Uh, the OP’s post is about making a tumblr, and asking the community to participate in the process.
Not quite. From a political perspective, marketing yourself can be associated with propaganda (which is the act of generating or appealing to sentiment over reason), however in the business world it really has nothing to do with propaganda for the most part. In some instances you are correct though, usually when marketing is about making someone else’s product look worse.
Take for example theI’m a Mac, I’m a PC campaign from Apple. That can be seen as propaganda because it focused around mocking and creating a negative image about PCs as opposed to just focusing on Apple’s OS a product. I believe Jack n the box had a similar campaign in which they named their rivals such as Burger King as “microwaving their food”.
So as long as marketing is about selling on what the product does on its own merit, then its fine.
Propaganda really boils down to how to manipulate based on emotion, as opposed to obectivity and reason. If blender markets itself as a professional app, thats objectively reasonable.
Even excellent tools need to be “spoon fed” to their target audience, though thats a bit wrong to put it in those words. Instead of spoon feeding its more like informing and erasing any negative biases or impressions that exist regarding Blender.
Think of it this way… Final Fantasy 14 (the online mmorpg) was a huge disaster. It left a lot of negative impressions throughout the gaming community. Square Enix, the developer/publisher, went about fixing everything that went wrong with the game. However, despite that, the negative impressions still remained no matter what happened. SO how do you get those people back, how do you erase that negative impression and encourage the larger market to give it another shot with all those fixes in place? Simple, its marketing. The result was a simple change to the name. Final Fantasy: A Realm Reborn. Now every game journal is giving it raving reviews, and both old and new fans have moved away from that negative image to look at it again in another light. Diablo 3 is doing something similar with their xpansion pack. Blizzard wants to remove the negative impressions from the horrible release and questionable game design by selling all the new improvements to the game (which will exist outside of the xpack as well). One of their selling points is now “Loot 2.0”.
You mention a powerful free open source 3d package, but the larger community of artist do not necessarily see it as powerful, and by being free, there is already a negative connotation tied to it. Because Blender is Free and Open Source, it has to dispel that negative image associated with free applications, especially ones in which people can lose or gain a lot of income with. Linux had to do the same, and it was thanks to the Ubuntu marketing attempts that Linux has grown.
I think blender could really gain from marketing itself better and removing that negative stereotype associated with free open source software as well as the negative impression tied to blender and its community as a whole.
What XRG was pointing out was that the OP wasnt telling the BF to do the marketing, like you implied in your post. His intent, while it sounds silly, was more of a community driven approach. Speaking of which, did you listen to the podcast he is reacting to? That would go a long way in regards to keeping his post in the proper context. I get it though, rebranding is a strong word which can create a strong negative reaction from fans…so I suppose thats to be expected.
Even if no one is talking about renaming Blender to something that sounds more professional, there is also the concern that whoever does the re-branding could end up bringing disaster to Blender’s image or at least make it not seem like what it was before for a while.
Take the re-branding method of logo changes for example, it seems like all of the great logos of the past are being phased out for simple, minimalistic ones. The Gap changed their logo to a small box by the end of their store name. Microsoft changed theirs to 4 squares, Autodesk changed the icons for all of their apps. as well as their logo to some simple origami letter, it’s as if artistic is out and forgettable flatness is in.
I even whipped up my own crappy, 5 minute example of what could happen if the re-branding stage happened for Blender in the same vein, I would ask you, would people still get excited about Blender if the logo changed to something like this?
Hey, Autodesk changed their logo to something boring, why not a boring ‘B’ for Blender 
I can understand the idea of making the website and image of Blender more professional and functional at selling blender, they are going the right path right now and just need to continue.
Look at the consistent Siggraph attendance and Blender conferences, look at the short films coming being created by the institute for several years. These are all big positives for Blenders image. See how Blender is now communicating with large studio software developers and hardware developers.
This is all steps forward and making progress.
Blender just needs to continue it’s history of improvements and keep pumping out results in terms of artwork and software development.
I don’t however understand the idea of Blender make “more like X so we can stick it to autodesk”.
Blender is about making good software for anyone to access and enjoy freely, not about marketing, pleasing share holders, taking over the world and making millions selling to major studios and “pros” who don’t really have a reason to switch from X major proprietary software in the first place.
If there was a proper need for this some dev team would take the Blender source, change interface to “something normal/bland” so people can swallow it, name it something else, make a “pro logo” and offer commercial support and development available only to major studios (in a legit way, not like 3dmagix).
If people want to use Blender they use Blender, they use X if they like X. Why would making Blender the same as X/Y get it anywhere?? People would just continue to use X.
Not all products need to appear as a faceless megacorp with no personality to succeed.
So long as Blender is moving forward and making results it should be happy to keep it’s nerdy, fun and cute personality(the logo/colours is cute/childish). This is Blenders image and brand.
People should really listen to the podcast before they come here arguing against it. It’s getting ridiculous and you risk sounding as ignorant as Endi if you don’t look up the facts before saying anything 
Anyway back on topic:
I agree largely with Xrg and Sainthaven. Yes I think that Blender needs to be marketed better, by people who understand marketing, we shouldn’t shove yet another big task to the foundation. And rebranding doesn’t mean change the name or make Blender commercial people, come on.
But only marketing Blender better doesn’t help in itself. Even if we would suddenly get thousands more new people to try blender it wouldn’t really mean anything if we can’t keep them in Blender. If Blender remains as hostile and alien as it currently is to new users then they aren’t gonna stick with it and then the new “good name” we worked so hard to get for Blender will be tainted yet again. We need to greatly improve Blender’s usability before we even think about marketing it better.
To keep more people in Blender the program should be better,not easier for new users.
We are not yet to the point where Blender is so good that if people don’t use it, it’s only for lacking of good marketing.
Blender is growing but it’s still a brittle application,a skilled 3d user(or artist,or super professional,call as you want)can find the limit of the program in 5 minutes.
In general, to grow the reputation, the only solution is to improve the quality(so who tries it will love it and not run away terrified) ,not to dupe people with marketing(which is a clever way to avoid weak points,not a way to solve them).
A lot of time here we read “we have to attract new users,we have to attract here super professionals” but do you really think that skilled artists like to work with a limited tool set ?
I like to paint,do you really think that everytime I start painting I use only the 3 primary colors with one poor synthetic brush or that I use all the colors I need with a good set of professional brushes ?
When you are free to choose, you go for the best,not for the easiest thing.
I think that might be a gross over assumption. Why would some user creating their own logo for blender bring a disaster to blender’s image? At the end of the day its still the BF and Ton that would have to make the decisions. Its not technically some free for all.
To be accurate, the points brought up by Andrew Price in his podcast are as follows:
- Reputation – The term “Free” usually comes with a catch. Plus 9 times out of 10, the free version is not as good as the paid one.
- Social Proofing – When the herd is flocking towards Autodesk, others are sure to follow. Currently Blender’s “active community” is largely hidden.
- Authority – Most leading Hollywood studios use Autodesk. Regardless of the alternatives, we assume authority = power = trust.
How blender can win:
- Reputation – Rebrand Blender.org to look like a professional organization with lots of support and training available. Shamelessly show off what Blender is capable of in stunningly large, hi-res images.
- Social Proof – Put counters on the Blender.org page. “22, 952 active users in the last week on BlenderArtist.org” or “8 bug fixes made in the last 24 hours”.
- Authority – Post feature stories of studios that use Blender. Include testimonials from happy professionals “I’d been a user of 3ds Max for 8 years, and switching to Blender has been the best choice of my career. -John Doe, Blur Studios”
The Way Forward:
- Define Our goal – What do we really want? Do we want to keep our ultra tight elite community of enthusiasts or make it more open and accessible to the public?
- A larger emphasis on marketing – People won’t care what’s under the hood unless it’s evidently clear from the outside that it’s worth checking out. Whether you like it or not, every business (for profit or not) would not survive without marketing.
- A full-time Blender web developer – Firefox, Ubuntu, Photoshop and other sites are updated with a new look almost every month. That’s no accident. It presents an image of staying on the cutting edge. IMO Blender could really benefit from this.
“What are your thoughts on this? Do you want blender to be more popular? If so, what are some ways you think this could be accomplished?”
Take the re-branding method of logo changes for example, it seems like all of the great logos of the past are being phased out for simple, minimalistic ones. The Gap changed their logo to a small box by the end of their store name. Microsoft changed theirs to 4 squares, Autodesk changed the icons for all of their apps. as well as their logo to some simple origami letter, it’s as if artistic is out and forgettable flatness is in.
Brands have to stay relevant, if they seem dated people treat them as dated. By keeping the visual stimulus going, they effectively give the impression that an update is indeed an update and something “big”.
If you think about it, sticking to the old logo for many brands is often tied to nostalgia, nothing more. This wont always be the case, but for software its often a big one.
Ironically, when you mention Microsoft’s corporate logo as being something new…its actually closer to one of their older logos from 1989 and windows 1.0. If we look at their original 1975 logo, its pretty bad. Just really retro text.
The sad thing is a lot of more modern logo designs are going for the minimalist look, much of it brought on by the success of apple and google. These are not new per say but thats just the style. A lot of some of our most “sacred” logos hail back from the web 2.0 days, and even that had its own style.
The moral the story is that image is important, and something as simple as an icon change or upgrade can make it seem like you are keeping up with the times. Humans naturally are drawn to whatever is deemed as “new” when it comes to technology and products. If anything its a point of interest and the means to re-evaluate what they may already have an impression on.
I do agree though that some of the newer icon changes seem a bit…odd… if thats the right word. Autodesks change in logos for their lineup have everything to with making the products easier to recognize yet seem part of a larger suite. We saw this with adobe, and now autodesk. I think its a wise move, whether or not I like the origami logo is another issue entirely. Previously every logo for maya, max, xsi, mudbox…ect were all dark grey boxes with some hard to read white lined drawing. They know color coding works, so they opted to make color part of the design.
Unlike all those though, Blender doesnt have a suite of applications. It has one, with everything inside of it.
When Andrew Price asks what people think? I honestly do think some logo refresh, something more professional, wouldnt be a bad move, but thats up to the BF. Its not a bad thing for users to suggest their own redesigns though. Thats a strength of the community, not necessarily a weakness.
Btw the logo you are showing is definitely a gross over exaggeration. lol But I can see how that would be cringe worthy if someone actually did try to push that. (additionally an orange B is already used by both Blogger and Brietbart, two very successful websites. So Orange B’s do work, believe it or not.)
Also check out this thread from awhile back in which a user created a logo for Cycles. Personally I think it has merit, if not for cycles, then for blender. But at the very least it looks more professional and easier to sell. Anyways, I dont think the OP had redesigning the logo in mind, nor did Price, though since you bring it up it might not be a bad idea to discuss.
What people need to focus on though is the result and the end goal, not personal preferences. Blender will have to change, its inevitable, the question is when.
That is also a strategy. Just look at Zbrush, hardly anyone like the UI yet they are forced to use it because it’s simply the best solution.
However I think we need to be realistic here. If Blender would be competing about the #1 spot in almost anything we would be up against companies with hundreds (if not thousands) of developers with million-dollar budgets. We have to accept that Blender has little chance to ever be the best in anything so I would rather spend the energy improving the usability.
@NinthJake
This can be true,but you can see the thing also from the opposite point of view.
if you have few coders and resources compared to a commercial application,why to spend time in usability when you could use all the resources to improve the program(if Brecht had spent all his time in ui stuff and usability do you really think he could have coded Cycles?).
A 3d application has to go forward(in power,performance and feature set),without a good set and performance nobody will use it even if it looks marvelous for the eyes.
The bigger team behind a commercial software is Cinema 4d Development team, about 20 people. ADSK has about 15 people behind software like softimage and 3dsm. Maya, due its developing for close the gap vs houdini has two team, MAya team and Maya FX team (composed by ex softimage team members), maya fx team is pretty small (5 people?)
I take this info by some post done by Luceric (exsoftimage developer and now in the maya fx team).
Blender has 4 developers, but a bigger number of contributors doing inconstantly job, and during GSoC they are more.
From I hear only a tiny tiny fraction of the revenue earned by autodesk products actually goes back into their R&D. With all the profit something like Maya makes, very little goes right back into it to make it better. Autodesk would rather keep the revenue for their executives and such, while maybe buying out a 3rd party plug in and plugging it into their software while asking for users to check out an extra $600+ per upgrade (yearly).
This is where Blender can really shine, revenue made (from donations and funding) can go directly back into the R&D. By making Blender more accessible, more user friendly, even regarded better by the larger CG community, Blender can increase that core developer count from more revenue. If what valve is proposing, that can be a huge boost for Blender. Of course thats where all this rebranding talk comes into play.
I would like for the BF to get big enough to the point where they can offer paid technical support for studios as a means of encouraging it to be used on a larger scale.
You really think professional 3D modellers need tech support? No. They need serious tools that works. We have seen “marketing” like this before. It’s usually coming from open source people, who are wondering why their great piece of software is not used in commercial world. They just can’t figure out the answer so obviously they think it’s a marketing issue. I suggest these people start to think with their brains which I think they still have in place.
Well as a matter of fact, tech support is a huge draw for major productions. This is pretty much common sense to anyone in the industry. Whether we like it or not, studios generally tend to like that kind of security. I am not sure why you think Blender is just a modeling program though, or why you would limit the pipeline it can be used with to mere modeling. In fact the Foundry’s business model pretty much revolves around their ability to offer tech support in a certain professional fashion.
Its pretty much a given that the software actually be good. So I agree that its also important to have software that can be taken seriously and one that works. Again not sure why you would assume that non-serious software that doesnt work would be part of it. I am first and foremost a Maya user with a zbrush license who relies heavily on commercial software. So I know exactly where the standards are and how high the bar has been set. I hope you dont think everyone here is some open source fanatic that only sticks to open source. Open source does have its draws however, Gabe Newell and John Carmack have stood beside it, believing it will play a large role in how software is used and developed in the future.
I agree in that for the software to be adopted by more professionals and more importantly the studios they often work for, Blender needs some serious development love, but you also cannot separate the FACT that for such software, how people perceive it and their impressions of it, go a long way into who starts funding it.
Valve has shown interest in incorporating blender into a steamworkshop based pipeline, they even allow content creators to direct some of Valves revenue from the store to go to the BF. When I go to Siggraph, I constantly see my fellow industry peeps stop by and say “wow I didnt know Blender could do that.” The reason for this is that there exists a perception Blender that is tied to how it used to be, not where it is now. That is where marketing comes into play. If the BF wasnt interested in such, they wouldnt be at Siggraph to begin with (its not cheap). They wouldnt be pushing for Blender adoption, nor would they be redesigning the website. How people perceive your software is big, and the tech support plays right into that perception.
Now you say people need to think with their brains…but I am getting the impression that you are reacting based on sentiment (emotion) rather than objectivity and rational thought. You can make a case regarding how you think Blender should develop and who it should be used by, or you can make a case why you think its a crappy tool, but lets do so preferably without proclamations and veiled insults towards a certain community. Thats not productive. If you think this conversation as a whole is silly, then therse no reason to participate.
All in all, I do think before any serious marketing can take place, Blender needs to get a face lift internally as a software package as well, this includes layout and functionality, so we are probably in agreement about that I hope. There was a thread while back where I and a few others said that the best way for Blender to get into any major pipeline, is to find that one element that everyone needs and be the best at it, whether its modeling, retopo, texture painting or animating. Obviously there was some push back, and yeah it is frustrating at times, but what can you do but stay consistent in that kind of message?
No need to rebrand Blender in order to being more credible. Autodesk has announced that it wants to go the Adobe way (read cloud) and therefore THEY are going to do the hard work :evilgrin:.
Newell has so much money that he can say anything. Those guys are for open source as long as it doesn’t hurt their money making. A great example is modding in game industry. What could be easier than make players create new content to games? It’s wrong, but people are dumb and they suspect nothing.
Money is involved in Blender also, in form of donations. Frankly I don’t know why people give money to Blender developers. Maybe it’s just open source, you got to support that!
I believe there will be a third option in software development: relatively cheap closed software created by indie developers that eventually will become better than “old dinosaurs” (Photoshop etc.) or open source projects. The way tools itself in software development are getting better will result in that sooner or later.
Reading all of this, I definitely agree with the idea of overhauling the website and putting more emphasis on marketing (the website that’s reportedly under construction is a good start), because I do know that the marketing side as seen from the BF itself seems lacking at the moment.
What I would think would rather not be done though, is a name change for the app. as well as a logo change, because I think the points that Andrew Price brought up would be sufficient to increase Blender’s exposure to the professional community.
Finally, it makes sense that Renderdemon would bring up the issues of polish and feature-completeness, because it would be a highly recommended thing to back up the new marketing push with tools that are polished to 11 (ie. a lot of the limitations and quirks removed as well as additional functionality to increase their power).
I think the most useful re-branding would be to overcome the stigma that Blender is hard to use. So many “smart” designers accept the dogma that Blender is for programmers/developers (which I just don’t get) thus not worth their time. These are the same people that use Illustrator and Photoshop daily which have just as many confusing controls. So they head back to their pirated version of C4D which they can’t figure out either.
The foundation could come out with commercials that showed sexy young people working Blender with one hand while overflowing with joy. That should be next open project the foundation takes on.:yes:
“Wild Young And Free”
I think Andrew Price is an amateur.