Marketing, damnit!

The ideas behind the open source movement are very powerful.

How powerful?

So powerful that if a competent marketing team -- people who ordinarily churn out boring beer commercials -- are asked instead to create a commercial for Linux or Wikipedia, they can make something mindblowingly inspiring without breaking stride.

That doesn't happen very often because open source projects are broke. But when it does happen, you get stuff like this 2003 ad:



link, if you can't see the embed

After watching that, I want to marry the open source movement and have its children. This is the kind of power your typical corporation has to shape public perception; usually it's spent trying to get you to increase your detergent consumption.

Now some Texas design students have created a mock ad campaign for Wikipedia, complete with magazine ads, a T-shirt, posters, etc. It so utterly fucking rocks.



The artistic vision:

"Many people tend to view Wikipedia as an unreliable source of information because anyone can edit entries on the website.

Our concept was to present an everyday person as an "expert" on a specific subject in order to show that whether the information comes from a university professor or from an avid gamer, it is still reliable.

Each piece shows a straight view of each persona and a mind map of their thought process. We felt this approach humanizes the experience of Wikipedia."

via