I'm considering buying 10,000 bumper stickers. Buying this many greatly reduces the cost of each. I would then hope to resell them in packs of say 50. That would be a large enough size that the packing, shipping, tracking money etc. wouldn't be a huge commitment on my part. I wouldn't want to mess with mailing one at a time :)

The idea would be to sell them and take any proceeds and use them to help the project in other ways. Perhaps producing and posting easy to install CDs, or mailing info. to schools, or buying ads.

Here's my current bumper sticker design. [edit] shoot! I had another design which included the project URL, but I think it's on my PC at home, I'll have to post a new link tonight.[/edit]

If you think bumper stickers is a good idea, and you'd be willing to buy a pack of say 50 bumper stickers for $25 USD, please click the little green plus sign beneath this post. I'd like to see 30 clicks to give me a comfortable feeling that there would be some support for such an effort.

I should point out that at this point, it's just an idea. I've not discussed it with the project team, have no approval, nor specific designation for how they feel the proceeds should be used. I don't even have permission to modify their logo at this point. Therefore I have no IMMEDIATE plans to pursue it, but it's something I was thinking of doing in the coming two months or so.

If I buy 10,000 of 'em, I'd have to sell about 80 packs of 50 to break even on the shipping and printing costs. After that there's potentially $2,500USD more to sell and use for other purposes. (please don't try to follow the math too closely, every additional pack would have costs for packaging, shipping, etc. even after you breakeven on the up front printing costs).

Let's leave the ideas for how to spend the money for another thread.

Please post any alternative bumper sticker layouts here, and your thoughts on whether this would help bring people to crunch Rosetta. And click your "+" vote if you'd be willing to buy a pack.

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Great idea. I'd buy a pack. I think the URL would be important. There's also the option of having the stickers be a bit 'stickier' mentally. . we used these "Do you Boinc?" posters in our dorms and a survey showed almost everyone had noticed them:

https://boinc.bakerlab.org/rosetta/rah_misc.php

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we used these "Do you Boinc?" posters in our dorms

I had seen that poster on the website. And for a college environment, I think "Would you BOINC for ice cream?" was REALLY an appropriate catch phrase. But, for children and a wider audience, I for one, prefer to remain more conservative. And on a bumper sticker, you don't get to use many words. I'm just hoping to get the reader curious enough to find out what it's about. I think that's about all you can expect from a bumper sticker.

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Yeah, as a fundraising idea I think the bumper sticker idea has merit but I honestly don't think it will provide increased participation with the project. If you can raise a few bucks by selling them along with coffee mugs or whatever then go for it. But it's my honest opinion it won't produce any new computing power. I call 'em like I see 'em, folks.

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Founder of BOINC GROUP - Objectivists - Philosophically minded rational data crunchers.

Does anyone around here work in the marketing world? There must be a reason car dealerships put their name on licence plate covers.

I think the sticker idea is a good one, you're at least exposing the name to people that wouldn't have heard of it otherwise. The rate might be low, but it's better than nothing.

Feet1st. . I think the hard part is going to be finding 10k people to put it on their car. Maybe something smaller to start, say 250, and send them out to R@H users for free? Perhaps get the funds for the stickers and postage by donation, I'd pitch in 20 or 30 bucks.

The top google result for 'custom bumper sticker' will make 3x10 stickers for $.68 each. Add in .39 for postage, and .15 for an envelope. . that's $1.22 per ($305 for all 250).

If you made a basic site where people could request them, with a link to a paypal account for donations (not required to get the sticker). . you might still end up with a bit extra for the next round of stickers or to try another idea.

-Ethan

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Ethan, I'm a salesman...and a pretty good one.

The issue of bumper stickers is a matter of cost to benefit analysis. Everyone here wants the most from the project. Sometimes ideas are just not fruitful. I honestly think that this is not a productive idea if considered as one that generates teraflops. It is with merit when considered that it can raise revenues but that is the extent of it. That is my objective opinion (if you wanted it). I post this message with the best interest of the project at heart.....

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Founder of BOINC GROUP - Objectivists - Philosophically minded rational data crunchers.

The top google result for 'custom bumper sticker' will make 3x10 stickers for $.68 each. Add in .39 for postage, and .15 for an envelope. . that's $1.22 per ($305 for all 250).

I found that three color printing (which makes it more eyecatching I believe) is more expensive. So, some numbers I saw were that I could get 1,000 for roughly $300USD. ...and that I could get 10 times more, for roughly 6 times the cost.

I'm hoping that, worldwide, 10,000 stickers, vs 27,000 active users isn't that big of a stretch. I only need 1% of them to take part, and that's assuming no additional users between now and when such a program would be rolled out.

If you made a basic site where people could request them, with a link to a paypal account for donations (not required to get the sticker). . you might still end up with a bit extra for the next round of stickers or to try another idea.

I'm trying to avoid all of that. Can you imagine simply addressing all of the envelopes to mail them out to people one at a time? And Paypal takes a percentage of every sale that way too. Also you're now paying as much in postage as you are for stickers.

The mission here is to give people a vehicle to get the message out. Each participant is tasked with bringing in 10 new crunchers. So, let's say you do half of that and bring in 5, give them each 10 stickers and tell them they are to find 10 more.

It was a simple matter of logistics. I'm the volunteer that's going to be handling all the orders. I may find one or two others to help when the time comes. But I'd much rather handle a maximum of 200 orders and move 10,000 stickers, than be spending the rest of my days simply trying to recoup my expenses, and hours reconciling paypal accounts.

Robert, I can relate to your point about cost/benefit. And, for the record, I'm no salesman. As you can see now in what I've described above, the fact that I ship in packs of 50 is a part of what may make this work. It gets people to go out and talk about Rosetta, and THAT is what gets you the users... not so much someone seeing the sticker as you drive by or they walk past your car in the parking lot, and Googling it and enrolling.

By the way, Ethan, if you like the idea, please go down to the bottom and click the green "+" on the original post.

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For the last 9 years I've driven around a 1976 Corvette with the license plate that reads "Buy me". It piques interest enough that people will ask me about it once or twice a year. So the approach works; but obviously not very well for the intended purpose. How much more likely are people to visit an intriquing URL, or to ask the driver about it? Or give you the opportunity to speak to neighbors, friends, family about why you're running around with the weird bumper sticker?

Granted, it's much cheaper than the "I'll let you have this computer if you run this DC client on it" approach. :)

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By the way, Ethan, if you like the idea, please go down to the bottom and click the green "+" on the original post.

I did. . Housing and Food Services is the account I manage for our work computers. . I didn't want to double dip in your survey :)

I'm putting feelers out to the Geek Squad. . they touch thousands of computers that wouldn't likely get R@H otherwise. If they offered it as a free service, they get the pr and their customers feel good about participating. Maybe they could hand out the stickers for everyone who signs up?

-E

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Feet1st....if you decide you want to pursue the bumper sticker/magnet thing then let me know. There's a company here that I am familiar with that perhaps I can cut a bit of costs. I do advise against it though. But I will be willing to make the calls and set up the manufacturing contract if you wish. But again, I do not think it is the wisest use of your money.

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Founder of BOINC GROUP - Objectivists - Philosophically minded rational data crunchers.

I didn't want to double dip in your survey

Stupid rules! :)

Great work on the Geeks. Keep us posted in the Bring users to Rosetta thread.

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My 2 (euro-)cents, keeping in mind that marketing tactics might have vastly different effect in different countries/cultures:

Bumper-stickers or T-shirts or mugs or hats are great gadgets for "fans", people who want to show their enthousiasm, their "affection" etc to a product/idea. They are also "tools" which can be used by marketers to enhance brand awareness and "loyalty".

So overall, I'd say a bumper-sticker should be popular and warmly received among fans, i.e. people who already crunch for Rosetta.

But, to yield good results in TeraFLOPS, i.e. have best "bang-for-buck" attracting new CPUs, we need to do very focused "marketing" to user groups that have potential. So IMO "marketing" should mainly target user groups which are relatively tech-savvy (in comparison to the general population) and tend to own high-end computers.

This particular demographic group can generally be reached via the Internet itself.

PS: I've tried several different "marketing" pilots over the past 2 months and will post my conclusions here in the next few days. In short, IMO the best approach is to sell it with a catchline like "Put your PC to work to cure disease". From this perspective, the "benefit" to the user is the cool screensaver and the incentive to keep it running is the competition for credits.

Talking about general audience, the "blunt", in your face "Put your PC to work to cure disease" message, I'm seeing about click-through rates of 0.3%-2% (depending on positioning), i.e. 3 people in a 1000. That's the % initial interest (of which many won't fit, as they have no higher-end PC etc). A more subtle phrasing (I used WCG's) has a click-through rate of 0.03%, i.e. 3 people in 10000.

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Founder of BOINC GROUP - Objectivists - Philosophically minded rational data crunchers.

Have we settled this now?

There's nothing to settle. We're all on the same team. I have a number of fires burning. I'm floating an idea. I appreciate your marketing perspective. I may chose to proceed anyway. Please take no offense if I do. I'm simply trying to show some results. Something more than a post on a message board. I'm trying to put my actions where my mouth (and handle "feet1st") is.

My click through rates have only been around .1%. But there's nothing like trying to write a Google ad to help you focus your thoughts. I started some pilot tests April 1st. To date, I've had 41,000 ads delivered, and 39 click throughs at a cost of $16.61. I have two types of compaigns, one was a week long focus on specific science-oriented websites, the other is based on the keywords used in searches. Perhaps with a budget larger than $.67 a day could improve my numbers. I too plan to post more details and seek marketing advice when I get a chance. So overall, I'm approaching 50 cents per click. Bumper sticker, 50 cents... it could get a click a month for a year, still 50 cents.

Perhaps we should start a thread, write your ad, you get (strict limits) a 25 character tag line, two 35 character description lines, then you also get to chose which words you'd like to bid on for having your ad placed. We could start a thread, "place your ad here", then people vote with the "rating" buttons. I've presently got over a dozen different ads for different search words. Not surprisingly some seem to have higher click throughs than others. But, alas, there still wouldn't be any action taken to make it happen.

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If anyone would like to see it, my revised bumber sticker design is now posted in the same URL.

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The url is a bit much to remember - so I'd ask if David could get www.RaH.org and have that site direct people to the main Rosetta site.
And wouldn't it be a little better to give the reader an idea of what the purpose of Rosetta is? Something along the lines of "Your computer can help with medical research"?

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drop the http:// and the /rosetta
as they are not needed

just boinc.bakerlab.org will suffice.

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Team mauisun.org

drop the http:// and the /rosetta
as they are not needed just boinc.bakerlab.org will suffice.

I wasn't sure if the current redirect that's in place might change over time. Also, some people set their browsers not to follow the redirects. And I'm thinking if you take the http:// off, then it isn't as clear that I'm showing you a URL, so now you need more words.

Hopefully the project can get a nice concise URL. Although I note the difficulty as several simple "Rosetta" names are already taken. And even that is only simple if you have some idea what Rosetta is, and can remember that name.

Your computer can help with medical research

I was hoping that with just three words "computing with purpose" I might pique your interest. But I'm all for telling people what it's about if we can fit it in a 3 x 11.5 inch bumper sticker and still have it somewhat readable at highway speed. Just to give you a feel, I threw together how your idea might look.

Perhaps something shorter? Like... "Your PC, advancing science"? or "home PCs advancing science"? or "Home computers helping science"?

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Hey, Feet1st. That bumper sticker design you made looks pretty good! I like it.

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Founder of BOINC GROUP - Objectivists - Philosophically minded rational data crunchers.

Hey, Feet1st. That bumper sticker design you made looks pretty good! I like it.

Thanks, what do you think of the all important tag line? Is intrique enough, or is one of the "tell 'em what it is" tag lines going to be more effective, from a marketing perspective?

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