Idea: Advertise Linux? [Archive]

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DeadSuperHero

June 30th, 2007, 10:12 AM

I had an interesting idea concerning Open Source/Linux: why not make advertisements and spread them around through YouTube, Myspace, and heck, maybe even prime time television?

Here's an idea I had for a commercial/video/whatever you want to call it:

A man is shown, digging through some old junk in an attic. He's calmly taking his time, not too excited. Then, he hears a small breaking sound, then looks on the floor. Several jagged pieces of broken glass lie on the floor, and he curiously picks a piece up. It's in the shape of a triangle, and when he looks at it closely, he gasps. He jumps up, and runs quickly to another room. A new shot shows him drawing a rough diagram, and it looks like a crummy drawing of a rocket ship, with a few interesting parts. Immediately, it shows other people working on the same picture, adding to it, making it better. Scientists are shown with advanced diagrams that resemble refined versions of the original picture. By the end of the video, it shows the rocket, complete, standing straight up inside a futuristic glass/white metal launchpad. A hand presses on the outside of the glass, feeling it, and the camera pans to the man who started it, with tears of joy in his eyes and a look of wonder on his face. The rocket begins to launch, and as the fire ignites, white light fills up the screen, and a slogan appears.
"Care to Innovate?"
"Open Source (or Linux)"
It could also have narration during it about the power behind ideas, I don't know.
But, I think it would be good to have this thread as a place for ideas. After all, someone out there might have the tools to make such a video, so post your ideas.
What do you think?

Tomosaur

June 30th, 2007, 12:19 PM

What is the point of the broken glass? Why not just have him drawing a rocket in the first place?

In any case, there are Linux commercials, but the problem with that is the only people who see them already know what Linux is, and many already use it. Linux distributions need the funding to get Linux adverts on TV, in magazines, billboards etc etc.

aimran

June 30th, 2007, 01:01 PM

Just wear a LInux/Ubuntu t-shirt and walk around town :)

No but seriously. The more people you have using linux the more problems you will get. Generally because not many people are READY for Linux.

a) Someone who's ready for the change will embrace Linux and get over the learning curve. He will be happy with Linux.

b) Someone who's NOT ready for the change will whine.

I'd rather have a) as opposed to b). The former will help spread the word - and provide the expertise as well. But the latter will just spread **** about Linux (is that what they call FUD?) and halt the spread.

Just my $0.02.

cacycleworks

July 13th, 2007, 12:38 AM

imho, i'm doing one better... everyone who i talk to loves the concept of open office. i turn every windows user i can onto open source ******* solutions. i'll let that do the talking for linux. ;)

jrusso2

July 13th, 2007, 02:04 AM

Take your laptop with Beryl into a crowded coffee shop every day and people will start asking what it is.

Old Pink

July 13th, 2007, 02:26 AM

Billboards:
http://ubuntu.files.wordpress.com/2006/08/ubuntubillboard.jpg

http://www.tegarden.com/images/content/ubuntu-billboard.jpg

http://darxr.net/files/ubuntu-billboard-thm.jpg

http://img.clubic.com/photo/0190000000471245.jpg

http://fridge.ubuntu.com/files/and-servers.jpg

Video: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1088424211468504165

Hex_Mandos

July 13th, 2007, 02:52 AM

Human beings won't make much from that billboard, and servers... I'd rather use Debian.

PatrickMay16

July 13th, 2007, 03:04 AM

Whoops! Heh heh heh. DENIS DENIS DENIS.

smartboyathome

July 13th, 2007, 03:16 AM

Here is my idea for a commercial (thanks Mr. Psychopath for inspiring me ;)).

A man draws a crummy sketch of a person, crumples it up, and throws it away in a small wastebasket. Another person walks by and picks up the crumpled picture, and adds to it to make it a complete outline. Then, the picture is handed to her friend (possibly through a same-room transition) and that person adds to the picture to add shading and some grey scale color. Another transition happens, and then, a statue is being unvieled being unveiled, based on that picture. The camera pans to the sun, and it fills the screen. A narrator then says "The power of open source technology, this is Linux. To find out more, visit Linux.org."

Teruterubozu

July 13th, 2007, 03:55 AM

I like both Mr. Psychopath and smartboyathome's ideas. I make video (primarilly art video, but I'm exploring linear narative) and spouse is the Ubuntu users (he's DocotrMO). So I can get the ideological aspects from him for vids, but if anyone has any specific imagery, I'd be interested.

I have some personal preojects in the works this summer, but am always happy to consider new things. I'd really like to make something and would freely (as in free speach, but if you have free beer let me know and we'll meet up) make it availabe on something such as YouTube. I have a YouTube account as well as tow MySpace accounts (one for viseo art, one for a performace character), a Facebook account and my own web space.

-Teru (aka Diva Jutta, aka about a dozen other things)

Teruterubozu

July 13th, 2007, 03:56 AM

DeadSuperHero

July 13th, 2007, 04:38 AM

Hey, I'd love to see whatever you and your spouse can come up with.
I'm going to try to get some cameras from friends, and I've fleshed out the original idea a little:
The guy is in an attic full of junk breaks something accidentally, and picks up a shard of glass. He stares at it for a moment, and then gasps. He immediately grabs a clipboard, and starts drawing a very simple rocket, with some basic layouts and interesting ideas. He then immediately throws the clipboard aside, and someone in a different place catches it. They draw on it, erase a few bits, and then throw it onwards. It goes through all sorts of people. Teenagers, artists, inventors, scientitsts. Then it shows a crowd of people cheering as a ribbon is cut, as someone announces their completion. Finally, it shows the original man, standing behind a pane of glass, holding his hand against it. On the other side is a high-tech rocket, preparing to take off. Tears of joy stream down the man's face, with a look of wonder in his eyes. The rocket takes off, the screen transitions to white, and it says "Open Source: More than just community."
I dunno, maybe I'll make a rough concept, and someone can build off it. :)

Motoxrdude

July 13th, 2007, 04:45 AM

Sporkman

July 13th, 2007, 06:28 PM

I sport an Ubuntu bumper sticker on my car, centered, no other bumper stickers.

DoctorMO

July 13th, 2007, 08:57 PM

Hey, I'd love to see whatever you and your spouse can come up with.

I'd love for you to develop your idea, can you draw up story boards? (you know like a small informal comic)

DeadSuperHero

July 13th, 2007, 08:59 PM

I'd love for you to develop your idea, can you draw up story boards? (you know like a small informal comic)

I can try that. I could also try a few example film clips, with a basic idea.

smoker

July 13th, 2007, 10:36 PM

here's an idea for any takers,

david and goliath parody

goliath, counting money, watching giant balance sheets on wall size screens, then, in a giant and dingy warehouse, all the poor peasants, thousands of them, but instead of fields, 'battery-hen' call-centres, grafting away taking credit card details to accumulate more money.

david suddenly throws off headset, jumps up and runs out the door, to green open fields, (laptop under arm!), finally sits down under a tree, exhausted and exhilarated, opens the laptop, there is new mail for him,

"welcome to the open world", (the desktop of the laptop begins to disintegrate, and ubuntu starts to form. friends begin to appear all around him (all smiling, happy),

"you don't have to dream anymore"

it could be one of a series.

:-)

smartboyathome

July 13th, 2007, 10:57 PM

shaft350x

October 10th, 2007, 09:16 PM

I like the David & Goliath idea.

A recommendation for the broken glass to rocket, perhaps instead of the original innovator behind a pane of glass, have him holding it up to the sky, (dramatic sunlight glinting off of it), then rotates around to the rocket until the broken glass matches up with it.

My idea: Start off with a conveyor belt stamping some sort of MP3 player. Show people walking around (all looking the same) listening to the same music. (Could have some voice "indoctrinating them" ...you like this music...) Have a voice-over "But Human beings are different, shouldn't their Operating System be different too? Show different people using different flavors and setups with Ubuntu (some with lots of flash and eye-candy, and some just vanilla). Voice-over "Ubuntu, Linux for Human Beings".

Granted it could use some work. But I was thinking about how the iPod and iTunes have helped spur change in how people buy music. People don't just have the same albums, but rather highly customized music libraries of individual songs. So I thought maybe that would be a good approach to advertise from.

DeadSuperHero

March 15th, 2008, 02:04 AM

It's been AGES, but I just had to bring this thread up from the depths. I had a plethora of great (although some of them are crude) ideas for viral (you-tube-ish) Linux/FOSS commercials.

1. Community
(A guy and a girl are looking at one another, some nice slow music plays)

Narrator: Community is a wonderous thing. (zoom in on hand, guy takes girl's hand) It starts with a small development.

(Guy looks into girl's eyes)
Narrator: Then...(guy and girl kiss) it turns into something good. Opportunities that were once impossible suddenly are understood.

(another girl appears)
Narrator: Not only that, but it isn't just developed by you. (girl kisses girl, they start making out)

Narrator: And the best bit is that everything gets contributed back to you. (both girls put their arm around guy, they start hugging and feeling each other)
(show guy with two thumbs up)

Narrator: Open Source. Flexible. Powerful. Cool.

2. Interoperability
(a young man and his middle-aged boss are standing in an office)

Boss: Jim, I have an important assignment for you.
Jim: Very well sir, what it is?
Boss: Well, I have it all written down here. (Boss hands piece of paper to Jim)
(piece of paper is covered in meaningless symbols)
Jim: Um, boss? I can't read this, could you try a different format?
Boss: Well, okay. Try this one, it's going to be an ISO standard. (hands Jim another piece of paper, but there's a string wrapped around it. Every time Jim tries to read it, the Boss pulls the string and yanks it from him.)
Jim: Er, this isn't working out. Maybe you should try an Open format?
Boss: Uh, okay. Is this going to be a regular thi-(a new piece of paper folds itself, flies into his hand, and then shoots into Jim's hand.)
(Jim opens it, the handwriting is beautiful. He looks up.)
Jim: Pure poetry.

3. Freedom
(It's an ordinary day, as Jim walks out of his house. Everyone around him is going about their business, except everyone's in shackles.)
(Jim is shown just walking around, smiling, waving to people, and everyone miserably looks at him as he walks buy.)
Narrator: Ever get that great feeling of freedom?
(some sort of FOSS logo appears, or Ubuntu, or whatever)

Those are a few. I wrote down about 7 or 8 ideas, but I left my spiral at home, so I can't remember exact details.

Omnios

March 15th, 2008, 02:17 AM

i like the idea of a YouTube show is intereswting and thought of one but only have a 6mp capera with video lol.

K now I would start a window linux commercial parity "leave mac out of it". Use a lot of catchy stuff like "Linux can do that and it is free as in Beer" so what is this free as in beer thing?.

Then grow from there as in a channel so you can have kel vids on what linux can do with free as in beer. Eventually you might end up with say a monthly or weekly show with neet stuff that you can do with free as in beer.

Now if you did a parity on eye candy you could blow vista away with linux candy and it can do this on a P3.

Now there are a lot of linux vids and stuff there but it lacks organization and this is the hard part as you woud want your theme and channel to be findable wich may work with a padcast theme that points to this. Another catchy phrase is on demand which it is as you can see any episode etc on demand.

Also I think pushing just the linux os or a disto would be to much so this s importand showing neet stuff like gimp at its best or say myth and other toys may help. Say like a episode on differnet music making programs. Again free as in beer. Fixating on a disto is not exiting as what it can do free as in beer.

zmjjmz

March 15th, 2008, 05:10 AM

I think we should advertise FL/W/MOSS, not just Linux.

If anyone has a large production team and expert professional video editing skills, here's one for you:
[No words to speak of]
(Seen is NYC, a crowd in 5th Avenue.)

(Guy in crowd pulls out Motorola RazR, a fun little text (like the one used in the Sprint commercials) hovers, animated, over it displaying the words "Linux")

(That same guy looks up at a plane flying overhead, camera zooms into the plane, where we see the Delta personal entertainment center in one guy's seat, the text appears (flies in?) over the display)

(That guy pulls out an Asus EeePC, the text jumps down in front of the EeePC.)

(Guy looks down from the plane on to a large company headquarters, camera zooms into the server room, which is filled with the IBM servers running Linux, text floats around it)

(Camera zooms out of the door to someone looking at Google's website on a Nokia N810, text appears over the device)

(The picture fades, the "Google" text remains, and the Google place thingy comes int view, camera goes to the huge server farm that they have, shows the text again)

(This goes on with as many examples as you can think of {Include desktop computers}, and then end with: "Linux. Why don't you use it?" [put a URL under the text to, say, linux.com or something like that.])

zmjjmz

March 21st, 2008, 05:02 AM

bump

Mr. Picklesworth

March 21st, 2008, 06:05 AM

These are all unusually good ideas. Kudos for creating a thread that has attracted entirely positive thinking!

I think a lot of these could be quite striking -- and technically easier to collaborate on -- as animations. Possibly an evolving / changing animation style, where different contributors do different chunks, all following a similar theme. For example, the rocket ship one could be rather neat. (On the topic of which, that could conveniently line up with Launchpad, which I for one think is capable of incredible things for collaboration in open source projects).

mr.propre

March 21st, 2008, 08:55 AM

The best advertisement Linux can get is school. On the moment the only thing you learn of Linux in school (Belgium), is that it's an alternative OS that is hard to learn, offcource it's a lie of somebody who never used Linux in his life ;-)
And even though the law forced the schools to be neutral, the legal school program force schools to learn the students to use Windows and MS office, because its mostly used in business. Personal I'm okey with that, accept I don't understand why they totally need to ban Linux and open office of schools? How neutral is that?

billgoldberg

March 21st, 2008, 09:02 AM

No but seriously. The more people you have using linux the more problems you will get. Generally because not many people are READY for Linux.

I don't agree. Sometimes it's hard for the, lets call it advanced computer users, to know how the computer illiterate people use a pc. Those users can be perfectly migrated to ubuntu (or another user friendly distro like mint, pclos, ...)

An example.

A friend of mine was running xp on his computer. He had some anti-virus thing running, but it was an 2 year old norton program that came with the pc and hadn't been updated since the license expired. Needless to say, his pc was bloated with useless software and malware. His booting time was 10 minutes.

He asked me to fix it, but I said i'll install linux on it, he agreed as long as it was easy to use.

So I installed it, installed everything he could ever need (vlc, libdvdcss2, flash, java, frostwire, ...).

I put some icons on the desktop and prepared his pidgin account so he only needs to enter his password.

He hasn't complained yet, even better, he is bragging about it every now and then to other friends.

The only problem normal people have (those who use the pc for internet, music, and chatting) is installing ubuntu and some of the basic programs (flash, java, dvd support, ...).

billgoldberg

March 21st, 2008, 09:05 AM

The best advertisement Linux can get is school. On the moment the only thing you learn of Linux in school (Belgium), is that it's an alternative office that is hard to learn, offcource it's a lie of somebody who never used Linux in his life ;-)
And even though the law forced the schools to be neutral, the legal school program force schools to learn the students to use Windows and MS office, because its mostly used in business. Personal I'm okey with that, accept I don't understand why they totally need to ban Linux and open office of schools? How neutral is that?

They never talked about other OS when I was in school (i'm 21, so not that long ago).

They forced me to use word, excel, frontpage and access.

Now at the time I had no idea that linux existed, but they forced me to buy very expensive software that has equally good free alternatives.

MikeTheC

December 21st, 2008, 06:04 PM

This is something that's going to take a while. But don't sweat it, it took a long while for computers to gain the mass acceptance in society which they have.

Internet connectivity (in general) is what became the "killer app" which spurred the mass societal acceptance of computers. Everyone wanted to surf the web, send and receive email, chat, etc.

Computer security can be the next "killer app", if you like, and one the one side you have Microsoft's approach (which continues to result in having people's heads, knuckles, knees and back-sides being scraped across the concrete), and on the other you have the Unix/Linux approach as exemplified in the public square by Apple and the Linux community.

It's all in how the cards are played, folks.

blakjesus

December 21st, 2008, 06:07 PM

I thinnk that if Linux/FOSS is going to be advertised, it needs to start small at first. We should first try to target users that are willing or know how to get help from places like the ubuntu community. If a bunch of people try Linux and quickly give up because they they get frustrated trying to get certain things setup then it will most likely leave a bad taste in their mouth towards Linux/FOSS.

Maybe we could start by creating web ads (flash maybe?) advertising Linux and would redirect to a page that explains Ubuntu (maybe another distro?) and has tutorials on the page to get it installed and setup common tools that people normally use (flash, java, codecs, etc). As the user-base increases we could get into other means of advertising.

DeadSuperHero

December 21st, 2008, 06:51 PM

I've written down a few shorts over the past few months, mainly to explain basic concepts of FOSS.

-One would feature a young man being given an assignment by his older boss. The boss hands the young man a folder, but all the text is horrifically garbled. The youngster asks for different formats over and over again, with various humerous metaphors for problems with different formats, until finally the young man hands over an instruction set for ODF. The old man stays up all night, determined to make his message clear. Finally, the oldster hands the young man a packet labeled 'ODF', and the young man quickly reads it, and hands in an immediate report also in ODF. To the old man's delight, he too can read the format.

I'll update this when I find my other entries.

moffatt666

December 21st, 2008, 07:30 PM

I'd suggest the following:

Boy draws an F1 car
Dad draws car in CAD
Mum takes CAD into work, briefs team
Team produce model
Model is taken to other companies
Teams from companies co-operate
Finished car is rolled out
Boy jumps into driver's seat
[Logos of famous FOSS projects at bottom on screen]
"Designed by you"
[FADE]
"Made for everyone"
[FADE]
"Are you Open Source?"
[Logos]

Patrick Snyder

December 21st, 2008, 07:53 PM

I love all of these ideas.

I'd like to add that while we're doing this, I believe it's very important to reiterate and think about what we're up against. It will give us some focus for the advertisements we make.

Choice vs. The Best
People do not want "choice", they want "the best". They want the freedom of choice in as much as they are able to choose "the best" out of those choices.

Windows and Mac basically have one "current" choice as far as the masses are concerned; Vista and OS X. Whenever they've tried to make multiple versions (e.g. "Media Center", etc) it has not marketed well for them.

Choice
I worked in a school district where we could automatically enroll in tax exempt 403b retirement plans. An insurance agent would come to us, and set everything up for free. The insurance people found that if they listed all of the possible investments, people didn't enroll. It was only when they gave a very limited set of options on paper that they got mass acceptance.
Frankly, from a marketing perspective, Linux sucks for this. There's too much choice.

The Best
Often, when I talk to friends (including fairly computer savvy friends) about Linux, they always ask 'why is it better than what I've got?' They'll accept it if it does what they want, better than what they've got. If the bonuses are only slight, the detriment of learning something new is too great and they won't take time to explore it.

Expelling Myths
Many in the masses don't understand the difference between hardware & software. PC = Windows; Mac = OS X. People think it's very strange that I bought a Windows machine and run Linux on it.

Also, "Linux is difficult to use" is very prevalent. And honestly, from an average person's perspective, this was true until recently.

We must be very careful of where we send them once we've got their attention.
"Your website is your face to the world." This is even more true for something like Linux.

Compare:
Microsoft (http://www.microsoft.com) & Apple (http://www.apple.com) websites with some of the Linux alternatives.

Ubuntu (http://www.ubuntu.com), Mandriva (http://www.mandriva.com/) & openSUSE (http://www.opensuse.org/) are up to par.
(Unfortunately, their names are not as accessible as "Macintosh" or "Windows", but that is a conversation for another thread.)

But many others are not, in my opinion. The following are not good places to send the average person for their first impression.
Linux.org (http://www.linux.org/) has ads on it and looks unpolished.
Linux.com (http://www.linux.com/) has ads and a news feed on it.
Debian.com (http://www.Debian.com/) is unpolished and overloaded with text.

For regular people who are finding out about Linux for the first time, something like Firefox's website (http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/) should be the kind of layout to send them to. It is professional, eye-catching, uncluttered, very easy to navigate, and the important things are huge on the screen. Plus there is a lot of information if the person is willing to click a few times.

Just my 3 cents. I hope things like this really get off the ground! (^_^)