Date: Mon, 9 Aug 1999 00:16:04 +0000 (GMT) From: Terry Lambert <tlambert@primenet.com> To: garbanzo@hooked.net (Alex Zepeda) Cc: BMCGROARTY@high-voltage.com, freebsd-advocacy@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Marketing FreeBSD / FreeBSD as a product Message-ID: <199908090016.RAA06151@usr08.primenet.com> In-Reply-To: <Pine.BSF.4.05.9908061836530.2809-100000@localhost> from "Alex Zepeda" at Aug 6, 99 06:41:10 pm
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> > - An attractive box with heavy contents adds $20 to software's perceived > > value. > > Nah, I really don't think so. Even so, getting a better desgin on the > package, really would not hurt in any way. I don't think as poorly as you > do of the current CD packaging (having never seen it in person); but I do > feel there's always room for improvement. An attractive box with heavy contents adds _immeasurably_ to software's percieved value. Take it from me: Century Software, where I worked and did things like approve PMT ready ad copy, and coauthored the user manual, with Tim O'Reilly, when there were less that 10 of us there and we all had to wear many hats, had the first boxed, shrink-wrapped application for UNIX. The box was designed by the Evan Tweede Agency (now Dahlen, Smith, Tweede) and was attractive. As it should be; the Tweede Agency had more awards (including many CLEO's) than I have seen at almost any other agency (they did the Mel Tillis TelAmerica commercial, for one). It was basically one of those "binder-in-box" things, which were popular with software companies back then (frankly, I miss them; the new soft-boxes simply lack heft, as well as lacking printed documentation). The ability to merely _show_ a shrink-wrapped box in our print advertising decimated our competition (Blast, M-Link, etc.), and basically won us the entire market (that, and we had ported to run on about 120 different UNIX platforms, the Mac, the PC, and VMS). In a UNIX World survey, the product, TERM, beat out UUCP for most used asynchronous communications software on UNIX systems. Several years running. Image is _very_ important. Without a box, we looked like a rinky-dink company, who might not be around in three months; with one, we were suddenly as permanent a structure as a building. Another FYI: if you do advertising, do it consistantly. It is more important to be in the magazine in a 1/3 page ad when the buyer intends to make a purchase decision, than it is to be in a full page ad every other month. Not being there _every time_ is also an indicator of a rinky-dink company who only places ads when they have the money to do it (never mind that most magazines have a 3 month lead time -- readers are ignorant of that). Terry Lambert terry@lambert.org --- Any opinions in this posting are my own and not those of my present or previous employers. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-advocacy" in the body of the message
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