[ubuntu-florida] A Copy of a message to the Ubuntu Marketing Team

[Mike Feravolo]

Good Day People:

Last Friday June 1, members of the Florida Loco helped me (Mike
Feravolo) sell Ubuntu to the East Orlando Business community at our
local chamber of commerce trade show.

Given the limited resources of our small business Ad Spend and the
nature of our business, we can't sell Ubuntu to the entire world.
However, will do our best at our local level and getting out there and
talking to as many people as we can one on one is the best way to do
that.

As an engineer I liked the way that Gerry Carr categorized people into
types.:

 TYPE 1
a) new to Linux
b) heard of ubuntu but not ready/capable of downloading
c) wants reassurance that it is a familiar environment

TYPE 2
a) familiar with linux and/or ubuntu
b) wants to know what's new and cool in latest release

However, all of the people which need to be sold on Ubuntu are "Type
One", the others are already sold or they are hard-core users of another
Linux distribution.

Our motives are simple we are computer scientists and engineers and we
sell our time and expertise. That's how we make our money. So why do we
want to help "Sell Ubuntu"? Why Not! because it can save our clients
money and we all are old UNIX hacks anyway. 

So forget giving a client with a small office a bill that includes
$20,000 worth of software licenses when we don't get any of the money
anyway. Now, We can give them an Ubuntu option that will save them that
twenty "dimes" up front.

There is your marketing right there. Wow! we didn't even have to say
anything good or bad about [deleted], we just gave them a price
comparison. That says it all!

Walmart isn't the largest employer right now in the United States,
because people here price shop for the highest price tag. But they don't
want anything for free, because they are afraid there is a catch. 

Which means that you could put together an Live CD edition of Ubuntu
that you could get out as an impulse buy for a token fee [of less then
five dollars] and then people would buy it. 

Money collected from these impulse racks could be then be rolled back
into the production budget to recover the costs of the media. People
don't need to understand that software licensing is free, and just think
they are paying for a disk.

Walmart would be the place to put them, right at the check out line next
to the five pack of Blank CD's. As long as the "Walmart Edition" both
carefully eliminated any fear to try it, while protecting the new users
from themselves.  Many people have told me they were afraid to try the
Live-CD, because "they were afraid that it was going to delete all their
files".

Now, the artistic talents of our marketing team are required to make
these special Live CD's attractive and the copy writers get the message
straight and eliminate any fears.

Sorry we are software engineers and we can't hold a pen straight. Good
thing for spell checkers or we would even know how to spell engineer. 

Thanks for Your Time

Mike Feravolo
Cocoa Beach, Florida USA