[Foundation-l] Rethinking brands

Wed May 9 11:35:57 UTC 2007

Hello,

Alison Wheeler a écrit :
> On Wed, May 9, 2007 11:07, Sebastian Moleski wrote:
>> Short quiz for all the Americans on this list: what do Bounty, Dawn,
>> Pringles, Duracell and Lacoste have in common? If you think those are
>> all strong brand names, then you're right. But how many would know
>> that they all belong to the same company (Procter & Gamble)? I would
>> venture a guess that not too many do. Or at
>> least, to most people, it really doesn't matter. They don't buy the
>> products because P&G makes them. <snip>
> 
> But I believe that is the problem we currently have! That list of brands
> don't market to the same target audiences, and they demonstrate few
> synergies between them so thay have no need to target similar markets
> directly, however eachof our 'products' *do* target the same people, and
> that means (imho) that we do need a much clearer "umbrella" to be visible
> 'out there'.

What make you think that "each of our 'products' target the same
people"? I think that we are going the wrong way here. And this proposal
confuses a search for readers with a search for contributors.

Each of our 'products' has a specific audience, and people looking for
textbooks or pictures do not necessarly look for encyclopedia content,
and vice versa. People willing to share their pictures or to publish
existing texts do not have the same objective as those willing to write
an encyclopedia. I think we need to do the exact opposite: differentiate
more each of our projects, so that each gets its specific audience.

Beside, we should not think in terms of commercial products for our
projects. We have no deadline, no profits to make, no balance to adjust.
Why do people come to our projects? Not because we have a big brand, not
because they see an ad. They come because our content is free as a beer
and free as a speech. Rather than a brand, that the message we need to
spread out: Wikimedia is the greatest (and biggest) free project on the
planet.

Regards,

Yann

> A further example; Answers.com runs "WikiAnswers". If we stick ad absurdam
> with our "Wiki...." convention then how many people will think that
> "WikiAnswers" is one of ours, when it isn't. David Gerard pointed out that
>> "People call it "wiki" in English as well. (A conversation yesterday
>> with a TV person who kept talking about "wikis", and it took me a few
>> minutes to realise he was talking about "articles in English
>> Wikipedia". And that's someone in an organisation I *know* has *lots*
>> of internal wikis ...)".
> 
> We've lost the battle to call everything "Wiki...." and for the general
> internet population to realise which is 'ours' and which isn't. It will be
> a shame to lose some of the name recognition that the non-WP projects have
> gained - though it is clearly minimal so far - but I think there is merit
> in realising that we need to change our POV and ensure that non-editors
> realise that we have more than the one (WP) project.
> 
> Alison Wheeler

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