At 09:54 AM 8/04/2005 +0000, you wrote:

>Firebird goes by the slogan "The Database for the New Millenium".
>I am somewhat puzzled by it. Where did it originate?
>
>I am trying to figure out -- in mass marketing terms -- what
>functional and emotional benefits it intends to convey. Think Coca-
>Cola: "Delicious, Refreshing, Fun" The words "delicious, refreshing"
>are on every can and bottle for over a century and explain the
>functional benefit. The phrase "coke is fun" (accompanied by
>appropriate imagery) has been in their advertising for decades and
>conveys the emotional benefit.
>
>SAP's "The world's best run businesses run SAP" is also very clever.
>It is both functional (SAP contains the best practices of leading
>companies) and emotional (join the exclusive club of best run
>businesses). It also deflects a problem, which is that SAP is hard to
>implement and implementations often fail. The SAP slogan suggests
>that these failures occur at poorly run businesses, and nobody thinks
>of their own business as poorly run.
>
>I would be grateful if anybody can explain our slogan to me. Helen?
>Paul? Marius?

I think it stinks as well. I can't recall whose idea it was, Pavel's
possibly. It might have been thought to have some sort of significance
back in 2000 (though it's provably *not* the only RDBMS that avoided the
infamous bug), but who cares a jot about the new millennium today?

The t-shirts have "SELECT FIRST 1 RDBMS FROM open_source" which I think was
Roman's idea (or might have been Arno's). Personally, I don't like it
much, but at least it's "international" and it's not quite as naff as "The
Database for the New Millennium".

We should have a slogan competition, perhaps with a prize? I'd be willing
to contribute a copy of The Firebird Book to this end; maybe IBPhoenix or
CFLP could contribute a t-shirt?

Helen