Re: Re: names good for marketing

From: Robert (nuke_at_phipps.uklinux.net)
Date: 01/05/05

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    To: debian-user@lists.debian.org
Date: Tue, 4 Jan 2005 23:58:27 +0000

    >Alvin Smith writes:
    >> To put it bluntly, the issue is whether white people will accept a
    >> product with a Black African "sounding" name or not.

    >What a loony notion.
     
    >John Hasler

    Why loony? It hits the nail on the head. As I understand the original
    question was whether "Ubuntu" is a good marketing name. Most
    definitely it is not, if fact so bad that it had not even occured to me
    that they were trying to "sell" it until this topic came up.

    Mainstream marketing professionals are unashamedly racist in their
    appeals to the public. For example, we (in UK at least) are led to
    believe that Danes are racially superior when it comes to making lager,
    Italians at ice cream, Germans at car making, Swiss at clocks,
    Scanadanavians at furniture, Indians at spice, Japanese at consumer
    electronics, and Americans at software. Informed people know that any
    of this stuff could be made anywhere and often is (except for some
    agricultural products) - look at a can of that Danish-sounding lager
    and you will see it is really made in North London. Nevertheless, most
    of these advertising notions are based on some factual origin -
    clockmaking was indeed first perfected by the Swiss even if they no
    longer have the skill monopoly.

    However the idea of computer software emanating from Black Africa, as a
    marketing ploy implied by the name, will leave most members of the
    public baffled - probably even in Africa itself. I am not aware of any
    particular Black African tradition in this respect - nothing equivalent
    to the Swiss clock making for example. Probably the only connection
    between computing and Black Africa that will be made in most people's
    mind is the Nigerian 419 scams.

    Japanese cameras today are regarded as second to none, but Japan
    originally failed to break into the World camera market because they
    used their Japanese names. It was only when "Nippon Kogaku" rebranded
    to "Nikon" and "Asahi" to "Pentax" that they made the breakthrough.
    Similarly the promoters of Ubuntu are mistaken to have associated it in
    people's minds with a cultural niche.

    Nuke 

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