BrandValuesAndVision

Brand Features and Values

In brainstorming the next phase of the company and the two brands, we came up with a distilled list of the taglines and messages to get across in our products and brands.

Brands

We have two brands:

• Zope
• Digital Creations

The current plan is to launch a new brand:

• Content management system running on Zope

Here are some sample project names:

• Zaxis, Zeal, Zebu, Zebra, Zodiac, Zenith, Zest, Zoom, Zone

The initial question: should the name of the content management system running on Zope have a Z and share brand traits (fonts, colors, etc.)?

New New Brand Strategy

Digital Creations intends to stake out its place in the content management system market.

During Stratum's first visit here, we told them the goal was to re-launch the Zope brand as a content management system. After floating trial balloons and collecting feedback, we realized that this was a mistake. Zope has a lot of brand loyalty and awareness, and trying to change Zope is both difficult and ill-advised. Additionally, we don't want Zope to be narrowed, just because Digital Creations is narrowing its focus.

Thus the new new brand strategy is to create a new CMS (content management system) brand atop Zope. Some notes:

• Like Zope, the CMS will be a platform rather than a product, meaning we will encourage other applications and businesses. Thus we have a two platform strategy, which can be tough.
• The CMS features and values of the CMS will help provide a roadmap for Zope, as it will set priorities for development.

Message

Out of the two brands emerge a message. This message is composed of various facets:

• Ideas, values, features, differentiators, strategies

Artifacts

The message is delivered in a great number of ways:

• Sales kit, investor prospectus, press releases, web sites, product information, development roadmap

Message Brainstorming

The following are messages that can be distinct to Zope or Digital Creations.

• First mover as Open Source content management system. This one is getting a bit tough as ArsDigita? now is moving there and they have $35M.
• Transforming content. People have a mental answer to "What is content?" that is very constricting. Zope will transform their ideas about content, management, and brand.
• Open Source means having control. With commercial software, your technology supplier controls your fate. With Open Source you get some control back. This can be represented by the car hood story:

  If the auto market was like the software market, cars would come with their hoods locked shut, and only the dealer could open the hood to fix problems. Obviously nobody in the auto market would stand for such a ploy. Even if someone had no desire to fix the car themselves, they want freedom to choose their own mechanic. And if the car broke down in the middle of the desert, it would be nice to crack the hood and poke around anyway.

• Open Source Vignette. This can't be played in the world at large verbatim, but it does convey a strategy. Namely the vendors in the market are about control, and about hype vs. reality distortion. This leads to market dissatisfaction.
• Time to market. This is two things: Zope/DC have a killer time to market story, and time to market for content beats everything (including top-end performance).
• All three tiers as managed content. From an architectural point of view this one sizzles. App servers have a three-tiered architecture: presentation, logic, and data. In basically every other system, the three tiers use different facilities. In the CMS, we'll stress that all three tiers are treated as managed content in one facility, and all will get consistent application of the facility's power.
• Faster ROI. Instead of saying free, cheap, or cost-effective, per Gary's suggestion we'll say far faster ROI by avoiding license fees.
• Both build and buy. In the "buy vs. build" decision, we are both. People can pay us to come in and jumpstart development and deployment. When we leave, though, the customer can own all the intellectual property. Moreover, they are getting a platform with a bunch of people worldwide that isn't an evolutionary dead-end like their "build" app.
• Tim's drawing. Tim O'Reilly drew a four stage drawing for me that I'll attempt to describe below:
  1. The early web. Everything was .html files on disk served up by Apache. Very simple to create minimal content. Power in the hands of the people.
  2. First dynamic web. Simple dynamicism through CGI files on disk and minimal applications. Equivalent to "build" in buy vs. build.
  3. Revenge of IT. Around 1998, IT fights back with huge, ponderous architectures that require programmers and database admins to do anything. These are classic content management "buy" decisions. In this architecture, the web is a gateway into a fairly old-style, 1980's application (systems programming languages connected to relational databases). The web is "outside" the website application.
  4. Content is the application. Post-2000, we unify the original view of the web with the increase in application sophistication. Both buy and build. Open source means regaining control. Architecture that puts power back in the hands of the other 99.99% of the people on the web. Website is just a place where content comes together from multiple locations internally and externally. We're not the train, we're the train station.

• Minimize risk. The Digital Creations method (contract, development, deployment) is all aimed at minimizing risk. Hard stuff is done up front, lots of little microdeliveries, etc.
• Zope is Now!. Previous attempt at PR campaign. Says two things: Zope is about time to market, and Zope has hot buzz as the next thing.
• The next thing. Tim O'Reilly has been going around saying that Java+Oracle is the way apps are done and Zope is the way apps will be done.
• Since Digital Creations only does work in Zope, the value of the company is well beyond that of a body shop.
• Perfect distance. We have to keep a perfect distance between the Zope brand and the Digital Creations brand.
• Army of messengers. Having a platform and a passionate community means our message travels far.
• Open Source means:
  • Your business comes first, participate in passion, relationship based on trust, death of classic software control model, DC as technology partner, control over your business plan
• Portal (troublesome label) means:
  • Not broadcasted content, integrate information, engaging your own community, scale your internal resources better, very high trafficed site for rapidly changing content, empower non-programmers, reusable information
• Through-the-web means:
  • Everything managed with a simple facility (web browser), web object model, database organized like a filesystem, thin client vs. competition, coherent infosystem (stuff not spread across the filesystem, /etc/passwd, .htpasswd, etc.), WebDAV?/FTP/XML-RPC/SOAP etc.
• Safely Delegate Control
  • Separate SQL and HTML and programmers, rich access control, safety net (undo, versions, safe DTML, transactions), extend content beyond corporate walls, customers that have customers that have ..., move central content "up" for reuse and security, collaboration

Portal Pilot

This is an idea Gary and I are throwing around. Portal Pilot puts a lot of functionality with minimal customization into a customer's hands quickly at a fixed price. Some notes:

• Pitched as a milestone on the journey to their real app. Doesn't really have much of their functionality in it. We configure a bunch of off the shelf stuff that gives most of the services (but few of the unique business details) of their ultimate app.
• Greatly improve the sales cycle.
• Get money on table early.
• Helps our internal champion sway others.
• Show early success.
• They participate early and become champions of the project.
• Help reduce FUD.
• Gets a foot in the door.
• Indoctrinate on our process.
• Throw in on-site training and 90 days of support.
• Fixed price for base portal plus options from functionality matrix.
• Self-bracketing by customer.
• Find the fox, meaning, find out who really pulls the trigger in the decisionmaking process.
• Repeatable revenues.
• Little custom work lets us invest in future profitability, but still begin setting scope.
• Provides a business offering for franchising Zope Business Partners.
• Lets others do the hard work of getting the platform in the door, letting us do the more lucrative work later.
• Create labor pool, both for us and potential customers, by franchising it.
• Network effects applied beyond software (Zope) to business (Digital Creations).
• Perhaps a certification to guarantee quality of other providers.

Events

Over the next few months, Digital Creations will have a number of happenings that can lead to news.

• Perl For Zope, XML releases, Interliant, Applix