use Perl

• Additional thoughts on "branding" Perl (Score:1)

  by phillipadsmith (9261) on 2009.09.28 12:00 (#70682) Homepage

  Sad to hear that the branding exercise turned out so poorly (though not entirely surprising). I suspect that any attempt to work with a marketing agency that is not focused on marketing technology is going to result in something similar.

  There's also lots to be said about the "pinko marketing [pbworks.com]" approach, for brands that have such a huge user community: i.e., marketing from the bottom-up vs. top-down.

  I jotted down some thinking on the "branding Perl" question in a recent blog post: "Getting to the root of Perl's perception problems [newint.org]." As a consultant, and a technologist, I still believe that the approach outlined there is part of the answer for moving forward on these question.

  Specifically, not just thinking about the One True Message(tm) for Perl, but -- more importantly -- thinking about the myriad truths that apply in different situations, and for different audiences. Also, with some reflection on the topic, I also believe that the Perl community could achieve some successful pro-active (not defensive) promotion by seeding some "open-source marketing kernels" and letting the community do the rest. Think of how the TIMTOWTDI spread effortlessly, and pro-actively.

  Ideally, rather than over-branding, the kernel would be simple, flexible, and adaptable and would have ways for the community to continue to evolve it by contributing back. What if we could pro-actively develop Perl's brand in a way that is similar to how the actual language is developed -- therein lies the key.

  Phillip.

  --
  Keeping technology simple since 2003

  Reply to This

  • Re: (Score:2)

    by Ovid (2709)

    I really like the post you linked to and some of the responses. I can agree with the message. Back when I sold cars, I learned a couple of interesting things. First, selling Japanese cars was hard because I didn't give a damn about cars. Customers came in armed with invoice price lists, Consumer Reports, news articles, etc. They really were focused on value. When I switched to selling American cars, many people came in to "buy American" and while the cars were demonstrably a lesser value -- 3 versus 5
    • Re: (Score:1)

      by phillipadsmith (9261)

      I must admit, I also like the "Creative power" messaging also. For me it's reminiscent of "Making Easy Things Easy and Hard Things Possible" -- which has always resonated for me when thinking about Perl's strengths.

      But that "creative power" message is probably aimed squarely at developers, and not business executives. And that's where I was going in the post referenced above: There could be -- and probably should be -- different messaging to each potential audience. For developers, Perl is "creative power

      --
      Keeping technology simple since 2003