The Creative Brief

If you’re looking at this, consider your self sworn to secrecy until such time as the "official" 1.0 release has been made...

Immediate and Near-Term Needs:
+ logo
+ marketing website
+ new manager theme/skin/layout
+ pre-baked web-side templates
+ "elevator pitch" and short background story
+ launch plan
+ support website (forums + file manager + bug tracker at the minimum)
+ base set of snippets for installer determined
+ announcement list (websites, blogger list, etc.)
+ Promos ... chotke give-aways, contests (iPod giveaway, anyone?) ...
+ Blog w/ Feedburner/RSS/Atom feeds

Why are we communicating?
An open source dev team has evolved ModX into a new CMS/application framework that is quite distinctive from Etomite.? We need a new name & outreach approach that brings new people into our development circle and introduces new users to our offering.

Who do we need to connect with?
Primary group in my mind is for bloggers that want/need more. Serious bloggers. This can be translated initially as technically savvy developers and designers who know what PHP is, and who at the minimum have at least attempted to hack some PHP code (which is very different from creating it from scratch in the first place)... bloggers, web designers, corporate developers, and even small business owners. Early adopter types. South by Southwest Panelist (SXSW). Influencers.

Some examples of these folks:
David Shea -- http://mezzoblue.com/
Brian Oberkirch -- http://www.lightbox5.com/likeitmatters/
The Stylegala Crowd -- http://www.stylegala.com/
Brainfuel -- http://www.brainfuel.tv/
Jon Hicks -- http://hicksdesign.co.uk/journal/
Shaun Inman -- http://www.shauninman.com/
Douglas Bowman -- http://stopdesign.com/
Cameron Moll -- http://www.cameronmoll.com/
Andy Budd -- http://www.andybudd.com/
John Kottke -- http://kottke.org/
D. Keith Robinson -- http://www.7nights.com/asterisk/
Mike Davidson -- http://www.mikeindustries.com/blog/
Dan Rubin -- http://superfluousbanter.org/
Richard Rutter -- http://www.clagnut.com/
Jeffrey Zeldman -- http://alistapart.com/ and http://zeldman.com/
Steve Smith -- http://www.orderedlist.com/
Brian Sweeting -- http://it.sweeting.net/

What do we know about them (and the market) that helps?
The CMS market is highly fragmented, with lots of ways to skin the cat.? Many homegrown, some open source, many commercial.? It?s a market that has yet to find a highly evangelized solution.? We?re trying to offer the best of both worlds:? flexible, powerful programming that is simple to use & doesn?t hinder designer creativity. Think Ruby on Rails for the rest of us, or .Net without the learning curve or MS-stigma, or Cold Fusion or Zope without the ummm... Cold Fusion or Zope!?

It?s also a highly peer driven environment.? Seeding with influentials is key.? Think about the take up for Movable Type.? Naming/branding/viral thinking is critical.? We want this to be a cool brand/tool that really makes great sites happen. Our solution makes you look good.

What?s the name?
tattoo

Possible line/slogan:
make your mark

URL:
TattooTheWeb.com (.net/.org/.biz/.info)

How come??
It?s punchy, memorable.? Has personality.? Puts the focus on creativity as opposed to technology.? Keys in on the prime value we?re offering ? powerful expression tool that is highly individualized.? Using Tattoo, Mr. savvy netizen, you can make your mark.

It?s a meme waiting to happen.? The logo is done in tattoo style.? Maybe there are endless variations on the logo, a la different tattoo artists.? It?s about making individual creativity possible.? It?s a renegade writing style.? Intensely personal.? Create a little graphic bug:? This site has been Tattoo?d.? User generated Tatttoo logos.? Flickr groups of ?Tattoo? tattoos.?

Who is the competition?
Right now, it’s opensource and mid-tier commercial stuff. Mostly PHP based but other options are viable. You could even consider some blogging tools as competition in reality. So given that, here’s some examples:

http://www.mamboserver.com/
http://web.burza.hr/en/ (particularly, http://web.burza.hr/en/core.web/#content)
http://www.etomite.org/ (duh!)
http://metacubecms.com/
http://jetbox.streamedge.com/
http://www.blogger.com/start
http://wordpress.org/
http://www.sixapart.com/movabletype/
http://reddot.com/
http://textpattern.com/
http://typo3.com/
http://drupal.org/
http://zope.com/Products/ZECMS.html
http://macromedia.com/software/webpublishingsystem/
http://camelback.net/
http://www.symphony21.com/ (beta soon)
http://www.gaincms.com/ (in early development/planning)


What about people that are "turned off" by Tattoos? (aka "Ryan’s Tattoo-Marketing Manifesto)
You don?t have to like Tattoos to like the name. To me it does imply a bit on the edge ? a bit of irreverence ? and damn near impossible to forget.

Tattoo: leave your mark on the web. I really, really like that.

I want a polarizing, eye-brow raising name. I don?t want safe.

When the CEO of Fat Brain (later acquired by Amazon, I think, during the heyday) named his company that, he damn near had a revolt from a lot of people that worked with him. Many thought no one would take it seriously, thought the name would doom them to failure. I?m sure a couple even quit over it. But you know what? It turned out to be a GREAT name that was sticky, and left no one guessing. It had a great logo, too ?

I?m 99% certain the name will resonate with our target early adopter market. And we need this target market that will drive it upstream to SMEs. It?s unfortunately going to take more than just us to get widespread adoption.

Who are they? In short, I want the big-time influencers?the SXSW panelists is our A-list target? to blog it and start using it in their businesses. The name ?Tattoo? will certainly not be detrimental or invoke negative connotations there.

Heck, even Herb Keller of Southwest Airlines used to run full page print ads with his arm totally decked out with a nice flamin? tattoo. SW also happens to be the only profitable commercial airlines (well, maybe Jet Blue now, but they?re just copying everything that SW does, years later). A bit irreverent and tounge in cheek? Yep. And they?re still to this day laughing all the way to the bank.

When we get down the road 18-months or so after launch, then the early adopters will have proven it to be a ?safe? choice and then the boring mid-level VPs can start pushing it up the corporate food chain. At that point, we can roll out an ?enterprise? version with a safe name. Make the crazy, bleeding edge Gen X/Yer ?grow up? and become ?mature?. But you know what, it?s just gonna be a wolf in sheep?s clothing, And wolves are bad-boys too! :lol:

Possible promotional ideas:
"Seasonal" Tattoo logos ala Google
Cool mini Tattoo site badges that start showing up everywhere
iPod giveaway for the coolest Tattoo plugin/module
Site showcase of really great sites
...

Work to date
http://veretxworks.com/tat/login.html (login prototype for new manager... showing logo which still needs tweaking)
http://veretxworks.com/tat/index3.html (new new manager navigation and styling prototype)

phew, that was a mouthful I would say

@ templates
Need something soft, hard, and punctual to grab the attention of the mambo crowd. I think that a lot of folks started to pay attention just about the time they came up with orange * theme. We get a few to start and I’m sure that many will take a look.

@ target users
Nothing like a slew of fanatics to spread the word.
I’m thinking here:
macosxhints.com
the drunkenbatman blog guy
and the guy who used to work for BBEdit ... errr ...
Well, namely Mac heads. Lots of folks on the mac side went geeklog just because it was picked up by the well known macosxhints.com.

Heck even ikonboard got a boost from the mac community because the lead programmer was a mac user.

I think that letting it be know every once in a while that mac users are here on the main team that this will get the ball rolling in a world of just the 3%.

hehe, the 3% that is the leader of the compute rindustry.

@ name
all on board with the tattoo name and coming image. Fits pretty much along the naming conventions that Igor likes to use. Might even attract the attention of the ladies who are out there too!

@ add ins to the above
Need to lay down a well thought out end user site. Have to have in place:

bug report location

road map / work board

download area (with the options: ranking, latest, preview, compatiblity, version) -- sourceforge type doesn’t really turn me on

international community (on same server might be a good idea)

paypal / sponsorship

wiki documentation

somewhat clear governance - xaraya gives off a feel that it’s just a download location and any outsider has no real feel of home.

community ! community ! community !
End users are the bread and butter that will push our cms above the rest. osC has what now 80,000 registered users, 10,000 + registered on display shops. This alone gives credit to the code (be it good or not but still the end user trusts numbers).

hmmm, any more ?