Hola people!
As several of you may know, today I made a couple of posters to fill a ticket asking for 4 foundations artwork. After receive some complains (really few, but we as Fedora listen to everyone) about the message that we are sending I think that is a good idea to have a small (but intense) thread about "what" we can do to have a more powerful and -clear- message that we can use this new year.
Mo and Fab where chatting about how impressive are marketing ads from companies like Apple and others, and they also talk about what they show as product.
I think that is a good idea to try to come up with a solid marketing strategy this year, not only to increase our consolidation as artwork/Marketing team; but also to help us recruit not only more users, but also more contributors. We want users to choose fedora because "what we are and what we do", not because we are winning money. Even so, we want more people to know about foss benefits.
Reading just a little, there are several list with the best campaigns [1], but the ones I found interesting were:
* McDonald's, "You deserve a break today", Needham, Harper & Steers, 1971 * U.S. Army, "Be all that you can be", N.W. Ayer & Son, 1981 * Saturn, "A different kind of company, A different kind of car.", Hal Riney & Partners, 1989 * Polaroid, "It's so simple", Doyle Dane Bernbach, 1977
Now, What made me focus on this ones? They are worldwide known. Being a non_en speaker (you can know by my terrible english) We should be thinking in an _easy, short and consistent between languages_ slogan that defines Fedora.
Also, as artwork team i think is not a bad idea to use some ideas to take advantage and to try out a strong campaign this year (probably will take us a couple of months to develop it and put it in production a couple more of months) to recruit those "already new users" and turn them into real contributors. One of the problems I see (don't know if is only LATAM or if this is happening in other regions) is that people come to events to know about $distro , install their pc's, and become users; considering them as a 100% of new candidates, only a 20-30% become contributors, and another 5-10% quit after their 1st year.
So.. the real question after this huge and with bad grammatical mail is: Do we, as design-marketing team can do an advertising campaign to get more help and spread even more Fedora?
If anyone has ads campaigns that can be examples (of good and bad stuff) or ideas, pls let me (us) know about them :)
See ya!
[1] http://adage.com/century/campaigns.html
21.02.2011, 09:28, "María Leandro" tatica@fedoraproject.org;:
Now, What made me focus on this ones? They are worldwide known. Being a non_en speaker (you can know by my terrible english) We should be thinking in an _easy, short and consistent between languages_ slogan that defines Fedora.
I like that "consistent between languages" thing. As a member of L10N team and Russian translation team coordinator I remember the hard times we've had trying to translate the four foundations into Russian [1]. The result came as either words starting with F but with a slightly different meaning making the translation pointless or words not starting with an F at all (because of the absence of a close equivalent with F) [2]. We then decided to leave it in the original. As a result, there is no Fedora slogan for the Russian community.
A slogan may consist of words that sound similar across different languages, such as those with Latin or Greek origin. Many of them are used on a regular basis in English while being understandable in sound by foreigners without a translation. For instance, the following are very similar to Spanish, French and Russian equivalents in sound or transliteration:
progress - el progresso - progrès - прогресс style - estilo - style - стиль phenomenon - fenómeno - phénomène - феномен evolution - la evolución - évolution - эволюция element - elemento - élément - элемент vision - la visión - vision - виденье alternative - alternativa - alternative - альтернатива variant - variante - variante - вариант illustration - ilustración - illustration - иллюстрация maximum - máximo - maximum - максимум project - proyecto - projet - проект real - real - réel - реальный result - resultado de la - résultat - результат structure - estructura - structure - структура trend - tendencia - tendance - тренд center - centro - centre - центр form - forma - forme - форма function - función - fonction - функция planet - planeta - planète - планета criteria - criterios - critères - критерий reputation - reputación - réputation - репутация aspect - aspecto - aspect - аспект privilege - privilegio - privilège - привилегия collection - colección - collection - коллекция license - licencia - licence - лицензия genius - genio - génie - гениально triumph - triunfo - triomphe - триумф manifest - manifiesto - manifeste - манифест
and many other. Being such, these are easily (and quite naturally) translated into the languages.
The linguistic criteria has a special value for an international project. It would be reasonable to organize a vote to find the universal terms first.
[1] https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Foundations/ru [2] https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Talk:Foundations/ru
Em Seg, 2011-02-21 às 12:41 +0800, Misha Shnurapet escreveu:
21.02.2011, 09:28, "María Leandro" tatica@fedoraproject.org;:
Now, What made me focus on this ones? They are worldwide known. Being a non_en speaker (you can know by my terrible english) We should be thinking in an _easy, short and consistent between languages_ slogan that defines Fedora.
I like that "consistent between languages" thing. As a member of L10N team and Russian translation team coordinator I remember the hard times we've had trying to translate the four foundations into Russian [1]. The result came as either words starting with F but with a slightly different meaning making the translation pointless or words not starting with an F at all (because of the absence of a close equivalent with F) [2]. We then decided to leave it in the original. As a result, there is no Fedora slogan for the Russian community.
A slogan may consist of words that sound similar across different languages, such as those with Latin or Greek origin. Many of them are used on a regular basis in English while being understandable in sound by foreigners without a translation. For instance, the following are very similar to Spanish, French and Russian equivalents in sound or transliteration:
Interesting that you mentioned this. It's something I have been thinking since the 4F's were created. The 4F's aren't 4F's in Portuguese as well. I do think the concept of the four foundations is great, but when translated to other languages it loses its shape. That reflects not only on the impact of the message we are trying to pass but also on the creation of promotional material.
You made a good point here and this is something that definitely should be taken into consideration for our marketing tasks. We can tell from Ambassadors and Smolt statistics that most part of our users and contributors are from parts of the world where English isn't that main language. Keeping that in mind is crucial for transmitting a consistent message around the world.
Regards,
On Tue, Feb 22, 2011 at 11:45:42AM -0300, Igor Pires Soares wrote:
Em Seg, 2011-02-21 às 12:41 +0800, Misha Shnurapet escreveu:
21.02.2011, 09:28, "María Leandro" tatica@fedoraproject.org;:
Now, What made me focus on this ones? They are worldwide known. Being a non_en speaker (you can know by my terrible english) We should be thinking in an _easy, short and consistent between languages_ slogan that defines Fedora.
I like that "consistent between languages" thing. As a member of L10N team and Russian translation team coordinator I remember the hard times we've had trying to translate the four foundations into Russian [1]. The result came as either words starting with F but with a slightly different meaning making the translation pointless or words not starting with an F at all (because of the absence of a close equivalent with F) [2]. We then decided to leave it in the original. As a result, there is no Fedora slogan for the Russian community.
A slogan may consist of words that sound similar across different languages, such as those with Latin or Greek origin. Many of them are used on a regular basis in English while being understandable in sound by foreigners without a translation. For instance, the following are very similar to Spanish, French and Russian equivalents in sound or transliteration:
Interesting that you mentioned this. It's something I have been thinking since the 4F's were created. The 4F's aren't 4F's in Portuguese as well. I do think the concept of the four foundations is great, but when translated to other languages it loses its shape. That reflects not only on the impact of the message we are trying to pass but also on the creation of promotional material.
You made a good point here and this is something that definitely should be taken into consideration for our marketing tasks. We can tell from Ambassadors and Smolt statistics that most part of our users and contributors are from parts of the world where English isn't that main language. Keeping that in mind is crucial for transmitting a consistent message around the world.
That the foundations start with "F" in English is really not important at all in my mind. In fact, that's one of several reasons we have never referred to them as "4 F's". Another reason is that we knew when we came up with the four foundations that they wouldn't translate exactly with the alliteration.
(Did you know "4F" has a negative connotation in the US? That's another reason why we don't use that term. It was the rating someone would get from the military draft board (when the draft was in use) when they had an impairment of some kind that meant they were ill-suited for military service.)
The alliteration of the initial "F" for each idea may make them all easy to remember in the language where they were devised, but that's all. The *ideas* behind the foundations are what's really important. I'd rather see consistency in those ideas than for translators to put a lot of work into making the alliteration work in another language.
Building a brand is a long, hard process that requires consistent effort for years behind the same core ideas. Thanks in part to the strong graphical ideas the Design team has built around the foundations, they are increasingly well known. I think Fedora should be building consistent messaging around these ideas in every language, with an equality of ideas, and not so much emphasis on the "F". We want strong language matches for the ideas themselves.
Em Ter, 2011-02-22 às 14:24 -0500, Paul W. Frields escreveu:
That the foundations start with "F" in English is really not important at all in my mind. In fact, that's one of several reasons we have never referred to them as "4 F's". Another reason is that we knew when we came up with the four foundations that they wouldn't translate exactly with the alliteration.
(Did you know "4F" has a negative connotation in the US? That's another reason why we don't use that term. It was the rating someone would get from the military draft board (when the draft was in use) when they had an impairment of some kind that meant they were ill-suited for military service.)
The alliteration of the initial "F" for each idea may make them all easy to remember in the language where they were devised, but that's all. The *ideas* behind the foundations are what's really important. I'd rather see consistency in those ideas than for translators to put a lot of work into making the alliteration work in another language.
Building a brand is a long, hard process that requires consistent effort for years behind the same core ideas. Thanks in part to the strong graphical ideas the Design team has built around the foundations, they are increasingly well known. I think Fedora should be building consistent messaging around these ideas in every language, with an equality of ideas, and not so much emphasis on the "F". We want strong language matches for the ideas themselves.
I totally agree that the ideas are the most important aspect here. The foundations totally reflect what the Fedora Project is about. But when translating the four foundations the feeling that something is missing is inevitable. We lose the alliteration in order to make the ideas consistent. That feeling is inherent of a translation work, it's natural.
marketing@lists.fedoraproject.org
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Igor Pires Soares -
María Leandro -
Misha Shnurapet -
Paul W. Frields