Aggressive Ubuntu Advertising Campaign to during MS Windows 7 Launch [Archive]

pashonic

January 8th, 2009, 02:15 AM

I was wondering if there is any plans to launch a Ubuntu series advertising campaign before or during the Windows 7 launch. It be nice to air a TV commercial stating "We do that too... and for free". I can't imagine a better chance for the Linux community to pounce.

We could just sit and wait for the word to gradually spread like we normally do but I think its time to actually throw some weight around.

I can think of one company that might be willing to fund such a campaign... Google.

Ubuntu has come a long way in terms of usability. Hell I even got my parents using it and doing everything they would in Windows. When M$ launches Windows 7, Ubuntu will be even better.

just some ideas, any thoughts?

cardinals_fan

January 8th, 2009, 02:17 AM

One word: why?

Grant A.

January 8th, 2009, 02:18 AM

Why doesn't Shuttleworth/Canonical ever try making a marketing campaign? This is the most widely used distribution, afterall. I think just a single commercial, especially with the words "FREE" in it could attract some interesting attention.

pashonic

January 8th, 2009, 02:21 AM

One word: why?

Because a majority of people out there have never heard of Linux.

Paqman

January 8th, 2009, 02:23 AM

One word: why?

I dunno, it'd be a great way to blow lots of money.

waapwoop1

January 8th, 2009, 02:25 AM

What is M$?

pashonic

January 8th, 2009, 02:25 AM

What is M$?

Sorry, M$ = Microsoft.

Joeb454

January 8th, 2009, 02:27 AM

I fixed the title for you :)

Sealbhach

January 8th, 2009, 02:27 AM

The single most effective way to reach customers is through pre-installed software. If Canonical starts advertising that Ubuntu can do this or that and people start downloading and running into problems they could be sued for false advertising. It would be disastrous.

.

cardinals_fan

January 8th, 2009, 02:37 AM

Because a majority of people out there have never heard of Linux.
Most of said people won't blow their money on a preinstalled system based on just an ad, and most of them will also run into major issues configuring Ubuntu themselves.

pashonic

January 8th, 2009, 02:38 AM

earthpigg

January 8th, 2009, 02:43 AM

System76 would be an ideal candidate to advertise - not ubuntu ads, but for their computers (which come preinstalled with ubuntu ;) )

shuttleworth put $10m into the project back in 2004, the company is not profitable. even after donations, im sure the company has less than that now.

worldwide ad campaign with that little money? not possible.

jrusso2

January 8th, 2009, 03:14 AM

They systems come preinstalled with Windows. You don't usually advertise free things and I would rather see the money put into making the interface better.

King_Critter

January 8th, 2009, 04:20 AM

worldwide ad campaign with that little money? not possible.

Uh... according to Wikipedia, Mark Shuttleworth had (at least at one time) over half a billion dollars. I don't think an ad campaign would stretch his budget that much.

phrostbyte

January 8th, 2009, 05:44 AM

Ubuntu needs WORD OF MOUTH. Advertising is WAY too expensive. Any money Ubuntu gets should go to development and administration only!

What we need a SPREADUBUNTU type initiative, which worked fairly well for Firefox. And yes, timing it around the time of the Windows 7 release would be wonderful.

phrostbyte

January 8th, 2009, 05:45 AM

Uh... according to Wikipedia, Mark Shuttleworth had (at least at one time) over half a billion dollars. I don't think an ad campaign would stretch his budget that much.

Half a billion is nothing compared to MSFT marketing budget, and what makes you think he is going to blow all his fortune on Ubuntu?

tgalati4

January 8th, 2009, 06:30 AM

2009 is the year of the linux desktop.

Or was that 2008? Or 2007?

Giant Speck

January 8th, 2009, 09:23 AM

Why would you spend millions of dollars to advertise a product that you don't buy? Wouldn't the goal of advertising be to attract money? I could see how advertising might be effective if consumers actually had to buy Ubuntu, especially if Ubuntu was offered for a lower price than Windows. Consumers would basically be paying off the advertising costs by buying the product.

It would be wiser to pump the money into the product itself instead of wasting it on advertising. Ubuntu seems to already have word-of-mouth advertisement, and it has so far been effective enough to make Ubuntu one of the leading Linux distributions, if not the top distro.

Bachstelze

January 8th, 2009, 09:34 AM

i fixed the title for you :)

orly?

|{urse

January 8th, 2009, 09:55 AM

Seriously, aggressive advertising? For a free Os? If anything I'd think that advertising ubuntu t-shirts would be more profitable, or hey, you too could become an UCSE!!! Linux is cool because it's that quiet guy in the bar that noone messes with because they know he's a total ninja. lol

ade234uk

January 8th, 2009, 02:24 PM

sydbat

January 8th, 2009, 07:49 PM

There is no need to advertise. M$ are doing it free of charge for Ubuntu by creating crap after crap. I just watched the Windows 7 video, there is nothing special about their new OS. There smack bang out of any ideas at the moment, playing catch up.

Windows 7 is just going to confuse people more, and hopefully drive more people Ubuntu.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7817190.stm
Watch the 2nd Video, what's so good about it?

Windows 7 looks like a complete lock down of your freedom to use the PC how you see fit. Windows Live is intergrated within Windows 7 and Facebook, how much did they pay them?
Live search is also intergrated as well. They can keep it all, I'm happy with Ubuntu. It does the job.They paid people to applaud, right?

You are absolutely correct - at least according to the videos, they are struggling, nay, floundering and are WAY behind...playing catchup is a nice way of putting it...

Mason Whitaker

January 8th, 2009, 08:39 PM

We could do some more Google and Youtube Advertisments. I'd love to see some put on Youtube by Canonical staff.

jomiolto

January 9th, 2009, 02:19 AM

Uh, as far as I know, most people don't know what an OS is (and don't really care), so I think this would be wasted money. And those who care about what OS they are running are usually aware of Linux/Ubuntu anyway, so I don't see much point in this. Perhaps if there was a way to get some large hardware manufacturer in on this and advertise a line of Ubuntu computers, then maybe...

Eclipse.

January 9th, 2009, 03:26 AM

I think advertising could work but not if it came from canonical directly, advertising through canonicals partners (dell ect) like the dell adverts which have the vista adverts along with it.Thrashing deals out though wouldnt be easy.

sn0m

January 9th, 2009, 03:36 AM

Windows is always gonna be windows, 98, 2000, nt, xp, vista, 7, 57 whatever. Each one of them was and would be a wonderful piece of crap that is shoved down customer's throat.
People like myself came to linux cas I wanted freedom to do whatever wish to with my computer and not be an eternal aula agree-ee and mouse operator, plus the joy of customising/learning/writing scripts.
These kind of people will find linux whether you do an advertising campaign or not.
Now if you want to compete with windows, you got to work on the bling thing, plus will be difficult to fight the hardware/software/windows relationship.
In my opinion:
Do we need to agresivly campaign against M W 7, no
Do we need to put more bling on Ubuntu, yes (get rid of the ugly brown colour, more awn type of aplication, more eye catching icons, interesting fonts, not the current ugly ones.)
Do we need to campaign, definitely yes, but the right type, ie come to freedom, knowledge, security and fun.
Respect
Sokol

cardinals_fan

January 9th, 2009, 03:49 AM

Do we need to put more bling on Ubuntu, yes (get rid of the ugly brown colour, more awn type of aplication, more eye catching icons, interesting fonts, not the current ugly ones.)

How is this related to this particular topic?

Onoskelis

January 9th, 2009, 04:00 AM

The starter of this thread is a moronic fanboy.

Windows 7 is shaping up to be a great OS. I'll be quite happy to dual boot it along with Ubuntu.

People who hate on different operating systems because they are *gasp* not free, need to quit acting like immature nerds and go outside. Call me when WINE exceeds Windows in gaming performance and compatibility, and I might just stick with Ubuntu only.

cardinals_fan

January 9th, 2009, 04:08 AM

People who want others to hate on different operating systems because they are *gasp* not free, need to quit acting like immature nerds and go outside.
Fixed that for you ;)

sn0m

January 9th, 2009, 04:15 AM

How is this related to this particular topic?

Hmmm, I have shown ubuntu to a few friends of mine and their first impression, it is ugly.....!?:(
Does it make any sens now?......

cardinals_fan

January 9th, 2009, 04:18 AM

Hmmm, I have shown ubuntu to a few friends of mine and their first impression, it is ugly.....!?:(
Does it make any sens now?......
So make it look nicer. Anyway, people who make major technical decisions based on easily changed defaults are probably not capable of installing and configuring an operating system. I'm not trying to be an elitist here, but until preinstalled Ubuntu systems are more common, the default look probably makes very little difference.

Onoskelis

January 9th, 2009, 04:24 AM

So make it look nicer. Anyway, people who make major technical decisions based on easily changed defaults are probably not capable of installing and configuring an operating system. I'm not trying to be an elitist here, but until preinstalled Ubuntu systems are more common, the default look probably makes very little difference.

Well Linux Mint is based on Ubuntu and it looks infinitely better, and requires little configuration. Ubuntu should work on getting rid of the default brown wallpaper, ugly fonts, and try to present itself as a professional and attractive alternative to Windows.

ugm6hr

January 9th, 2009, 04:26 AM

Uh, as far as I know, most people don't know what an OS is (and don't really care), so I think this would be wasted money.

Perhaps, but MS obviously think it is worthwhile to spend money advertising an OS.

cardinals_fan

January 9th, 2009, 04:33 AM

Well Linux Mint is based on Ubuntu and it looks infinitely better, and requires little configuration. Ubuntu should work on getting rid of the default brown wallpaper, ugly fonts, and try to present itself as a professional and attractive alternative to Windows.
http://kmandla.wordpress.com/2008/08/01/pretty-is-a-feature-but-ugly-is-subjective/

Onoskelis

January 9th, 2009, 05:06 AM

http://kmandla.wordpress.com/2008/08/01/pretty-is-a-feature-but-ugly-is-subjective/

So your argument is that the user should work to make their desktop look nice, and that Linux is made for customization?

If I wanted ultimate customization in a Linux environment, I definitely would not be using Ubuntu. Arch and OpenSUSE are much better for that.

The point of Ubuntu is an "out of the box" OS that just works and keeps thing simple. Having the OS look nice after a fresh install would be a positive thing.

cardinals_fan

January 9th, 2009, 05:23 AM

So your argument is that the user should work to make their desktop look nice, and that Linux is made for customization?

If I wanted ultimate customization in a Linux environment, I definitely would not be using Ubuntu. Arch and OpenSUSE are much better for that.

The point of Ubuntu is an "out of the box" OS that just works and keeps thing simple. Having the OS look nice after a fresh install would be a positive thing.
No. My argument is that "nice" is inherently subjective. I have never seen a default desktop on any operating system that I wanted to keep. I seriously doubt that you would like my desktop.

Paqman

January 9th, 2009, 05:27 AM

Perhaps, but MS obviously think it is worthwhile to spend money advertising an OS.

Yes, but they actually make money off their OS. Tons of money. Ubuntu doesn't.

MikeTheC

January 9th, 2009, 05:36 AM

People who want others to hate on different operating systems because they are *gasp* not free, need to quit acting like immature nerds and go outside.
Fixed that for you ;)

Missed two. ;)

cardinals_fan

January 9th, 2009, 05:40 AM

Missed two. ;)
Good work :D

bigbrovar

January 9th, 2009, 07:50 AM

Traditional advert cost alot of money an is certainly not the Linux way. i would prefer the proposed advert cash be spent on paying more dev to work full time on the Linux desktop. that would be more beneficial to Linux in the long run than an advert. beside tell me any of the big FOSS company that uses relies on advert. Mozilla? or Redhat ? even google never done one single advert .. yet this companies strive because the best advert a product can have is word or mouth. maybe not in the traditional sense of word of mouth but using the power of web 2.0 the youtubes, the blogs the twitters of the word.. i feel eventually we would get there. we cant and should not even try to compete with MS or apple when it comes to traditional advertisement because we don't have that can of money to waste. beside we have a good product which can speak for itself.

earthpigg

January 11th, 2009, 11:25 PM

Hmmm, I have shown ubuntu to a few friends of mine and their first impression, it is ugly.....!?:(
Does it make any sens now?......

then hand them live CD's of Ubuntu Satanic Edition, or Ultimate Edition, or Mint.... you know your buddies who you are giving CD's to - pick the flavor that individual is most likely to jive with.

first impressions do count, after all.

Frak

January 12th, 2009, 01:56 AM

Even if you did advertise, it'd be like offering a plastic cup with a string on the end. Even though you can explain to them what it's good for, it's good parts, and it's shortcomings, they'll still wonder why they need that cup with a string on the end while their red plastic cups are working just fine.

BTW, Did You Mean: Microsoft Windows

some_random_noob

January 12th, 2009, 08:47 AM

What we need is more Ubuntu blogs, and a "try Ubuntu" site. After all, we're not meant to be spreading it, we're meant to be getting people to try it. Making a basic site would take nothing, all we need is a brief explanation of what Ubuntu is along with lot's of well organized links. Then maybe we could all have bumper stickers for our cars/desks. Another thing would be having people speak at local Linux user groups (to promote Ubuntu).

p.s. if you want to help Ubuntu with a single click, then go into the synaptic settings and click "submit statistical information" :) this is often over-looked.

toupeiro

January 12th, 2009, 10:20 AM

OK, so there are no TV commercials for Ubuntu. Personally, I think there are better ways. Partner with other technologies. This is what MS and Apple are doing today to try to ensure their slippery slopes don't turn into full on avalanches.

Partner closer with Netflix, Adobe, Cable and Satellite companies. Make efforts to partner where applicable with the Automobile industry, the music industry. Partner with stores like Guitar-center and put ubuntu studio on display right next to their more commercial rig running MAC or Windows and Pro-Tools. Get the ubuntu name out there by working with everything else people associate with technology and computers, and it will be a natural understanding, that ubuntu is NOT windows, but it enables them to do things which Windows can enable them to do with lower costs and most of the time much fewer problems. Its almost easier to do that than to try to make people understand what an OS is and make that matter to them.

Svensk023

January 12th, 2009, 10:48 AM

There is no need to advertise. M$ are doing it free of charge for Ubuntu by creating crap after crap. I just watched the Windows 7 video, there is nothing special about their new OS. There smack bang out of any ideas at the moment, playing catch up.

Windows 7 is just going to confuse people more, and hopefully drive more people Ubuntu.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7817190.stm
Watch the 2nd Video, what's so good about it?

Windows 7 looks like a complete lock down of your freedom to use the PC how you see fit. Windows Live is intergrated within Windows 7 and Facebook, how much did they pay them?
Live search is also intergrated as well. They can keep it all, I'm happy with Ubuntu. It does the job.

in previous pages of this thread I found myself yearning to post something, but after reading this... well the words never even had a chance to be formed in my brain.

very well put, and you have concrete example of just how painfully far behind Microsoft has gotten.

free, solid and secure OS with good online support for when errors arise totally beats -$300 from my bank account and vistas repetitive "we cannot find a solution to your problem"

Tom Mann

January 13th, 2009, 12:17 AM

I think the words 'Aggressive' and 'Campaign' should stay solely in Microsoft's territory. That said I'm sick to death of looking up Linuxtoday, distrowatch etc and seeing Microsoft adverts.

I'm going to give the Windows 7 beta/final a fair trial... In VirtualBox. If it can't handle that then it's not fast enough for my PC. (Athlon X2 6400+, 3GB RAM, nVidia 9600GT)!

That said Kubuntu will stay a permanent fixture on my PC.

cardinals_fan

January 13th, 2009, 01:49 AM

What we need is more Ubuntu blogs, and a "try Ubuntu" site.

Please no. There are already so many unbelievably bad Ubuntu blogs that it defies imagining. You can easily recognize the fanboy blogs because the posts are innaccurate adverts and the authors have the writing ability of an average five-year-old.

Frak

January 13th, 2009, 02:02 AM

Please no. There are already so many unbelievably bad Ubuntu blogs that it defies imagining. You can easily recognize the fanboy blogs because the posts are innaccurate adverts and the authors have the writing ability of an average five-year-old.
Ubuntu is teh pwnzorz, and M$ is TEH DEVEEL. OMG, WIN!!!!11one!1

cardinals_fan

January 13th, 2009, 02:05 AM

Ubuntu is teh pwnzorz, and M$ is TEH DEVEEL. OMG, WIN!!!!11one!1
If I have nothing better to do, I leave a logical comment pointing out some of the blatant innaccuracies. It's really sad to see them try to act condescending, and then fail at that too.

Frak

January 13th, 2009, 02:07 AM

If I have nothing better to do, I leave a logical comment pointing out some of the blatant innaccuracies. It's really sad to see them try to act condescending, and then fail at that too.
I just say, Did you mean: Microsoft Windows? and repost that, but replace Ubuntu with Windows and M$ (and the variants) with (Just wanted to let you know, I can't spell Microsoft, in fact it doesn't really matter, because I'm not past the 5th grade as of yet).

It's condenscending, but it's fighting fire with fire to me. You can't speak logically to a troll/fanboy/zealot.