[Foundation-l] Rethinking brands

Alison Wheeler wikimedia at alisonwheeler.com
Wed May 9 11:02:28 UTC 2007


On Wed, May 9, 2007 11:07, Sebastian Moleski wrote:
> Short quiz for all the Americans on this list: what do Bounty, Dawn,
> Pringles, Duracell and Lacoste have in common? If you think those are
> all strong brand names, then you're right. But how many would know
> that they all belong to the same company (Procter & Gamble)? I would
> venture a guess that not too many do. Or at
> least, to most people, it really doesn't matter. They don't buy the
> products because P&G makes them. <snip>

But I believe that is the problem we currently have! That list of brands
don't market to the same target audiences, and they demonstrate few
synergies between them so thay have no need to target similar markets
directly, however eachof our 'products' *do* target the same people, and
that means (imho) that we do need a much clearer "umbrella" to be visible
'out there'.

A further example; Answers.com runs "WikiAnswers". If we stick ad absurdam
with our "Wiki...." convention then how many people will think that
"WikiAnswers" is one of ours, when it isn't. David Gerard pointed out that
> "People call it "wiki" in English as well. (A conversation yesterday
> with a TV person who kept talking about "wikis", and it took me a few
> minutes to realise he was talking about "articles in English
> Wikipedia". And that's someone in an organisation I *know* has *lots*
> of internal wikis ...)".

We've lost the battle to call everything "Wiki...." and for the general
internet population to realise which is 'ours' and which isn't. It will be
a shame to lose some of the name recognition that the non-WP projects have
gained - though it is clearly minimal so far - but I think there is merit
in realising that we need to change our POV and ensure that non-editors
realise that we have more than the one (WP) project.

Alison Wheeler




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