>> If I put the Firebird logo on my website and it says something
>> like: "Firebird: Your powerful ally" or "Firebird: The Legend"
>> What is there to tell visitors if it represents anything of
>> interest to them? These could mean anything.

> But with a sub-slogan under "Firebird: Your powerful ally" or
> "Firebird: The Legend" which states something like:

>> Firebird: SQL relational databases (or one of other variants of
>> this "direct" slogan)

> We will catch attention of visitors and will tell them also
> what about is Firebird. They will remember the name - because
> the name is legend (or powerful ally) and they will know that
> this is RDBMS. If they have interests in that area - they will
> spread the name to others.

So what you are saying is that we want to use works like
Free, Powerful, Easy
(or whatever) to catch peoples attention. Yes?

Words that I see on pretty much every advert for products of
almost every type (software or not). Words that happen so
often that my eyes skim over them as meaningless drivel.

So once you have supposedly caught my attention (with this
stuff that made my eyes glaze-over) then I will look at the
fine print to discover what it is someone got so excited over?
Maybe it does work on the general population, but to me it
is just so much hogwash. I firstly want to know if it is
something I might use, then I will probably want to know if it
is going to be affordable and then I might look for details.

IMO it is the graphic logo that has the job of catching the
eye. The next step is to show the person that it is a topic
they are interested in (if the logo did not achieve that, which
ours does not). Then you can add some relevant additional
details underneath if necessary.

If I had to support any of the slogans we have see so far I
would probably choose between the sausage and the legend,
mainly because these are not things I see on adverts for
everything from pornography to island holidays (not sure where
software fits in the middle of all that). Hmmm... then again
maybe I have seen these words elsewhere too. ;-)

For (hopefully obvious) reasons legend somewhere in the slogan
is better than sausage. I could support some variation on
legend; The legend reborn. The legend continues. and a few
others we have seen go past.

Note: I prefer the additional qualification to the slogan
("reborn" or "continues") because the use of "legend" refers
back to the Interbase past (or so the historical connotations
of the word would seem to indicate) and we cant really claim to
be "the legend" while Interbase is still waiting to slide into
history. It is this apparent reference back to Interbase that
I really find to be the worst part of "legend" in the slogan,
since it could make a person think they may as well go with
the "original" legend.


The various emotive words like "powerful" etc have come about
from the suggestion that we should evoke emotions from people
reading the slogan. I think legend achieves that without
being so common as to be painful.

OTOH: Most of the emotions I experience in regard to Firebird
(and all software development) are ones of frustration (why cant
I get this to work), impatience (why cant I develop faster) and
depression (there goes another deadline). Not exactly the ideal
candidates for a slogan. (It could just be that I am having a
bad couple of months.)

I am just too cynical for the task of marketing, which is
probably why (among many reasons) my "enterprise" still does
not fit the industry definition of the term.

--
Geoff Worboys
Telesis Computing