[drupal-docs] [task] Creation of a new marketing leaflet / brochure / pamphlet

Thu Jun 16 19:19:57 UTC 2005

Issue status update for http://drupal.org/node/24384

 Project:      Documentation
 Version:      <none>
 Component:    Marketing
 Category:     tasks
 Priority:     normal
 Assigned to:  andremolnar
 Reported by:  andremolnar
 Updated by:   andremolnar
 Status:       active

p.s.

I think I've been won over by Andrew's and Steven's point about the
redundancy of some of the text.  Is there another way of expressing
stability in the first section without overlapping the stuff in the
second section?

Stability is an important thing to express because it is what people
are looking for in a CMS - but maybe not the way I tried to express it.

andre

andremolnar

Previous comments:
------------------------------------------------------------------------

June 5, 2005 - 23:47 : andremolnar

Attachment: http://drupal.org/files/issues/brochure idea.html (5.8 KB)

Background:
Dries approached the Press and Marketing group to come up with a new
leaflet to be used at the OSCON conference as well as other conferences
that key Drupal community members will be attending this summer.

The original request is found here:
http://lists.drupal.org/archives/drupal-docs/2005-06/msg00010.html

Scope:
The mailing-list thread noted above includes some preliminary
discussion about project.
The main goal of this particular project is to create a general
brochure that is not targeting at any specific industry or user type. 
The reason for this is the the deadline for completion will not allow
for multiple brochures.  It has also been determined that the audience
at OSCON is quite varied - from non-technical people (including press)
to hard-core techies and system admins.

The idea is not to sell Drupal to 'everyone', but the document should
speak to some of our key targets including personal site admins (e.g.
bloggers), corporate site developers, and community site developers.

The overall goal is to have multiple brochures created - each one
targeting a specific industry or user type, but that is beyond the
scope of this particular project.

Time line:
The text/copy for the brochure must be completed no later than June
15th, 2005.
The preliminary graphic design must be completed no later than June
22nd, 2005.
The FINAL deadline is June 28th, 2005.

Call for help:
A forum topic has been created to enlist contributors to this project. 
See: http://drupal.org/node/24174

Preliminary progress report:
Attached is a mochup / visualization tool/page I have created based on
some suggestions from Josh in the forum, and inspired by Steven's
response to Josh's post.  It is very rough and not meant to be pretty. 
It is hoped that the file will inspire some discussion.  Feel free to
edit and resubmit the file to this project with your additions.

andre

------------------------------------------------------------------------

June 9, 2005 - 08:06 : andremolnar

I've tried to come up with some text for the brochure and was hoping for
some feedback.  I was thinking that something like this could be
included in the first fold-out of the brochure.  It is a general
description of a CMS and goes through some benefits of CMS's and Drupal
in particular.  (Standard disclaimer, I am not a writer - I hope that if
people feel that this text is in the right direction, someone more
skilled than I could re-write or improve the text).

***

What is Drupal?

CMS is web development speak for "Content Management System".  And that
is just another way of saying, "a really simply way to create, update
and maintain your own web site without any prior programming or
web-design experience."

Drupal offers all the benefits of a typical CMS.  For example:

- never having to call someone to add, update, or delete content from
your site.  Doing it yourself is no more difficult than sending
web-based e-mail - and like web-based e-mail you can do it from
anywhere in the world provided you have an Internet connection.
- Allowing you to delegate the creation of content to others, but still
leaving final approval for publication with you or someone you trust.
- Allowing you to decide who can or cannot view content on your site.

Drupal keeps your site visitors in mind:

-  Implementing content categorization and search tools means that
finding information on your site couldn't be easier for your visitors.
-  Interactive features keep visitors of your site engaged and provide
simple means for your target audience to communicate directly to you
and each other.
-  Drupal has been designed to be 100% accessible.  Accessible design
means never closing your door to visitors with special needs and
maximizing your potential audience.

- and because Drupal is both modular and scalable, as the number of
visitors to your site grows and their needs change, your Drupal powered
site can accommodate those changes quickly and seamlessly.

Because Drupal has striven to maximize your site visitor's experience
while minimizing the effort required to provide that experience, Drupal
is often referred to as a "Community Management System" or "Community
Building System."

Why Choose Drupal over another Content Management System?

Besides the fact that Drupal is much more than a 'CMS' consider the
following.

Drupal is Stable:

If Drupal powered sites like Spread Firefox can handle 50,000,000
visitors (and counting), you can count on Drupal to keep your site
running well after your 100,000,000th visitor.

Drupal is Supported:
The community of developers from around the world investing their own
time to improve Drupal is growing as is the community of people that
volunteer their expertise to support new users.

Drupal is Here to Stay!

In short, you can count on Drupal.  Any investment you make (in time or
resources) to implement Drupal is secure and is sure to be returned many
times over.

And if that wasn't enough - Drupal is Free Software released under the
GNU Public License.  Free refers to much more than just price.  You are
free to modify the software, free to improve the software, and even free
to sell the software if you wish.

****

andre

------------------------------------------------------------------------

June 10, 2005 - 15:20 : cel4145

Some ideas and suggestions. Realize that these are based on how I would
do it personally:

* Anyone who does not know generally what a content management systems
is--either an IT administrator, corporate type, developer,
etc.--probably is not ready for Drupal. Even journalists covering OSCON
should know the term (and if they don't, I don't think we want them
writing and publishing a review). 
* Given (1), rather than beginning by defining Drupal as a content
management system in which you define CMS, begin with defining what
Drupal is (I know, I'm biased against the sole term of CMS applied to
Drupal :) Or if you do define it as a content management system,
immediately go for a more robust definition. So here are two different
openings (taken from elsewhere). One tries not to pigeon hole Drupal as
a CMS.

*  A dynamic web site platform which allows an individual or community
of users
to publish, manage and organize a variety of content, Drupal integrates
many
popular features of content management systems, weblogs, collaborative
tools
and discussion-based community software into one easy-to-use package. 
* Drupal is an open source Content Management System (CMS) which allows
an individual or community of users to publish, manage and organize a
variety of web content. Drupal integrates many popular features of
content management systems, weblogs, collaborative tools and
discussion-based community software into one easy-to-use package.

* Overall, the text seems too long. I don't believe people will read
that much. I'm not even sure it can fit in a readable font size.
*  I'm not sure the ordering of the pages/text flow is correct for how
people read (looking at the brochere example). I think that most
people, after looking at the front page, open a brochure all the way
up. If you take this approach, realize that the interior three pages
don't have to be three columns but can be formatted as one large
landscape oriented page. Also, if it's not columnated this way, it will
encourage people to open it up. That would leave the page with "
inside: (Continues discussion from oposite facing page)" on the back. 

------------------------------------------------------------------------

June 10, 2005 - 18:07 : andremolnar

Thanks for the feedback.

The text IS long.  Way too long.  In fact it is exactly 2x too long
(based on a single 1/3 landscape column at 11pt text).  I put it all
out there to get the ball rolling and initiate some discussion about
some of the messages we might want to include.  I don't think we can
include all of it - or at least not as it is written now.  (But, maybe
we can use some of this in a Drupal handbook page or other marketing
materials when we are all done ;-)

I also agree that defining and selling Drupal as 'just another CMS' is
the wrong idea.  

The idea was:
Communicate what a CMS is - and what some benefits of CMS are.
Communicate that Drupal offers all those benefits AND much much more
Communicate: Content Community! Management System

The reasoning for this approach was based on feedback Steven's friends
and family gave him when reviewing the old brochure.
"That's great, but what does it do?"

Regarding Layout:
I think you may be right about people opening the brochure up all the
way.  Ultimately I think it will be the responsibility of the graphics
team to decide what works best given the text we produce.  Once again I
was just putting an idea out there.

andre

------------------------------------------------------------------------

June 11, 2005 - 04:50 : andremolnar

Laura wrote:

"Speaking for myself, for me it was about 6 days from learning what CMS
meant and having a Drupal site up and running. I don't think knowing
acronyms, abbreviations and jargon is a prerequisite to being able to
grok what Drupal offers. So while I do not agree with your point about
CMS, I do agree that it's best to simply focus on what Drupal does.

Sales 101: Features vs. Benefits

Features: What it does.
Benefits: What you can do with it.

Which approach is more likely to appeal to this OSCON audience?
Figuring that out might be a way of picking out the copy to keep and
the copy to cut.

"
I would say a little from column a) and a little from column b)

What we can assume about the OSCON audience:
Probably know what a CMS is in a general terms - and many of the web
people may already be using a CMS - but maybe have never thought about
what makes one CMS better than another.  Also, they may not have
thought about all their needs that could be met by using a CMS beyond
the immediate need they see being filled (e.g. needed something to make
a blog with, or needed something where it was easy to write an article
and attach files and publish them on-line, or needed something to help
organize a project development community.)

For those that already know what a CMS is and are shopping for one -
features can be a selling point and a way to compare products.
For those looking for a web solution and are vague about CMSs - its the
benefits that will capture their imagination.
For techies its almost always about the features and details - not so
much what it is, but 'how it works'.

And this is the dilema with the OSCON audience - there is going to be a
broad spectrum of 'types'

So - if we do assume that most people there already know what a CMS is
- then its all about what makes Drupal better than all the rest.  What
are Drupal's 'better' benefits?  Which means that we can trash the
entire bit about 'what is a CMS'.  We can also drop the general CMS
benefits - and go with benefits that are unique to Drupal.

I think we can assume that there will be quite a few techies.  So the
existing architectural diagram is something that they would
appreciate... and a couple of blurbs about some techie feature/benefits
(like caching systems, and templating systems, and multi-site deployment
from a single code base) would go over well.

Advertising 101b:
I like to think of benefits as what a feature means to the client... or
a response to "so what".  Also, anything that meets a need is a benefit.
 Drupal has a powerful taxonomy system.  So what.  The answer to 'so
what' is the benefit.

Just some more food for thought.

andre

------------------------------------------------------------------------

June 12, 2005 - 20:39 : andremolnar

Another attempt at a first page:
Here is another go.  I think that the consesnus is that the audience at
OSCON will know what a CMS is.  So, if they know what one is and are
considering implementing a CMS solution the focus should be on: what
makes Drupal better than all other CMS'.

All the research and documentation about 'how to choose a CMS' says
that people are looking for the following:
Stability, support, multiple authors with granular access control to
both authoring and content, scalability, modularity and themeability
(templating).

This page covers:
What is Drupal.
Stability and support
And has two competative advantages (standards compliance / accessiblity
and 'freedom')
(Essentially this is a re-write of the existing first page - with a
little added focus on benefits).

The existing diagram of Drupal architecture addresses modularity and
scalability.

We will still need content on access control, and templating.  I'm
still in favour of including some geeky features like multiple site
deployment and caching (and its benefit of speed - Drupal is faster
than most CMS').

A note about the following:  I did check for length and this would fit
in a 1/3 landscape column at 10pt.

****

Drupal is a Content and Community Management system which affords a
broad range of individuals and groups the power to publish, manage, and
organize a variety of contributed content.

Drupal integrates individual and community blogging, collaborative
writing, community discussions, content aggregation and friend of a
friend modules into a single easy-to-use package.

What Sets Drupal Apart?

Caring about your community: Accessible + Standards Compliant
Drupal has been designed to be 100% accessible. Accessible design means
never closing your door to visitors with special needs and maximizing
your potential audience. This accessibility is achieved by embracing
standards such as XHTML, CSS and separation of content from
presentation which have the added benefit of improved search engine
ranking.

Stability
If community sites like SpreadFirefox(tm) can handle 50,000,000
visitors and the slash-dot effect,  you can count on Drupal to keep
your site running well after your 100,000,000th visitor.

Support
Very few products like Drupal can boast about the size and expert
knowledge of their support community.  Drupal.org is home to hundreds
of developers and thousands of users regularly contributing to support
forums and an already extensive documentation library.  Several
organization also offer specialized Drupal hosting and consulting
services.

Freedom
Drupal is Free Software released under the GNU Public License. Free
refers to much more than just price. You are free to modify the
software, free to improve the software, and even free to sell the
software if you wish.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

June 15, 2005 - 10:08 : andremolnar

Another Section for review:

****
Feature Rich: Drupal adapts to your needs.

With dozens of core features and over 100 contributed modules there are
literally millions of possible configurations available with Drupal. 
And, enabling or disabling core functionality is as simple as a mouse
click.  This means that as your site needs change, Drupal adapts to
meet those needs quickly and painlessly.  

Whether you would like to add image galleries, a full e-commerce store
or simply enhance your community's experience, Drupal has the tools you
are looking for.

***

A section for power-users and IT admins to come shortly.

andre

------------------------------------------------------------------------

June 15, 2005 - 10:28 : andremolnar

More text for review:

****

Drupal is powerful: Features power users and IT administrators demand.

How is it that time and time again Drupal sites survive slash-dotting? 
Drupal has been built for speed and is smart enough to adapt quickly to
the load visitors put on your site.  Drupal's built in chaching and
throttling mechanisms keep your site responsive even when faced with
massive surges in the number of visitors.

How fast is Drupal?  Drupal consistently ranks near the top of its
class in benchmark tests regularly performing many times faster than
other popular CMS products.

****

andre

------------------------------------------------------------------------

June 15, 2005 - 10:51 : andremolnar

And Finally - some more text.  This needs work - but it represents a
real benefit to power admins.

****

Multiple sites - One Installation - One code base to maintain.

Imagine running dozens of unique sites dozens of unique site
configurations without having to maintain dozens of installations. 
Imagine upgrading several sites to the latest version of the software
at once.  With Drupal this is a reality.  Adding additional Drupal
powered site to your servers is as quick as uploading a single file.

How much time and resources would that save you and your IT staff?

****

andre

------------------------------------------------------------------------

June 16, 2005 - 00:55 : andremolnar

Attachment: http://drupal.org/files/issues/brochure draft 1.1.txt (2.9 KB)

After a number of off-line discussions attached is some updated text and
wording.

Still to do:
Select a few key features and write short to-the-point descriptions of
the benefits they provide.
Alternatively we can keep the use-cases from the existing brochure.

If you would like to make changes, upload a new version of the attached
file indicating the changes you have made.

andre

p.s. yes - next time we will wiki.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

June 16, 2005 - 11:15 : andremolnar

Robin Monks wrote:

"I think the themes section, or a node edit view would be good
canidates for screenshots.  And what about these modules:

"
+1 for the themes section screen shot.

"Buddylist Banner E-Commerce Event Organic Groups Privatemsg Recipe
SiteMenu Textile Wiki

"
I'm okay with any of these + taxonomy + localization.  I haven't used
many of the extensively so we would still need a volunteer to write a
single sentence that describes the feature and its benefit.

What is the consensus?
Should we name off a few of these key features
OR
Keep the use cases (e.g. corporate, community, campaign, education,
personal)?
OR
Somehow include both by possibly including names of some key
features/modules that each use-case makes use of.

andre

------------------------------------------------------------------------

June 16, 2005 - 13:51 : andremolnar

Just getting this into the project page:

"Some quick comments:

- The opening doesn't tell me anything if I'm not at home in the world
of CMSes. I think this is an important aspect, and something that I
noticed myself when I showed the old brochure to others. They said:
"Nice, but what does it DO?". Phrases like "establish online presence"
or "manage online activities" are a lot more vague than "build your
website". I participated in a student-organised website contest at my
university a while ago: most sites were simple, plain, non-interactive
affairs. When polling the other contestants about this, most of them
said "yes, but I'm not a programmer and I don't know anything about PHP
/ MySQL / ...". When I talked to them, I tried to make it clear that
with systems like Drupal, you can set up complicated features without
touching a single line of code.

- Mentioning "friend of a friend" in such a prominent position at the
top seems wasteful: it is not a core feature and very few people are
familiar with it. Perhaps it should be "user identity" modules.

- Search engine optimization should mention clean URLs. They are an
important feature. And not only do we have clean URLs, but we also
allow arbitrary custom URLs. And with pathauto module, automatic,
meaningful URLs derived from the content. We could add a bold claim:
"Drupal sites consistently rank high in search results.". It is what
several of our users have said:
http://drupal.org/node/20033

- The "stability" "speed" and "power" sections seem to overlap a lot.
Even if there are subtle underlying differences, it is my experience
that this is lost on unfamiliar readers and perceived as repetition
instead. Perhaps they should be merged into a single section
"Performance and stability", while "power" should be aimed more at
modularity and flexiblity.

- A title like "Power that expert users and IT administrators demand"
is completely ineffective and near-impossible to use in a nice design.

- The "feature rich" section seems to mention Drupal's modularity as a
side-effect... in the last brochure this was a very important section
covering one full "flap". It illustrated effectively how many features,
which would be hardcoded and/or inflexible in a traditional CMS, are
removable and customizable in Drupal. Now it's more like "yeah, you can
turn stuff off if you don't like it, and modules have something to do
with it". This hardly describes what Drupal modules are and the way
they can hook into every aspect of the CMS and integrate every feature
with every other feature, or how most features (like the profile
module) are built as a flexible system rather than a fixed set of
functions. While underlying architecture is not directly important for
end-users, it is important for customizability and flexibility. If you
don't include a big "architecture" section, at the very least you
should

- All in all, I think many people are a lot more familiar with the term
"open source" rather than free. "Free", to me, reminds me more of how
Drupal doesn't tie you down to fixed things, but how every component is
built as a flexible, customizable system. "Freedom" as a section header
just doesn't strike me as effective (especially when you consider how
that certain country *cough* has been abusing the word recently).

- The text introduces a lot of concepts, but lacks concrete
illustration and examples. The last leaflet's use cases were nice in
this, but we could improve it by tying examples directly into the
listed points.

- Perhaps we could include a "what do people say about Drupal?"
section. There are plenty of nice quotes on the forums, like the one
about search results.

- The text needs a definite proofreading: "Bryte" "several
organization" ...

And as a graphics person, I think it is really a bad idea to write the
text, then have it 'poured' into a brochure. Brochures have a very
specific design to them and are read in a certain fashion (I tried to
illustrate this in the brochure thread on drupal.org). This text
doesn't seem to be written with presentation in mind, and that's a
pity: presentation and content should go hand in hand. It also seems
too short to fill a whole brochure..

To be honest I can see no remains of the last brochure in this... it
feels as if you started from scratch! A lot of discussion preceded the
creation of the last brochure with some nice ideas and try outs to
learn from:
http://drupal.org/node/7782
The last brochure had several problems, but it did many things right as
well. It would be silly to ignore all that... 

"

------------------------------------------------------------------------

June 16, 2005 - 18:54 : andremolnar

Attachment: http://drupal.org/files/issues/rough-idea.png (67.5 KB)

Attached is a very very rough inner layout.

Obviously there are balance and other serious design issues here.  But,
it does illustrate how much content there is... how much room remains...
and may spark immagination for alternate layouts.

In response to Steven's comments:
Given the space - it does look like we could include some his
suggestions:  A definition of CMS - AND what is Drupal - (possibly
along the top)
A quote or two (testimonials).

Under - or near the architecture diagram - we can include the names of
a few features with one-liners describing what they do.

***

Notwithstanding a certain country *cough* (as Steven put it) -
bastardizing the word 'freedom'.  Would the word 'freedom' not resonate
with this OSCON croud.  Or since its the "Open Source" conference should
we opt to use that term instead.

My personal feeling is that 'freedom' is a benefit of open source - and
Open Source is simply a proper noun?  Thoughts?

andre