A group of grassroots activists in the OpenOffice.org community have just announced they are going to undertake a similar media campaign to Spread Firefox, starting with a free (as in beer) New York City daily newspaper called "The Metro," published by Metro International. Most penguinistas know what a huge success the grassroots Spread Firefox ad campaign was. Through ads in the New York Times and the Frankfurt General Newspaper, and the hilarious Firefox videos on the FunnyFox website (video link here), Firefox has probably gained greater popular name brand recognition in the general public than any other free open source software (FOSS) project.
As he explains in this in-depth Mad Penguin interview, Ben Horst, a long-time member at large of the OpenOffice.org community, is planning an ambitious summer ad campaign to bring awareness of the very robust OOo 2.x office productivity suite to public attention. Ben says that if the campaign is successful, it could stretch beyond New York City and the summer of 2006 into a much broader effort.
Ben's personal home page explains that he and his burgeoning grassroots community chose the Metro for practical reasons. He says that 330,000 free copies of Metro are distributed to commuters in the five boroughs each weekday, resulting in 450,000 daily reads. Most of those readers are younger, affluent, and tech savvy, according to NYC media mavens Don Nizen and Floyd Weintraub.
Talk of an OOo ad campaign is not new. There has been a lot of discussion on the OpenOffice.org (OOo) discuss lists for some time about undertaking a mainstream media ad campaign. But Ben and his group have now taken the steps to actually set up the infrastructure to receive funds, and to coordinate work through community forums dedicated just to this topic.
The community discussions will be carried out in the OpenOffice Ads Action Google Group. Funds will be collected via a project set up at Fundable.org. Readers of the ad will be directed to the OpenOffice homepage at www.openoffice.org, NeoOffice for Mac, and the "Users" mailing list (users@openoffice.org) of the OpenOffice.org project for interested people in getting more information. The design of the ad itself will be done in an open source fashion. To get the full skinny on this ambitious project, Mad Penguin interviewed Ben Horst by email:
Mad Penguin: Ben, let's talk about the history of this ad initiative. Obviously the successful Firefox ad buys were an inspiration. But how did this idea come about right now?
Ben Horst: The idea had been percolating for a long time, probably since the announcement of the Firefox New York Times ad. Recently, I discovered Fundable.org and suddenly realized it could be the key to collecting money for our own newspaper advertising effort. I also realized that someone needed to step forward and get the ball rolling. I figured, why not me? I didn't know how to do every aspect of it from the start, but could certainly learn as necessary.
When Firefox first ran its famous ad in the New York Times, downloads had reached about 10 million. After that ad, the surrounding publicity, and a little more time, Firefox has now been downloaded almost 185 million times.
OpenOffice.org is already the second most common office suite on the planet. It has been downloaded over 63 million times from its main site, shared via peer to peer networks and CDs, and distributed with tens of millions of Linux systems. It is becoming the default choice in many markets and many countries, including Brazil, Germany, India, French government agencies, and others.
However, awareness within the USA lags behind other countries. Therefore, a large-scale marketing move is needed. Considering the resources and skills available to our volunteers, an ad campaign in NYC's Metro newspaper seems the most effective option.
MP: I understand that this is a real grassroots effort, much as the Spread Firefox campaign was a grassroots effort. Is that correct?
BH: Yes, we're looking for volunteers and financial benefactors to donate small amounts (starting at $10) for the bulk of this effort. The organization, design and every other aspect of project management are also being undertaken by individuals volunteering their time and abilities.
We are, at this moment, more shoestring than Spread Firefox, by a long shot. Depending on the outcome, we may choose to organize more tightly for future actions. Perhaps we could target college and university newspapers next?
Nevertheless, donations from companies or institutions are very welcome!
MP: Right. One of the key successes for the OpenOffice.org project is that there are a lot of corporations who have the common sense to get behind a successful free open source software project like OOo, and it's a whole lot more than just Sun Microsystems. What other companies are supporting OOo?
BH: Several come to mind immediately: Novell, Red Hat, Google, IBM, etc. It makes sense for companies to contribute to OpenOffice.org. They can potentially save millions of dollars by using it, and they can get software that is tailored for what they need, since they had a hand in creating it! And of course, the industry-standard open data formats mean that they won't ever be held hostage to an individual software program or vendor because their data is locked into its arcane format.
MP: Speaking of open formats, one thing giving a huge boost to OpenOffice.org, KOffice, and AbiWord, to mention just three free open source office productivity suites, is that the OpenDocument Format was approved on 2006/5/1 as an international standard by the International Organization for Standards (ISO). That is something that not even Firefox had when the prior NYT ads ran. How do you see that ISO approval affecting your efforts? Will you mention that OOo is part of an ODF international standard in your ad?
BH: It will have a strong positive effect, of course! ISO approval of the ODF format is something that will have strong pull among technical and legal decision-makers, however, it might be too technical to highlight in the ads we are developing at this stage. The target is still to get the name "OpenOffice.org" into the public mind, and then later, additional refinements can be added. My understanding of marketing is that a simpler message is usually better, even if some important details cannot be included.
In combination, though, the ISO acceptance will lead to greater demand for the use of ODF-capable suites like OOo from the geeks, while our advertising campaign will lead to greater demand of OOo itself from the end-users. This creates the classic pincer tactic, squeezing in from both sides to capture our objective.
MP: What kinds of checks and balances exist in the OpenOffice.org project to make sure that it doesn't become too corporate?
BH: The corporations that participate balance each other out. No one can exert too much influence, because the others can band together to prevent that. The individuals and government agencies who contribute can do the same, but most of all, the LGPL license under which the code is shared will always leave an escape hatch for the code to remain Free. No individual or group can dominate the code because the others could always make a free fork if needed.
MP: Let's talk about the ads themselves. What sections of the Metro will they run in, and what is the logic of running them there? Who is the target audience?
BH: Metro is a free daily newspaper distributed all over New York City, especially near the entrances and exits to subway stations. It's a short paper, allowing a 20-minute read during the morning commute. Three hundred thirty thousand (330,000) issues are distributed daily, and 450,000 people read them. The demographic is young, affluent, and savvy, and consists of office workers, students and many others. It's a perfect target group: people who probably don't know about OpenOffice.org already, but who would be very likely to use it once they are exposed to it--not just because it is free of cost, but also because the political aspect of Free Software philosophy really does appeal to a broad range of people.
The ads will run on the back page of the newspaper, and should be extremely visible. Of all the possible advertising spaces in New York City, this is probably one of the most visible. It really gets noticed! A back page ad in the Metro may be more prominent to New Yorkers than one in the New York Times itself. Meanwhile, advertising space is much less costly, and non-profits receive special pricing on top of that.
We plan our ads to be placed in early July, to coincide with the USA's Independence Day. The general theme of our ad will play to those feelings, with the tagline "Free Software for a Free People." Of course, this can be replicated in many countries around the world on their own national or independence days.
