers, side-effects, etc. And the ads are annoying as hell.
But the campaign has been staggeringly successful.

Arguably the worst ads are the ones that are incredibly clever and
entertaining, but after which you don't remember what was being
advertised. There are plenty of these around, since I'm convinced that
many ads are created for the purpose of peer recognition rather than
maximizing brand exposure and sales.

This, of course, brings us to open source, in which peer recognition
does count for a lot, and the most controversial moves may be those that
succeed in the marketplace but look bad -- or dumb, or evil -- to the
rest of the community. Just ask Novell.

The open source world is overwhelmed by a "if you build it good enough,
they will come" mentality that oozes total contempt for conventional
marketing. Developers think that the public thinks the way they do, and
can be convinced using the same tactics that would sway them.

I may be sorry to mention this, but an excellent example of this mistake
(IMO) was the reaction of some on the community to the Microsoft Vista
launch. Stand on the corner across the street, demonstrate, inflate a
big penguin, and hand out CDs. It certainly made the participants feel
good (look how many brochures we burned through!) and was great for peer
recognition (participants later judged the event a success because
photos of it found their way onto social websites). But the net real
effect of that event, to get more open source use in Toronto, was near
zero. Make no mistake, this event was done for the benefit of the people
doing it, not the target audience -- it served a purpose, to be sure,
but not the one stated.

On one hand, one can wonder what might have been possible had all the
person-hours spent on the event been turned to something more
productive. OTOH, these are volunteers, and there's no question that the
real marketing work necessary is generally far more tedious, anonymous,
and completely devoid of instant personal gratification. So it's
doubtful that other marketing tactics would have attracted similar
levels of volunteer interest.

Similarly, it's interesting to see people here comment on the IT360
tradeshow. (dislcaimer: I did compensated work for the show organizers).

People complaining because the show was not just focused on Linux may
have forgotten to notice that Linux tradeshows are tanking around the
world. Remember the New York LinuxWorld every February? At the turn of
the century it ate up nearly a third of the cavernous Javitz Centre, now
it's GONE. Ditto the original Linux Expo in Raleigh, and other efforts
as well are either gone or hurting.

Does this mean that interest in Linux is tanking? Of course not. What it
does mean is that Linux is now part of the IT mainstream and no longer
needs or merits a ghetto of its own. Linux vendors are busy at
enterprise shows and medical IT shows etc., competing head-on with
proprietary vendors. The need to tell the world that Linux exists is
over, the message now needs to be different. The novelty phase is over,
and the shift in focus of IT360 was both useful and necessary.

More later.

- Evan

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