Who are our "mindset" competitors that we need to overcome?

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Ben Finklea's picture

Who are our "mindset" competitors that we need to overcome? (For example, "I think Drupal has a steep learning curve.")

Don't try to narrow it down to a single big one. Let's ger them all ou on the table.

NOTE: If ou agree with someone, simply +1 their comment. Don't feel the need to add your own story if it is largely the same as what has been shared.

Comments

Are you asking about negative

friendlymachine's picture

Are you asking about negative brand attributes? I've not heard the term mindset competitors.

John Hannah
Friendly Machine

A mindset competitor is any

Ben Finklea's picture

A mindset competitor is any mindset that the customer has that we have to overcome before they will do business with us. While a negative brand attribute would probably be a mindset competitor, there are many mindset competitors that are not associated with the brand.

For example, "Sports cars are gas guzzlers." is a mindset competitor.
"Porsche's are gas guzzlers." is a negative brand attribute.

Perhaps a better example:

"It's better to buy a pre-made website than to build one from scratch." is a mindset competitor.
"It's hard to build websites using Drupal." is a negative brand attribute.

It's not crucial that we make a distinction between the two for the purpose of this discussion. Just think of any argument that you've heard for not using Drupal and share it. This is a brainstorming exercise and there are not right answers necessarily. Although if we hear the same things from everyone then maybe there is a right answer.

Thanks for asking.

Not enough talent

DSquaredB's picture

There may be a shortage of qualified super-developers, but there is also a tendency among developers and firms looking for developers to only value the output of the most experienced. There are many out there that could move the the next level of development given a little mentoring and/or opportunity.

The mindset to overcome is that junior level/novice developers are not as valuable.

DSquaredB
Danita Bowman

Learning curve

DSquaredB's picture

Since the learning curve was only used in the example above, I am adding it as an official mindset to overcome.

Beign self-taught myself, I have experienced this curve. Fortunately, I have had some help when I get stuck and I have found many available resources. To me, the learning curve may actually be the easiest for us to overcome because of the willingness of many in the commu it's to share knowledge - both free and paid.

DSquaredB
Danita Bowman

Larger projects are the only ones worth seeking

DSquaredB's picture

As Drupal has become the platform of choice for some large and highly visible projects in the past few years, I have noticed a trend to discount the smaller projects. This has been mentioned elsewhere, but many I meet in the Drupal community really question why I would even use Drupal for small clients. Not all of the small clients, but some of them have potential to grow and need more complex features and Drupal can grow with them.

DSquaredB
Danita Bowman

Interesting. You're almost

Ben Finklea's picture

Interesting. You're almost saying that our own community has a mindset problem wrt smaller websites. While I agree that Drupal rocks the big sites, I've used it for very small sites and been very happy with it. Good find, Danita.

techdriven

joostburger's picture

Most of the comments I hear are about the fact that drupal is driven by developers. Almost all features are focussed on developers. I think wordpress is a huge competitor because they are coming from something simple, and scaling up towards more complexity

I think we have everything we

Ben Finklea's picture

I think we have everything we need on this topic. I'm setting a deadline of Sept 6 at 10pm CDT for any further comments or thoughts. Then, we'll move on to the next step. :)

To see all the steps, please visit http://groups.drupal.org/node/250768

To help with other items, please visit http://groups.drupal.org/marketing-drupal and see "Issues to work on".

Mindset Competitors

stevepurkiss's picture

As Joomla! cofounder Brian Teeman noted during his DrupalCon Munich session - roughly 74.9% of the top 1 million websites are not using an Open Source CMS. Our competition is the proprietary world.

If we pitch Drupal as the web app platform of choice, showing the benefits and cost reductions of having one platform, I think the message will be clearer to not only the larger users but also to agencies and other systems integrators. I think Drupal can be used by the smaller companies, however to get better value I think this will come via distributions as I previously mentioned for SMB/SME verticals. This is where we go back to providing the tools and support for distribution developers, so for example if you look at the Linux world they have a variety of package managers. We have some efforts in terms of this - take a look at the Apps project for example.

Think of a car manufacturer - they have a network of business suppliers who deal with business accounts for those who want fleets of cars, and they have a network of retailers who offer added value services to the general public - maintenance, repair, etc.

Step back with me...

Ben Finklea's picture

While I appreciate your comment, I can't help but feel that you want to skip the question at hand and jump straight to what we should be doing. Take a step back with me and let's figure out the mental processes that customers are going through rather than deciding now what we should be pitching them.

You might be surprised at the subtle differences that going through the process makes on the outcome. They can make massive differences in market share and brand value.

Adjusting language

stevepurkiss's picture

Was just adding my views, wasn't saying that was what we should do in the kind of do sense, I'm just throwing my ideas into the commons.

I realise I need to change my wording - today's excuse is I'm over-tired and very excited about seeing lots of Drupal people in Brighton soon!.

Other stakeholders than developers

jannekalliola's picture

This was already mentioned by joostburger, but I'll elaborate it a bit. I think that Joomla! does terrific job to feel compelling towards designers and WordPress does the same for content producers.

My hunch is that as developers are last in the "food chain" of getting sites purchased (content owners > designers > developers), this shows in the adoption rates of the systems.

I'm not saying that we should compete with the systems, but we should try to understand and meet the needs of these groups of people. Dries took content producers in spotlight in the Munich keynote, so some progress seems to be happening.

Lean trend

joostburger's picture

I had am interesting discussion with a consultant who is doing a lot of lean consultancy. He suggested that drupal (a swiss army knife) is less interesting than a pair of scissors (wordpress).

Lean is based on pull and specific things.

If we could position drupal as a framework ( a tool for developers) and position distributions as tools for specific situations, we could use this trend in our benefit.

Interesting point

jannekalliola's picture

That's interesting. We've seen the same with a couple of our clients that follow lean methodology. For others, there seems to be value on extensibility and "future-proofness", i.e. you don't need to change the system when you outgrow from the smaller system.

Pivoting

stevepurkiss's picture

I would've thought Drupal was ideal for the lean methodology as you have a platform to pivot on.

I think it goes back to what Joost reminded me of - Simon Sinek's TED talk on "How great leaders inspire action" - selling the "why" not the "what".

Let's take a look at two of the statements on the Drupal.org home page:

"Come for the software, stay for the community
Drupal is an open source content management platform powering millions of websites and applications. It’s built, used, and supported by an active and diverse community of people around the world."

Why Choose Drupal?
"Use Drupal to build everything from personal blogs to enterprise applications. Thousands of add-on modules and designs let you build any site you can imagine. Join us!"

I'm beginning to think these two statements are the wrong way round. The why is actually the what, and the what above should be emphasised and be the why (e.g. "Drupal is" is saying "what" it is, but actually it's describing the "why" - and the "Why Choose Drupal is selling the what not the why.

I need more coffee. But do you see what I mean?

How

stevepurkiss's picture

OK, I've had a bit more coffee, and see we actually sell the "how" too much. Also, I'm not a great fan of calling it a CMS.

Back in the dotcom days we spent a lot of money working out what this "RemoteApps" thing we had actually was, and we ended up with "web app platform" as opposed to CMS, even though we had a system which was similar in functionality to Drupal. We had modules covering the three C's of functionality on the internet - managing Content, Commerce, Collaboration (or Communication), plus we had a web management interface called "TeamView" where you managed content, create your own content types, etc.

If we pitch at the CMS level, we are compared to other CMSs, yet I don't know any other CMSs which do what Drupal does in terms of working together as a community at all levels. For me, Drupal is a language I can speak with people from all different kind of roles, from PMs to devs to clients. I doubt I'd have similar conversations about Ruby or Python with such a wide range.

So we go back to the "Why" - and for me it's all about IT being a conversation; solving problems by discussing them as we do on the d.o. system. The "why" is also about the freedom - the freedom to be able to do what I want on the Internet, of which one of the results is being able to make the most of the latest innovations as people have the freedom to make a module for it and put it into the commons so others can make use of it too.

Look at other systems - I may have to pay $15 for the privilege of doing that, in Drupal my freedom has not been interrupted by availability of cash. I know many who do Drupal because they started with nothing, if there was a price point at any time (time is the highest Drupal price point at the moment!) then they wouldn't have been able to build careers from scratch.

The "How" is more the "It’s built, used, and supported by an active and diverse community of people around the world" of the first statement above.

The "What" is more the "Use Drupal to build everything from personal blogs to enterprise applications. Thousands of add-on modules and designs let you build any site you can imagine. "

At the moment, we are selling the "what" "Drupal is an open source content management platform powering millions of websites and applications. Use Drupal to build everything from personal blogs to enterprise applications" along with the how: "It’s built, used, and supported by an active and diverse community of people around the world." and there's no "why".

If we look at Tom's reply on the "What is that Drupal does so well?" thread he starts off with some "why"s:

"Drupal allows organizations to innovate faster and more efficiently"

"having a huge do-ocracy based community future proofs the platform by enabling continued innovation around things we cannot even predict now"

...along with a great quote:

"In fact our biggest strength may not be what Drupal can do today, but what it will be doing tomorrow."

Stringing it all the above (and more bits from Tom's post!) together could result in something like this. It needs to sell the sizzle more, but it's a start ;)

In a constantly evolving web, creating engaging experiences is all about the ability to innovate faster and more efficiently.

By collaborating on a common platform, we implement solutions then iterate on those solutions to make them even better.

Thousands of add-on modules and designs let you build any site you can imagine, and our huge do-ocracy* based community future proofs the platform by enabling continued innovation around things we cannot even predict now.

What will you be doing with the web tomorrow?

("*" links to an explanation of what our understanding of a do-ocracy is)

Why for enterprise

Zoocha Will's picture

I totally agree with Steve's point - the why and the what are the wrong way round. Also, I am really keen to look at it from the point of view of 'enterprise' where the decision making process is different and therefore the 'why' needs to be tailored.

Here are some random "enterprise" platform providers 'one liners':
IBM - "Expert, Open, Ready" (I assume they say this with a straight face)
Oracle - "Complete Solutions That Deliver Superior Results"
(I appreciate these guys are selling business services too, but the language is relevant).

Hybris - "The Future of Commerce" and "hybris provides a complete multichannel commerce software solution that integrates product content, commerce operations, and the extended channel to help businesses create a unified and seamless experience for their customers – from online, to in-store, to mobile and beyond."
Sitecore - "Great Web Experiences Run on Sitecore"
(Their longer 'proposition' is quite good... "32,000 websites for customers of all types use Sitecore to create and manage dynamic, full-featured experiences. Sitecore is intuitive, scalable and flexible—able to integrate smoothly with your marketing organization, your systems and your developer investment")

Also Microsoft Sharepoint:
"​SharePoint 2010 Content makes Enterprise Content Management (ECM) easy for everyone. Combining traditional content management, social capabilities, and powerful search, it is as natural to manage as it is to use. With its simple, “behind-the-scenes” administration, you can quickly set up compliance policies, while its familiar interface lets your people work just as they would in Microsoft Office. The result is well-managed information that is easy to find, share, and use."

All these examples are doing a specific job:
Establishing credibility (words like "expert", "powerful" and "Enterprise")
Building confidence ("32,000 websites", "The future of Commerce", "Superior Results")
Re-assuring Business Users/ integrators ("intuitive", "simple", "seamless")

Drupals homepage reads more like wordpress than an 'enterprise' platform. I think a gradual shift in language towards the enterprise end of the spectrum would help to consolidate credibility, build confidence and attract business users.

Thoughts?

Why tailored why?

stevepurkiss's picture

Thanks for your reply Will!

I'm not sure we need to tailor the "why" part - well, the commercial community around us are of course free to, but the exercise here is to create branding and marketing communications for the community as a whole.

I believe if we work on the "why" and position it well it will appeal to people at all levels, whether Enterprise or not - that's the point, you're speaking to the person, not an entity.

Talking to the individual

Zoocha Will's picture

Good point Steve - we should definitely avoid 'different branding for different audiences'.

I also agree that we are speaking to humans, not 'organisations'. This is one of the tricky elements of 'enterprise adoption' i.e. it is an individual(s) who will have to make a decision for their organisation - when the individual and organisation are pretty much the same thing (start-up or 'one man band') the implications of "making a bad decision" are different from an IT Director making a bad decision for their employer. That is were the 'confidence' thing is really important. They need to be confident that if they suggest Drupal as a solution for their business, "they are not going to get laughed out the room" (quote from a FTSE 100 IT Director). This is where branding comes into play.

The Marketing of Drupal

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