Community-contributed Advertisement

[javaJake]

Twas thinking just now about the life, world, and politics, and a 40w light bulb suddenly shown forth.

Seriously, though, I thought it'd be cool to pull together some of the ideas around here for posters. (Dare I hope for videos?) The idea is to gather everyone's ideas, and list 'em here. Then the artful members of this community could use that inspiration later on.

For starters, we could think about different ways of targeting different audiences. General design ideas of how to format everything is also good. Once there's enough to go off of, people could start writing up draft posters. Obviously we can't do too much until there's a nice render or picture of the finalized Pandora.

I've written up some categories and items to start with, but I'll change it around once people start posting stuff. Suggestions about how all this should work are welcome - I do not want to monopolize this, but open it up for everyone to contribute!

Targeting Different Audiences

• General populace:"personal assistant with a really good game collection for the young office worker who doesnt want to sell his soul to the 'man' quite yet" - Linkous

[*]Gamers:

• "maybe something that smears the PSP or DS on processing power and screen size" - Linkous

[*]Linux fans:

• (Nothing yet)

[*]Everyone (general stuff):

• (Nothing yet)

Slogans, Snazzy One-liners, and other Textual Ideas

• "...a slogan like 'make your game ideas reality....worldwide'" - Linkous
• "Pandora - Open Mind, Open Source" - icurafu
• "Pandora, steal back your childhood memories." - imec

Miscellaneous Details

• "we should make them small/big enough that ameateur promoters can print 20 of them out and post them all over." - Linkous
• "If someone could make a design incorporating a stylized version of the O rune and P rune, that would be cool. ...First of all, runes by themself will add to the mysterious nature of the name 'Pandora.' ...Another reason for this is the dual nature of runes." Yrx

 

[Magnulus]

A 40W lightbulb?! You environmental pig! When -I- get ideas, they're always in compact flourescent. They take a tiny bit longer to fire up, and they're of variable quality, but they don't use NEARLY as much energy!! ^_^

Sounds like a fair idea. Any way in which we can advertise the Pandora is just a bonus, I would say, even if it turns out that they're doing all their own advertising. If anything, it gives amateur designers a change to cut their teeth some more and make something for their portfolio. Spec Ads are good for that.

 

[icurafu]

Maybe it was a flourescent light bulb at 40W. That's how bright an idea it was.

 

[StealthBagel]

Why would you want to advertise for a company? Is it your job to influence profits of a company run by people you've never met, when you're already giving them your money for a product (like a handheld.) .... Let their products be their own problem and marketing them too....

IMHO the relationship a lot of people on this forum have with people producing products for sale is unprofessional and really makes me uneasy, because when there are customer support problems the sellers aren't expected to respond with professionalism, and even being able to buy a handheld "because it's open-source" is considered some kind of privelege by many. It's not a privelege, you're buying something with money....

Well advertising costs money too and any serious professional project would have a budget for such already. Do I burden myself with if Nintendo or Sony or Nokia or whoever needs my help advertising before I buy one of their products? No.....

 

[sparr]

We aren't advertising for the company, we are advertising for the device, and thus the community. That only one company makes the device in question is immaterial. I want more people to own GP2Xs for many reasons, and GPH's profit doesn't even make that list.

More users means more attention from commercial game devs, which means more professionally made games.

More users means more homebrew/port devs. A LOT more bad devs, and a few more good ones.

More users means a longer lifespan for the community as a whole.

More users means more attention from other hardware developers, who are only recently starting to 'get' that there are people out there that will buy Open devices.

 

[A_SN]

I hate to put ideas down like this (no actually I love it) but err, when's the last time you've seen a good commercial (video) made by amateurs? Remember the Firefox video commercial contest? They all sucked, except the Weeeee one, but somehow even this one wasn't fitting.

I don't think anyone even a bit likely to read this forum is capable of making a good enough video. As for posters, I don't know know what you mean with this idea. Do you mean a full page ad in a magazine?

Anyways, Craig said he won't start doing shit like sending free Pandoras to magazines for reviews and such before it gets quite a lot of software, that means months after the thing will come out, so whatever you do, don't do it before Craig starts doing it to, or you will make it come off as a machine with no original software on to people who'll learn about it too early on.

 

[javaJake]

Maybe it was a flourescent light bulb at 40W. That's how bright an idea it was.

Yea, that was it.

Why would you want to advertise for a company? Is it your job to influence profits of a company run by people you've never met, when you're already giving them your money for a product (like a handheld.) .... Let their products be their own problem and marketing them too....

Call it word-of-mouth then.

I hate to put ideas down like this (no actually I love it) but err, when's the last time you've seen a good commercial (video) made by amateurs? Remember the Firefox video commercial contest? They all sucked, except the Weeeee one, but somehow even this one wasn't fitting.

That's why I asked "dare I hope for a video?" I'm not expecting video ideas - I'm expecting poster/image/text/other-forms-of-still-ads ideas.

 

[realyst]

Slogan ideas:

"Open Pandora and let the leetness kick you in the face."

or,

"Open Pandora...because Closed Pandora is a dick."

Maybe

"Open Pandora, for there is a little Awesome in there suffocating and needing to come out."

"Open Pandora: Oh...your iTouch can only do that? How quaint."

"Open Pandora: Better then sex. Well....as far as you know, anyways."

 

[dabomb3627]

i agree about letting the pandora get a respectable amount of software, even a few well built emulators would probably do well enough. but for posters, we should make them small/big enough that ameateur promoters can print 20 of them out and post them all over. we should have one poster that advertises its general all terrain capacity (for lack of a better term) as like a personal assistant with a really good game collection for the young office worker who doesnt want to sell his soul to the "man" quite yet. another poster that advertises gaming, maybe something that smears the PSP or DS on processing power and screen size. (not that we're looking for competition) and a slogan like "make your game ideas reality....worldwide".

 

[javaJake]

Linkous, your ideas have been added. I'm leaving the sarcastic ideas out, if you guys don't mind.

I'll begin brain-storming myself. I've just been so busy with all sorts of stuff that my mind is doing somersaults.

 

[icurafu]

Actually, the iPod touch ad was really really good.

But I guess apple people and firefox people are different.

Apple people have a lot of useless skills like creativity, whereas firefox people are more likely to horde useful skills + vi.


I remember someone did posters for the GP2X. (DaveC?) Did anyone ever post them?

 

[realyst]

... I'm leaving the sarcastic ideas out, if you guys don't mind.

You're no fun

 

[A_SN]

Actually, the iPod touch ad was really really good.

Just watched it, you've got a point, that's a good ad. Reason for that is, it shows how using the product is like (it doesn't try to insinuate that owning it will get you laid with super hot chicks unlike military ads), and what "awesome cool stuff" you can do with it.

So it's all quite obvious, if you want to make a commercial for the Pandora, leave your wit at the door, just show in a good way what's the most awesome stuff you can do with it. Which might require a survey, "What about the Pandora gives you a "geekgasm" (or if you prefer, a "bonerd")" in terms of applications (that is, stuff you can do with it) and if it turns out it's chatting on MSN, watching YouTube, playing Final Fantasy VII on PSX and Quake III, then that's what you've gotta show!

When you think about it, your "commercial" could be simply a modest video depicting these things, all of it edited in a concise manner. I think that when the time comes, we (a part of the community) could do that, that is, decide what to depict, then someone with a decent camera would do the filming, optionally someone considered skilled for video editing will step up, we will determine if there's anything wrong with the video or if anything could be improved, we'll use the youtube .flv exploit to have a high quality vid put up there and then we'd Digg it, blog about it, send it to Engadget, ask Craig to embed it on the official site, etc..

 

[whiskthecat]

we'll use the youtube .flv exploit to have a high quality vid put up there

Don't forget about stage6. Great for GP2X users because it's a simple drag and drop to the device since it is already in divx format.

 

[A_SN]

we'll use the youtube .flv exploit to have a high quality vid put up there

Don't forget about stage6. Great for GP2X users because it's a simple drag and drop to the device since it is already in divx format.

Yeah but no, you'll have more visibility on YouTube. More than anywhere else.

 

[StealthBagel]

I understand you want to advertise to get more community and more good software but you have to understand 1) devs will write for any hadware they are passionate about, I say that because I am one and I've seen emu authors on this forum write for hardware that almost no one uses, like the Gizmondo..... and 2) in this day and age good hardware propagates on its own from people who genuinely like it, through tech media and link sites like engadget/digg etc, and not through a small group of amateurs forcing their ideas on others. The only reason big companies use huge ad campaigns is because they can influence a wide audience with huge ad budgets and they have brand recognition whereas pandora has neither capability.

Instead... for success and widespread publicity Pandora must be a good device people like and advertising will take care of itself for the most part.

 

[Magnulus]

Using .flv in Youtube has never resulted in better video for me. Better, stereo sound, but the video was no better. It still down-converts to around 200 Kb/s. You know some secrets I don't?

 

[dabomb3627]

I understand you want to advertise to get more community and more good software but you have to understand 1) devs will write for any hadware they are passionate about, I say that because I am one and I've seen emu authors on this forum write for hardware that almost no one uses, like the Gizmondo..... and 2) in this day and age good hardware propagates on its own from people who genuinely like it, through tech media and link sites like engadget/digg etc, and not through a small group of amateurs forcing their ideas on others. The only reason big companies use huge ad campaigns is because they can influence a wide audience with huge ad budgets and they have brand recognition whereas pandora has neither capability.

Instead... for success and widespread publicity Pandora must be a good device people like and advertising will take care of itself for the most part.

quit bein a party-pooper, we're just trying to get the word out. if this pandora production flops, craigix wont make anymore. but if it takes off, we may even see it mass produced (not likely but still) we dont want this great machine to die diving into the water.

 

[atomicthumbs]

If I could get a 3D model, I'd make a video.

 

[A_SN]

Using .flv in Youtube has never resulted in better video for me. Better, stereo sound, but the video was no better. It still down-converts to around 200 Kb/s. You know some secrets I don't?

I do, indeed http://forum.videohelp.com/topic336882.html

Basically you can encode with a higher bit-rate and cheat on the video duration tag to fool YouTube into accepting the video as it is. Allows you to use such high bitrates that nobody can even watch the video smoothly.