Date: Fri, 10 Apr 1998 00:17:02 -0700 From: "Jordan K. Hubbard" <jkh@time.cdrom.com> To: Open Systems Networking <opsys@mail.webspan.net> Cc: David Shanes <dshanes@personalogic.com>, Brett Glass <brett@lariat.org>, hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Fw: Your Article "Freeware: The Heart & Soul of the Internet" Message-ID: <5942.892192622@time.cdrom.com> In-Reply-To: Your message of "Thu, 09 Apr 1998 23:19:58 EDT." <Pine.BSF.3.95.980409225048.7629B-100000@orion.webspan.net>
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Erm. A fine rant, Chris. :-) As to the question of money, Chris is right in that we're not getting any major $$$ support for FreeBSD, Inc. to take out full-page adverts, but we are getting SOME money and moreover Walnut Creek CDROM is willing to significantly invest in directed advertising and such things this year. The problem isn't, unfortunately, money. What we lack more than anything else is a MARKETING PERSON and I'm not kidding here. I do PR for FreeBSD for the very simple reason that nobody else stepped forward to do it, and while I think I do a reasonable job of it amongst the techie crowd by speaking at various assemblies and consulting firms, I know for a fact that I'm also NOT reaching the mainstream. I don't write good 10-word sound bites or punchy advertising copy, my background being engineering rather than marketing, and this holds us back from doing even the simplest forms of mainstream advertising. I know my limitations, and this is one of them. Let me give you a good example of this in action: We could, right this very minute, send off about 10 notices to various publications for printing in their "New Product Section" - many hi-tech mags have them and getting something into this section is FREE - and get some instant positive PR for 2.2.6. Not only has this not been done for 2.2.6, there has _never been_ a FreeBSD release product announcement in one of these magazines for the very simple reason that nobody has ever written the requisite "punchy ad copy" and sent it in. It wouldn't cost us a cent to do it but because we don't have somebody capable of just spinning out that kind of copy while sitting on the toilet (and I know such people - all very highly paid and very busy elsewhere), it has never happened. That needs to change, but I'm not sure how to go about it. I'm not an advertising guru nor do I know of any working on an hourly basis since I don't mix with that crowd very much, but I'd dearly like to change that. To put it another way, if we could locate the person who's the brains behind this advert: http://time.cdrom.com/~jkh/happy.jpg and could somehow subvert them to the cause of FreeBSD, we'd take over the world in less than 12 months even if we didn't add a single extra feature to FreeBSD. :-) Jordan To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message
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