[TYPO3-UG US] First Touch

[Gabriel Anast]

Alex Heizer wrote:

>
>This is someone else's brand that we don't own, and I thought our role was to be more of an extension to support that brand, not a separate brand. 
>
Yes, that is exactly the point I am making, and I am saying that 
typo3.us is as an entity likely to become its own brand.

A "Brand" is something that exists in the customer's mind and heart. It 
is a perception. A company cannot control all aspects of a brand, but 
they can control many (most?) of them. The first rule in brand 
management is consistency.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brand_management

When a company name is used in a brand it is termed a "corporate brand" 
and must at all costs not topple the company! The "company" in our case 
is TYPO3--centered around the work of Kasper and a handful of core 
developers. The brand is also TYPO3, although if we do in fact put 
together different packages of pre-installed/configured extensions we 
could (and probably will) create new "brands" like maybe, "Enterprise 
Media Server" for newspapers/periodicals, etc. A good example of a 
powerful corporate brand is Playtex. Almost everything they make uses 
the word "Playtex." Coke and Pepsi on the other hand are corporate 
brands that only extend to one product respectively. In those cases, 
each of their other products carries its own brand (Sprite, Barq's 
Rootbeer, etc).

How does this translate to TYPO3 and why am I being so persistent about 
this? I know we have typo3.de, .fr, .nl, etc... these are cases where it 
is unlikely that the "product" will topple the corporate identity. In 
the case of typo3.us it is very likely that there will quickly be more 
users of typo3.us than typo3.org. This is bad. Since we are aware of 
this from the outset, I believe that it is important to structure this 
portal as a subsection of typo3.com, and maybe that we do not in fact 
call it "Typo3 US," but instead create a subsection of the typo3.com 
site that is targeted at the US market, but that makes use of a 
subsidiary brand.

For instance:

connect.typo3.com
evolve.typo3.com
synthesize.typo3.com

This would do two things for us: primarily, it will ensure that "TYPO3" 
the brand is perceived as one company, one group. Secondarily it will 
channel the target market (US developers) to build typo3 itself and not 
see themselves as an adjunctive organization to something going on "over 
there."

Finally... we do not need access to the typo3.com servers in order to 
use a third level domain. All we need is for whomever controls the 
typo3.com domain (presumably Kasper) to establish a third level domain 
on our behalf and point it at the server that is set up to host the US site.

>I think we may be able to get some "sub-brands" approved that redirect back to typo3.us the same way itunes.com, quicktime.com and ipod.com redirect back to a page on apple.com, but there's probably some kind of approval process for that.
>  
>
Yes, but you miss the point... "apple.com" is the corporate brand just 
as TYPO3.com is our "corporate" brand. Apple capitalizes on the 
sub-brands to consolidate the corporate brand strength. This has been 
_crucial_ to Apple with the ipod/itunes popularity as those two products 
alone could probably out-gun the Apple brand. However, Apple carefully 
corralled and controlled those power-houses and uses them very 
effectively to build the corporate brand. In our case "US" is in a sense 
a sub-brand. You might say that I am mixing metaphors vis Brand vs. 
Market. But in our unique case, I think that market scale inequities 
will create a "brand" that is unwanted and difficult to overcome once 
created.

I am really not trying to be obtuse about this... I think it is 
something that needs to be considered _before_ the project "goes live." 
Please, at least argue with me about it... I don't mind the give and 
take. I also think that we should at least bring up the topic of the 
potential market scale of the typo3 US initiative amongst the Europeans 
on the Marketing forum and see how they would like to deal with the 
potentialities.

Ruv, do you think I'm right or wrong or what? You seem to have the most 
effective marketing strategy of any consultancy...

I admit that I might be entirely wrong, but this is an issue that is SO 
easy to change now, but will become SO difficult to change later.

--gabe


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