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Sorry, but I distinguish between 'Theme Design' and 'Logo Design'. I, for myself, find theme design much easier than logo design.

But I take the point....am excited about what else you mentioned regarding the subject

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Could be seen as climax of marketing efforts then.

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But we can inspire There had been an attempt in the German community, though the organizer was not happy with the response, and killed of all his XOOPS related activities Some people are very sensitive to critic.

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Like that very much, and it goes along my ideas, of free instalation CD's for distribution, but your additions are gold worth.

The doc team may be able to help us out here.

I especially like the idea regarding schools. Just not sure yet, how to manager something like that. Our australian community member Jen, is a teacher, maybe she has some ideas. It would have to be High School though. I have a friend who's a teacher, I will ask her, what she thinks of the idea, of teaching kids how to set-up a portal, using XOOPS. Maybe she can bring me in contact with the 'computers' teacher.

Also others are encourage to do the same. If you know an IT teacher, why not chat with them, about organizing school classes, where the students learn how to run a web site, using a system like XOOPS.

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It had crossed my mind...not well thought through.

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When a coordinated strategic media campaign is implemented for XOOPS as the folks at Mambo have done.
The articles and the awards are a result well targeted and executed PR campaign.

PR is not a logo, a road map, a promotional build, guerrilla marketing, tag lines, etc., etc.
While these all may be a part of a marketing and branding mix, they are not PR.

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I offered to help with PR for XOOPS back in Sept. 2004.
Mithrandir suggested I contact you. (2004/9/16)
You replied and I sent you a PM with some specific questions to get the process started.
Did not hear back.

Strategic Public Relations
A strategic public relations plan is used to reach target audiences with a specific message.
A media campaign is targeted at journalists who write for publications read by the end target audience.
It is a 2-4 month process to get started, and then ongoing.
A month or so to plan, and then you are constrained by the media lead times.

It starts with specific goals.
"We should have some articles" like Mambo is not a specific goal targeting a specific audience.
"We should have some awards" - ditto.
"We want more people to know about Xoops" - ditto.
A specific goal below.

The process:
1. Define the goals.
2. Identify the audience.
3. Define the message.
4. Create the tactics.
5. Execute the tactics.

Example: Part of a Media Plan

Goal: Increase use of XOOPS in medium and large company corporate intranets. This will encourage high-level code contributions, increased financial support for development, increase mainstream project awareness.

Audience: Corporate IT Managers

Message: XOOPS will help you reduce development time, reduce development costs, reduce ongoing maintenance cost, make your life easier.

Tactics: Create an article on how one company did this, their experiences, cost savings. Promote the article to journalists online and offline who cover this subject for a publication read by IT managers.

Execute: Email an article outline to a targeted list of journalists who work for the proper publications.


It is obvious to me that this is what Mambo has done. (having done this enough)
Journalists did not just find Mambo - they were targeted.
The articles are in the right publications.

Pursuing awards is a common PR tactic.
The Mambo awards did not just happen - they were targeted.

Their PR people are doing a great job.

Ken, my apologies. I did reply, but I guess my e-mail got lost (has some serious issues with my provider back then). And a lot has happened since that required my attention, both on and offline. Still, I should have acted more on this.

Now that this is coming alive, can we make this work? What you say in your post is what I think we need for the Communications Team, who will coordinate the efforts. Would you want to lead the creation of this team?

Herko

One thing that seems quite apparent to me is that we need more manpower for this.

I know this is one of the goals of this thread, but it could be very useful if we could have one guy (not me, not Herko, not Carnuke... we need to see it with fresh eyes and I know for a fact that myself, Herko and Carnuke are all busy people with too many tasks and too little time) who would be "in charge" of this. Not every part of it, but performing these tasks:

1) Gather a couple (3-5?) people in a discussion group
2) Perform steps 1-3 (perhaps 1-4) of Ken's process
3) Present this to the XOOPS Foundation Board (perhaps in smaller bits along the process)
4) Plan the execution

When we get to the actual execution, there is also a lot of work, but I think we have been focusing on too many tasks instead of setting the precise goals and breaking them down into manageable bits. Then we can make a milestone plan for the bits and join them together into one, big execution.

I think it is good to get ideas on the table, but until 1) is settled, they all end up on Herko's desk... and it's a biig desk with lots of ideas on it already.

So... who has the guts to take charge on this?

Herko, Mithrandir,

I am up for the lead job, with some concerns.

I went back and really read the entire thread.
It appears you are talking about more than just a PR plan.
More like a complete marketing plan.
Done right, this is a big job, and an ongoing job.
It will definitely require a team of people.

The scope of what we can reasonably achieve will be constrained by the manpower available.
Obviously the same as on the programming side.

Marketing and Communications team.
The good news, some of the people already posting appear to have some marketing experience:
Mamba - talking goals, audiences, etc.
wtravel - basically talking about SWOT analysis
JasonMR - collateral materials and tactics
Will need more people.

Identify Strategic Goals
Herko, Mithrandir, other members of the Foundation board? You know who should have input.
This is where the goals will have to come from initially, and
then be refined and massaged by a marketing person.
Me and members of the team.

From point A to point B -- as in any journey, you have to know where you are first
before you can get to where you want to be.

Competitive Analysis
Any marketing related project starts with a competitive analysis.
- Where am I?
- Where are the competitors?
- Where do I want to be?

This requires gathering and summarizing info about XOOPS and competitors.
Team members can help with this.

Messaging
What is the message (or messages) you want to communicate?
From the competitive analysis we analyze the competitors messages, determine where we want to position XOOPS in relation to those competitors, and then create the XOOPS messaging strategy.
This includes descriptions of various lengths, tagline, elevator speech, etc.
- tagline (on the logo now)
- descriptions (one line, 25 words, one paragraph, three paragraphs, one page, brochure, etc.)
- elevator speech (you're in an elevator, someone says "What's XOOPS?", you have x seconds)
You want them all consistent, same messaging.

Marketing Communications
This is an all encompassing term which includes PR, collateral materials, branding, etc.
Channels.

PR I discussed above.

Collateral materials include brochures, white papers, promotional materials, etc.
These are done after the messaging is clearly defined.
They are the physical communication and reinforcement of the messages.

Branding is a more esoteric process which includes messaging, repetition, and style guides.
Branding is a long-term process to imprint a message.
Q. What is the first thing you think of when I say Volvo?
A. Safety.
That's branding.
Muddled messaging, lack of cohesive strategy, inconsistent styles - all hurt branding.
Q. What is the first thing people think of when I say XOOPS?
A. ??

If nothing comes to mind for someone, they have not been branded for XOOPS.
What is the answer you want?

Style guides - can you recognize all XOOPS materials as XOOPS instantly?
Upside down on a desk, web site, coffee mug?
Search Google for "styleguide.pdf" - lots of corporate style guides.


All of the channels communicating the same messages is very powerful.


Where to Now?
There is more . . . but perhaps I am getting ahead of myself.

- What have you (the leaders) been thinking about this marketing thing the last few months?
- What has been discussed?
- What is the motivation to do something now?
- What are the goals now? Short-term, long-term.
- How do you see this project progressing?
- How will it be supported? Board or foundation involvement?
- Day-to-day mechanics?

After those questions . . .
My first concern would be staffing.
Lots to do if we undertake this entire project.
Creating the media list alone could be a week of time.
Definitely have to scale based on available help.

I am going to be very blunt here - my apologies up front.
I am not saying this is you - could be the board, team members, etc.
Second concern is dealing with technical people who think they
know everything about marketing and PR and make everything a battle.
Too many very smart technical people don't know what they don't know.
This got very, very old.
I only did 5 years in high-tech PR.
My former partner did 20 years in PR, mostly high-tech.
She wants nothing to do with it now.
Burned out from the aggravation.
The aggravation is just not worth it - especially working for free.


I think it is interesting that someone brought up the Mambo PR successes. I have been watching both Mambo and XOOPS for a while and been intrigued by how much more visible Mambo is while being basically a much smaller and newer project. Marketing and PR work.

Regards,

Ken McDonald

Good on ya Ken for stepping forward . One thing I'll say that I used to find really good from a PR perspective was the WOX news item each month.

Ken, great to see you stepped in. I think you got the picture right in order for this to work. Although time may be a bit limited for me, I would like to help out in whatever way I can.

Best wishes,

Martijn

Hi, I've read almonst everything of this topic (a good one ), so let me explain my point of view.
Xoops, as is, is not good enough.
A fresh new user that comes to Xoops.org now only see an old-style-CMS-phpnuke-clone, right?
So, my little personal list of improvements needed before you can start to seriously talking about Xoops' marketing (yes, i'm going to be cruel now )

in scattered order

- Give a nice and cool theme to the official website. Xoops.org has, probably, the worse and the monst anonymous theme confronted to the others Xoops' support - and related to XOOPS - sites.
Just some examples that are better:
http://www.frxoops.org/
http://www.myxoops.org/
http://tw.xoops.org/
http://www.xoopsit.net/modules/news/
An XOOPS theme contest - with or without a reward (a great one can be the theme developer's name listed on the all about XOOPS section ) - will probably help in this.

- A demo site is needed. Give to it as many robusted and various modules as you can, do a good optimization (cached items, visible blocks, etc), do a backup and make a task for restore that backup every X hours.. and then left this demo site tho his way.

- A themes.xoops.org is needed too. Here you can put just the theme-block and a direct link to 'download this theme now' - maybe you can transfer the theme library section in here.

- Personally, I think that the Foundation has to manage the various XOOPS support communities better. They are using and advertising you and your brand. So you can't left them to their way - a monthly newsletter, just as a starting point, will be a good thing.

- MORE support on sourceforge. This mean that a you have to show that you're keeping an eye on our troubles - bugs, patches, RFE need at least a reply from a Core Team Member.
I know this is an hard work, but trust in me.. it will help on the long way

- An Official chat for instant support and for help grow up (more and more) the community. Do I've to tell you that an 'official guy' have to live this as a second life?

- Trick and track with Search Engine Optimization. The work here is not that hard 'cause XOOPS is on the right way. Some little tweaks here and there will help you in your free advertising, right?
Of course .. we want these as a default feat

- More to come, later

banned

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The above is a part that I disagree with. I think the current method of support is sufficient. If we go to a chat support the solutions will be lost and not searchable, as well as making the solutions harder to enter into the faq.

Your other points are valid in my view. Maybe we should start a new thread of what XOOPS needs to compete. Because again, it is getting off the main topic.

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Kewl.
Please send more info on what you are interested in doing.

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Interesting.
Not good enough for what?
Not good enough to use now as a CMS?

Nothing on this list would preclude development and implementation
of a marketing and PR plan to promote XOOPS.

Does XOOPS have areas which need improvement? You bet.
I have my own list.

The world is filled with well promoted products which need improvement.
There are also many excellent products which are relatively unknown or
have disappeared due to non-existent or poor marketing.
Most products do not start out perfect, or ever end up perfect.
Most die long before that happens because of poor marketing.

An honest, comprehensive Competitive Analysis and SWOT will
identify and highlight areas which may need improvement
to better compete in the target markets identified.
How the management addresses the issues will determine how successful
the product will become in relation to its competitors.
If they do not care, nothing will change.

Commercial products have to care about being competitive.
Those that do not care die.
In open source it is somewhat elective.
To be more successful in displacing commercial products open source needs
to start thinking and acting like a commercial product in regards to
marketing and being competitive.

While in collage a close friend of mine always picked the one student he
thought was his toughest rival and competed in his head on every test.
He graduated 4.0 Summa Cum Laude.
Perhaps a similar goal would be to get more PR than Mambo.
Or how about targeting a commercial product.

Is XOOPS successful now? Wildly.
Is the XOOPS project deficient in marketing communications? Definitely.

Like most open source projects, XOOPS is founded and run by programmers.
Communications and marketing are not usually programmers' strengths.
This is not a criticism of programmers. Just the way it is.
I admire the programmers' talents, and appreciate the amazing free software.
My programming skills are above that of a bowling ball, but it still beats me sometimes.
I have over 20 years of marketing and PR training and experience.
The lack of marketing and PR in open source makes me nuts.

The open source projects which do have any marketing and PR are usually
those with a commercial support option - MySQL, Mambo, etc.
Because of this, they have hired trained marketing and PR people who
know the importance of and how to do these things.

It is hard to do consulting for many small companies because they don't get it.
Large companies got that way because they do get it and hire people inside.


To get back to the subject . . .
Where this project will go and how it will affect the future of XOOPS is unknown.
At this point I don't know the motivation or level of commitment of "the management."
To even be discussing commercial-level marketing and PR is a good start.


Regards,

KM