Marketing Message for Calligra

[Inge Wallin]

On Thursday, December 22, 2011 17:47:54 Cyrille Berger Skott wrote:
> On Thursday 22 December 2011, Inge Wallin wrote:
> > With due respect, I think you are totally wrong here.  It never pays off
> > in  marketing to be humble.  Really, what do you hope to achieve (or
> > avoid for that matter) by being humble?
> 
> It also never pay off to brag. And I want to avoid Calligra to be know like
> KOffice as the suite of application that promises wonder and deliver
> nothing.

Oh, it does pay off to brag.  Unfortunately it also often pays off to lie but 
that's a limit I'm not willing to cross. But if bragging is the same as being 
proud of what we have done and what we can do then bragging is just fine.

And I don't think we need to be very afraid of being known to not deliver.  
Calligra has *already* delivered more software for mobile platforms than any 
other free office suite. That's the difference between Calligra and KOffice. 
Besides, if we continue to talk about only the desktop, then we do indeed run 
that risk because the desktop is where we are far behind at this point. Mobile 
is not.

> You can make all the fun you want of LibreOffice attempt to port to
> Android, but if you go outside of the Calligra community, people perceive
> us as the people who have been trying for 14 years to deliver an office
> suite for the desktop. And now, we will start bragging to be leading on
> the free office suite market for mobile, and if you scratch under the
> surface, you will discover that we are positionned on a dead tiny fraction
> of that market.

I haven't exactly made fun of it. If you think so you have misunderstood.  My 
point, instead, is that LibreOffice has issued a press release saying they 
will start porting to Android (note: 'will start'. Not 'have done'). They have 
in fact *nothing* to show here and if anybody runs the risk of being known to 
not deliver on these platforms it's them.  

But still it worked for them insofar as that journalists and bloggers 
parrotted this press release. Some real buzz was created around LibreOffice on 
Android. If we don't tell people that we have done more already and will do 
more still then we can never push Calligra to the front.

> By being humble, I am hopping to avoid damaging the Calligra brand to the
> extend the KOffice brand had been.

You would have a point if I had suggested that we push Calligra on the desktop 
as the future, or even present, leader.  This is the area where we have 
traditionally marketed KOffice because at that point there was nothing else. I 
still think that Calligra is going to take a market here but it's much too 
early to focus on this as you point out yourself.

To be clear: I am not suggesting that we come up with dreams like "Calligra 
will be the leader of <something>. I am suggesting that we use the *fact* that 
Calligra is already the leader in free mobile office applications as a base 
for our marketing message and then build from that over the coming years.

This is the big difference from what we tried to do with KOffice.  KOffice had 
the advantage over OOo that the code base was much nicer and that development 
happened faster.  This is still the case for Calligra and LibreOffice so we 
haven't lost anything there. In fact I would argue that we are much closer to 
them now than we were 1 to 2 years ago and we are gaining fast.

But that doesn't mean very much in the market place.  The market is full of 
failed products that were better than the existing ones but didn't have the 
unique properties to gain a foothold. But Calligra has this: It's our great 
flexibility that allows it to go into the touch based world of computing and 
reuse > 98% of the code. 

> And don't misunderstand me, I think we should be proud that Calligra is
> used on the N9, it is a good achievement, and we should go around and talk
> about that. However lets avoid to create a mountain out of a mouse.

True.  So let's instead show people the wonderful mountain that we have 
already built. :)

> Merging an other email, since it is on the same topic:
> > I know it's sometimes laughable, but the reason people do it is because
> > it *works*.  All marketing textbooks say "you need to find a niche where
> > you are the leader and then tell everybody about it".
> 
> I am also hoping that every marketing textbook start by telling you to
> define who is your target. And to adjust your message for them.
> 
> Assuming our marketing target is geeky technical people, who know and
> follow open source project. Those people get suspicious with excessive
> "bragging", and while they know of the N9xx Maemo/Meego, they also know it
> is a very niche stillborn market. And will go and think, yeahyeah, they
> are the leader of nothing (and if they know from where Calligra comes
> from, they will think that people never change).
> 
> Worse, if our target is outside of that group, chance is that they don't
> know much about "free software", or meego and the N9. All they know is
> iphone and the cheap version of iphone (some of them know that it is
> called android). For them "the leading free office suite for mobile", free
> will translate to 0€, "mobile" translate to iOS or Android, and since it
> is available to neither, we are just liars.

I have two answers to this:

1. I thought our target user group were students and academics.  At least 
that's what I read from many of the maintainers and the Words manifesto. So it 
makes sense that our marketing should target the same group. I am pretty sure 
that this group knows the difference between iOS and Android. But I don't 
think that the majority of the students are aware of the history with KOffice. 
To them Calligra is something new and hopefully exciting.  

It is not unlikely that this group running LibreOffice or OOo already.  And 
frankly, getting them to switch to Calligra on their home computer or laptop 
is going to be very difficult. But it's not unlikely that they also have a 
tablet that they can use during lectures or in other places.  Telling them 
about Calligra and how it works well on tablets and handheld devices is going 
to make a few of them try it out and hopefully like it.  It is more likely 
that they will test the leader of free office apps than something they have 
never heard about so it makes sense to take that position.

2. Aside from mobile, Calligra's other strong point right now is the Office 
Engine. Here we see a completely different target group. I think that the 
engine is what makes Calligra truly unique and it is what will drive companies 
to start using Calligra. We have seen that with Nokia already and saw that 
with SKF at the sprint.

I have a big problem right now that the website doesn't show any of this. The 
mockups that were developed during the discussions with Jaroslaw were just 
that: mockups.  It's not a finished design.  But they illustrate important 
concepts that I would not like to left invisible when we release 2.4 for real. 
So if there are better suggestions I'm all for it