open letter to the marketing team
I totally respect your ideas that I consider very interesting and full of potentiality. But what you are doing is considerable as Public Relations rather than marketing.
what marketing means?
Marketing means to sell something to someone (awful and horrible definition)
But in Ubuntu there are no consumer, there are users and none of them are paying or consuming something, they're using something that is not sold. (its not the same stuff... words are importants) 
Marketing means understand consumer needs (much more interesting) but:
- noone is tring to imagine, identify or define users needs (someone did it, did you use his works?)
- noone has defined ubuntu users
- noone has defined the potential ubuntu users
be more creative!
there are too much many ideas copied from firefox marketing (eg spreadfirefox)
- firefox need to fight toward explorer and it seems that is winning but firefox is a browser ubuntu is an OS (we cannot consider it as the same thing) -- that point must be deeply discussed --
- BUG #1 won't be achieved unless with a long term approach: I'll be old and MS will be still alive. Why? because it will be hard to kill a corporation software with lots of code bugs, like other softwares, but full of talented-well-payed marketing man, dont'you?)
Ubuntu users are having an EXPERIENCE!
An experience can be repeated if there's an interesting reward -- to summup: I'll do it again if it's joyful
- is it joyful ubuntu?
- how the satisfied users talk about ubuntu?
- how the unsatisfied users talk about ubuntu?
- how to reconquer unhappy users?
- how to annihilate bad rumors on ubuntu?
- how to establish long term relationship with happy ubuntu users?
- there are many open/free userfriendly distros why a newbie should use ubuntu?
- how many time must a newbie use ubuntu, before he will became more practical and will use some other geeky distros? (lirycs by bob dylan)
- how to say to the geeks that ubuntu is good for them?
- how to say to debian purist that ubuntu is better?
- why using ubuntu instead of debian if ubuntu is based on debian?
- how to reply to the previous questions? that is marketing.(i think that canonical would probably appreciate that kind of answer)
- there are many unexpensive tools freely available on internet to deliver and communicate messages (podcast - blog - vidcast - etc) is it possible that ubuntu use none of theese tools? -- that is public relations question rather than a marketing but anyway....
whassup to the plan?
whatsoever your goals are, it seems that noone (as I suggested) have defined a well structured plan. I dont want to tell that what I wrote is good but if you google for "marketing plan template" you'll find out many other interesting stuff. All your ideas (the magazine it's great, spreadubuntu too) are very interesting and brilliant (magazine first of all) but are only tools that are not integrated in a well defined structure
It's very easy to define a plan:
- listen to the users
- select a goal (scopes in wiki.ubuntu.com/marketingteam are good and motivating but are too many and too much difficult to achieve--in other words the scope must become also easily reachable and first of all measurable in order to define if the goal is achieved)
- select and define your target (there is no target segmentation - users - potential - unhappy - geeks etc....)
- define the tools to join the respective targets (more innovative ideas than a website that says that the ubuntu word must be spread all over the world)
- analize the results
CONCLUSIONS:
Now, the choices are:
- the marketing team became the PR team
- the team must accept constructive critics
- all of the marketing team decide to follow a well defined plan
erase that page
(no, pleze!) - forgive my bad english and accept my ideas
my ideas are:
- all of you must read some Kotler's books (Lambin is interesting too)
- all of you must read the cluetrain manifesto (at least their thesis, google for it)
- all of you must read a definition of viral marketing
- all of you must read at least some much more interesting marketing definition
after that:
- must be defined an ubuntu user (geek, newbie, potential unhappy) profile (age, sex, interests, needs)
- must be defined the benefits and the problems of using ubuntu
- must be encouraged the viral marketing tools (consider that ubuntu is quite famous even without a well organized and productive marketing team, why?)
- must be used more web 2.0 tools
- must be encouraged user partecipation (what about a sort of ubuntu myspace? where users can easily decribe their experience with ubuntu, add screenshots, listen to the latest ubuntu podcast etc????)
goodbye
critics are really appreciated
RFS aka R. Francesco Sica