OOoConf 2004 - Berlin

OpenOffice.org

Marketing Project

Strategic Marketing Plan 2010

Agenda

Speaker Introductions

Marketing within the Community

Roadmap - Building the Plan

Workshop

Roadmap

Brainstorming

Strategic Analysis

Conclusions

Implementing the Plan

What needs to be done

How you can help

The Marketing Project needs YOU

Speaker Introduction

John McCreesh

mailto: jpmcc@openoffice.org

Marketing Project Co-Lead

Day job: 20+ years IT Management

Home: Edinburgh, Scotland

Jacqueline McNally

mailto: jacqueline@openoffice.org

Marketing Project Lead

Day Job: Hat Juggler, Decisions and Designs Pty Ltd

Home: Perth, Western Australia

Marketing in the Community

Marketing covers everything we have to do in:

coming up with a needed product or service

making potential users aware of it

making them want it, and then

delivering it to them

Everyone in the Community should:

be aware of the marketing message, visions, and goals; and

reflect that message in everything we do for the Community

The Marketing Strategy & Plan 2010 is

how the Marketing Project builds and communicates the message with the Community

External Environment Review

Community

Review

Marketing Project

Features and Benefits

Mission Statement

Success Criteria

Social,

Technical,

Economic, &

Political Factors

Market Segmentation

Market Review

Price

Promotion

Product

Place

Sales &

Market Goals

Strategic

Proposals

Competitor

Review

Product Review

Action Plan and Implementation

Marketing Project Structure

Marketing Plan 2010 - Roadmap

Features and Benefits

Features: "things" we build into OOo or provide as a Community

Benefits: the value this brings to the user

For example:

Feature: Open-source licence

Benefit: you can pass copies on to friends, family, students, employees... (legitimately!)

Users do not choose OOo for its features...

...they use it for the benefits it brings

What are the key distinguishing features of OOo, and

what benefits do they bring to users?

Brainstorm 1

Features – Benefits

Community – participation

pdf – exchange of data

maths equation editor – saves money buying extra software

multi-platform – flexibility to change platform

Microsoft Office file compatibility – easy migration

build dictionaries – can be used for translation, etc

Features & Benefits Recap

We build OpenOffice.org product features...

OOo

Features

...to provide benefits to users...

User

Benefits

...which will satisfy their needs

Market

Needs

Target Markets

OOo

Benefits

Competitor

Benefits

Needs

Needs

Needs

Needs

Needs

Brainstorm 2

What are our target markets?

What needs do they have?

How does OOo's benefits satisfy these needs?

Linux users

Language groups not supported by Microsoft Office

Governments

(save foreign currency)

Schools / other learning institutions

(can take part in community)

Users with long term archival requirements

anyone not using Microsoft Outlook

emerging/developing countries

(attractive price/no legacy files/localisation)

countries with piracy issues

(free and accessible software)

Outside World

Trends in the outside world which impact the Market for Office Suites (next 5 years)

Social and Cultural

e.g. world's largest potential market for IT (China) is showing a strong preference for open-source

Technological

e.g. spread of broadband and cheap CD writers reduces distribution costs for software

Economic

e.g. commercial software costs are unaffordable in many parts of the developing world

Political / Legal

e.g. COTS vendors are increasingly aggressive in their defence of IPR - patents, licences

Brainstorm 3

Next 5 years

What will be the major influences on the market for office suites? (Social, Technological, Economic, Political / Legal)

Are these Opportunities or Threats to OOo?

OpenOffice.org a good corporate international standard

Globalisation increasing opportunities for people to work

together (OASIS)

Integration capability

Far Eastern markets receptive to open-source

Easy access to knowledge without IPR issues

“Flavour of the month”

Inclusion/Equality

Change in the accepted way to develop software

How do we score?

Community

Financial Position

Abilities of volunteers

Governance / Leadership

OpenOffice.org

Features

Coverage (platforms, languages...)

Quality

Price

Target Markets

Product awareness

Attitude / Brand loyalty

Competitive Position

External Environment Review

Community

Review

Marketing Project

Features and Benefits

Mission Statement

Success Criteria

Social,

Technical,

Economic, &

Political Factors

Market Segmentation

Market Review

Price

Promotion

Product

Place

Sales &

Market Goals

Strategic

Proposals

Competitor

Review

Product Review

Action Plan and Implementation

Marketing Project Structure

Marketing Plan 2010 - Roadmap

SWOT

Internally (OOo or Community)

Strengths and Weaknesses

Opportunity + Strength

e.g. New language markets developing / OOo is designed to be easy to translate

Externally (next five years)

Opportunities and Threats

Opportunity + Weakness

e.g. MS will try and enforce users to upgrade to XP / OOo has no native installer for MS-Windows

SWOT

Opportunity + Strength

e.g. New language markets developing / OOo is designed to be easy to translate

Opportunity + Weakness

e.g. MS will try and enforce users to upgrade to XP / OOo has no native installer for MS-Windows

Threat + Strength

e.g. MS may try and enforce DRM in file formats / the Community has a strong position in OASIS

Threat + Weakness

e.g. Sun Microsystems may make a strategic move out of software / the Community has no internally-generated funding

External Environment Review

Community

Review

Marketing Project

Features and Benefits

Mission Statement

Success Criteria

Social,

Technical,

Economic, &

Political Factors

Market Segmentation

Market Review

Price

Promotion

Product

Place

Sales &

Market Goals

Strategic

Proposals

Competitor

Review

Product Review

Action Plan and Implementation

Marketing Project Structure

Marketing Plan 2010 - Roadmap

Strategic Proposals 1

Promotion ...

Price

Unique Selling Proposition

Community Involvement

Place (Distribution)

Virtual Distribution

Physical Media

OEMs

Product

Branding

Product Development

Support

Strategic Proposals 2

Product

Price

Place

Promotion

Website

Split between Shop Window and Community

Marketing Project and NL-Projects

Public Relations and Publicity

Project Leads and Marketing Contacts (MarCons)

Direct Marketing

Advertising

Conferences

Product Marketing Material

Value-Added Services

Technical Authors, Trainers, Support, Systems Integrators, etc. (BizDev)

Timeline

May

Jun

Jul

Aug

Sep

Oct

Nov

Dec

Jan

MarCon

Relaunch

MarCon

Debate

Community

Council

Adoption

V0.5

V0.9

V1.0

V0.1

Community

Debate

OOoConf 2004

Strategy building

Strategy delivery

What Next?

Read the Strategic Marketing Plan

http://marketing.openoffice.org/strategy

http://www.lulu.com/ooo

Help develop the Strategy

strategy@marketing.openoffice.org

Join the Marketing Project

http://marketing.openoffice.org

Want more background on marketing?

http://money.howstuffworks.com/marketing-plan.htm

Marketing in the Community

Everyone in the Community should be:

aware of the marketing message, visions, and goals; and

reflecting them in everything we do for the Community

The Marketing Strategy & Plan 2010 is

how the Marketing Project builds and communicates the marketing message, vision, and goals with the Community

This presentation was delivered at the OpenOffice.org Conference in Berlin, Germany on 23 September 2004 on the occasion of the launch of Version 0.5 of the Strategic Marketing Plan.

These web pages were created by Impress, the presentations component with the OpenOffice.org office suite.

Thanks to the Open Clip Art Project for the clip art.

The presentation took the form of a workshop, with participants encouraged to join in the brainstorms and feedback sessions.

The main objective of the session was to describe the strategy making process, so that the participants would feel confident and eager to take part in the ongoing strategy development process.

The presentation was led by John McCreesh and Jacqueline McNally from the OpenOffice.org Marketing Project

The Community is fortunate in that the engineers have delivered a world class piece of software. With the upcoming version 2.0 it will be better than ever.

However,history is full of examples where good technology plus poor marketing has meant failure. Unfortunately, there are also many examples where mediocre technology plus first class marketing has led to market domination.

The main challenge facing the OpenOffice.org community is not a technical one - it is a marketing one.

The people attending the Conference understand "the OpenOffice.org story", and show tremendous commitment to the product and the Community. The purpose of the Strategic Plan is to capture this understanding and spirit, and spread it worldwide through all our Community members and users.

This is how we will make OpenOffice.org the leading international office suite.

This diagram shows how the Strategic Marketing Plan is built. The workshop was a 'lightning tour' of some of the main paths through this Roadmap.

Features and Benefits is a key marketing concept.

In the Community we are often pre-occupied with product features - will this particular 'feature' make its way into the next release.

From a user's perspective, a 'feature' has to pass the 'so what' test before it brings them any benefit:

Feature: OpenOffice.org has an open-source licence

So What?

Benefit: you can give it away to other people

During this first brainstorming session, the participants were encouraged to name key features of OpenOffice.org and then say what benefits the features would bring to users.

The results were captured on a flipchart and will be used in the next release of the Strategic Marketing Plan

And this is what we wrote on the flip chart

Developing this logic further, benefits are only of use if they satisfy a need that the user feels.

For example:

OpenOffice.org is multi-platform (feature)

this means users are not 'locked in' further to their current computing platform (benefit)

but this is of no interest if they have no intention of ever changing their PC(no need).

A market is a group of users with similar needs. By matching OpenOffice.org's benefits to market needs we can see how well we serve a market.

Doing the same exercise for competitive products shows which markets we serve better than our competitors. These are potential target markets.

For example,

let's assume the Competitor on the slide is taken as MS-Office

the the balloon on the bottom right of the slide represents Linux users who require a comprehensive office product

the the diagram shows only OpenOffice.org will meet their needs

Commercial companies also require a market to be potentially profitable before it becomes a target market. OpenOffice.org does not necessarily suffer from this limitation. For example, there is no reason why OpenOffice.org should not be localised into a language with a very small number of speakers, provided there are willing and able volunteers to do the work.

Participants at the workshop were then asked for suggestions for target markets, using a needs and benefits approach.

The replies were captured on a flipchart and will be used in the next version of the Strategic Marketing Plan.

And this is what we wrote on the flip chart

A Strategic Plan also has to look to the future - say for the next five years. To give shape to these forecasts, the Strategic Marketing Plan adopted the well-known STEP factors model (sometimes also called PEST).

It is important to note that each one of these factors could be either a threat or an opportunity for OpenOffice.org.

Some factors could be both - for example, the aggressive pursuit of IPR (Intellectual Property Rights) by COTS (Commercial Off The Shelf) vendors could be:

opportunity - people with unlicensed software could be tempted to migrate to open-source

threat - people could be unwilling to move to open-source in case they fall foul of patent claims in the future

Participants were invited to give their forecasts for significant trends in the wider world that could influence the market for office suites.

Trends could be opportunities, or threats, or in some cases both!

The results were captured on a flipchart for the next release of the Strategic Marketing Plan.

And this is what we wrote on the flip chart

The next stage of the workshop took a very quick look at the OpenOffice.org Community, the product, and its target markets. Participants were asked to vote on a show of hands:

1=Poor

5=Excellent

for each of the ten items shown on the slide. From this emerged a view as to whether each factor was a strength or a weakness for OpenOffice.org.

Overall, the OpenOffice.org product was judged to be in a stronger position than the Community.

It says something for the overall optimism of the participants that 3.5 seemed to be the most common score...

By this stage of the workshop, the participants had had a 'taster' of all the items shown in yellow on the slide.

The next phase of building the Strategic Marketing Plan process pulls together this raw data and carries out some analysis.

Combining the Threats and Opportunities seen in the outside world with the Strengths and Weaknesses of OpenOffice.org gives a two by two matrix of the kind beloved by consultants and business schools.

(Strengths Weaknesses Opportunities and Threats also makes a nice acronym in the English language - SWOT.)

O-S: There is Opportunity which plays to one of our Strengths = a 'no brainer' - just do it

O-W: There is an Opportunity but a Weakness means we might not be able to respond to it = effort in this area could bring big rewards

T-S: Threats and Strengths = a defensible position if we are aware of the risks

T-W: Threat + Weakness = an area needing serious attention

The Strategic Marketing work could easily suggest far more possible actions than the Community could support. SWOT analysis is designed to help prioritise these proposals.

A review of all the areas covered so far by the Workshop, before moving on to creating proposals for actions. However, notice that it should be possible to trace every proposal back to one or more of the starting points of the strategy. This means that there is a clear reason for every proposal and every action in the plan.

The proposals themselves are split into the traditional "4Ps" of marketing:

Product

Price

Place (distribution) and

Promotional activites

There was only time in the Workshop to run rapidly through the areas covered by each of the four Ps.

The largest group of these come under the heading of "Promotion".

By having all the proposals and actions listed like this, we can offer a 'menu' to volunteers who are looking for something to do in the project.

As we also know the relative importance of various activities and can explain why they are important, we can encourage volunteers to work on the more important actions first.

The Workshop had explored the strategy development process in a very rapid and time-constrained fashion. However, for the past few months this process had been taking place 'for real' on a discussion list used by the MarCons - Marketing Contacts - people within the Marketing Project with responsibility for particular geographical or other markets.

From this activity the Project Leads have created a series of draft Strategic Marketing Plans. These had now reached the 0.5 release - the half way stage to the final version.

The Workshop at OOoConff marked the official release of 0.5 to the Community for a full Community debate, with the intention of having the 1.0 release approved by the Community Council by the end of 2004.

The early stages of this process concentrate on getting the strategy right; once this is agreed, the later stages will focus more on how to implement it.

For the strategy to work, it is absolutely essential that as many active members of the Community help in the next stage of its development.

The Strategy can be downloaded from the Strategy Home Page. It's quite a large document (54 A4 pages), so for people who would prefer to get a printed version, it can be ordered worldwide from an 'on demand' printer Lulu.com as a paperback book for a very reasonable USD7.95.

At the Workshop, all participants were encouraged to buy two copies, one for work and one for home (!), and read it whenever they had a spare five minutes. Agree with it; disagree with it; but most important, send in your views.

There is a downloadable feedback form on the site, or a discussion group to join for general debate.

For people who feel nervous about marketing topics, there is a good tutorial on the "How Stuff Works" site. There are some differences between their approach and OpenOffice.org's, but not enough to cause confusion.

Closing messages from the Workshop:

Remember - technical excellence is not enough.

If OpenOffice.org is to become the leading international office suite, it needs good marketing.

Community members have a wonderful message, but it needs to be written down and communicated. Having a good Strategic Marketing Plan is not an option for the Community - it is essential.

The Berlin Bear has bought his copy of the plan - have you bought / downloaded your copy yet?

John McCreesh

2004-07-03T20:12:10