Exciting New Emacs Commercial!!!

It doesn't exist yet, lol. But it's an idea I just had. I don't have the skill to do anything like this, but maybe someone else (or a group of people) do. It would contain music maybe starting slow and crescendoing throughout the commercial. Short scenes of individuals doing crazy complicated physical, artful, skillful /r/nextlevel kind of stuff, interspersed with crazy text on a screen moving around (typical org mode stuff, LaTeX editing, etc.), matrix looking stuff, more individuals performing high precision things, etc. Building up, and then ending with a finale and "Emacs" with logo on the screen. Fade to black. (Or fade to matrix.) I've read a few posts here and there about the need to get more people into Emacs. They usually focus on "how to change emacs to appeal to a wider audience". I'm not going to touch that subject, but simple marketing can be powerful. When I search google for ["Emacs Commercial"](https://www.google.com/search?q=%22emacs+commercial%22) I get a grand total of 20 results (none of which is a commercial). Youtube returns zero. Surely there's some skillful people out there, passionate about Emacs, who would also like to work on or collaborate on a few commercials? I could see another commercial that has testimonials from people. **EDIT: Someone asked for some examples.** So I searched some videos, and here are some examples. Please bear in mind I'm not saying EXACTLY like these videos, this was after only 5 minutes of searching. At a very high level, something like this (but talking about emacs, of course): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f7qy6dz8gEM Here's a good video of testimonials. The idea would be to show real people who give high level talking points about the benefits of emacs to their work and life. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R-O9tnTuDb0. Here's another example that drills down another level. An easy to watch animation of the high level benefits of emacs. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GzON3q8S00Y.

Most of us here are students who don't yet see money as the emf driving a circuit. All throughout my student years, I figured teachers, admissions committees, and foreign girls liked me for me. Anybody can pay for a splashy advertising campaign that intrigues the general public but says nothing about the product. Apple and more notoriously GoDaddy are very good at this. But it's not until emacs can convince investors of ROI that such a campaign could happen, and the FSF rather sucks at the hard sell.

Besides the specifics of its content and a who would fund it… …in what contexts or channels would a "commercial" be useful?

> who would fund it… \#1 I thought someone with video production knowledge and a passion for emacs might think this is a good idea to contribute on a volunteer basis. \#2 If the commercial itself was cool enough, a simple occasional posting to r/videos or something might gain interest. I know that's a shotgun approach, but that's just one example. This is a kernel of an idea. Maybe this or an iteration of this idea might be useful.

Hum, Emacs benefit from *users*, developers etc, generic advertisement like wearing Emacs logo T-shirts might be a kind-of status symbol and something to start a discussion at a conference but they hardly give anything to the community IMO... Doing Tiktok-alike stuff is even less useful IMO. Showcases alongside with configs easy to "copypaste" and some small tutorials might really be of help, I mean something like: - Literate DevOps, a classic :: https://youtu.be/dljNabciEGg - even better :: https://youtu.be/B6jfrrwR10k - PM/Gantt stuff :: https://youtu.be/5ViUBaarsbw However to really drive up users they also need some more broad video-tutorials series like the ones from Mike Zamansky, Rainer König, Stavrou Protesilaos, David Wilson and many others. All of them require far more effort than /r/nextlevel stuff...

I don't think emacs will ever convince any capitalistic organization to spend money on it. And I'm sorry if I didn't explain my idea well, but that was not my intent.

A splashy, "sexy commercial" would definitely be a shotgun approach. It would have a ridiculously low "conversion rate" (people who see the commercial vs. people who adopt emacs). But it would help to market emacs, in it's own small way. I just imagined the commercial, and wanted to share the idea I guess. > Doing Tiktok-alike stuff is even less useful IMO. I wasn't suggesting that (I don't think I was suggesting that!). But now that you mention it, YES WHY NOT TIKTOK-ALIKE STUFF? It's a new world, and this is how some/many younger people get information.

Well, mostly because of the relevant public. People these days is a bit partitioned in cohorts, for instance on Reddit you find few cohorts, most of mean or high culture, depending on the sub, respect of for instance Facebook, on HN you find a certain set of cohorts etc. While I do not like such "partitioning", an kind of neo-feudalism products, that do exists in our society, so if you attract Tiktokers you almost attract a cohort of people that might be interested in the Emacs WOW effect but not much willing to learn, even less to contribute. Showing something exiting to most of them instead of being useful for them and for Emacs community might result in a kind of "that's the nerd power, you can't get it". Advertising for business try to enlarge the potential buyer/investors so aim at a broad audience, selecting just in payment capacity terms, for a FLOSS project advertising IMVHO should be meant to benefit both who advertise and who get interested, in that case the audience need to be chosen a bit both to avoid waste of resources, users frustration to even potentially dangerous evolution like many FLOSS projects today that becoming led by people who born and get training in a commercial IT/cloud mindset and who not know desktop computing at all try to mimic what they know with a really bad outcome.

Yes, perhaps you can get volunteer labor to create a video. There's plenty of people producing videos showing off cool uses or feature of emacs. They're not going to be called "commercials", though, which is why your searching is returning no results. What makes a "commercial" different, in your mind? And why is that the best way to convince people to use emacs?

Then it would seem you share in the student misconception that every tv blipvert spreading awareness about starving children, animal cruelty, and the jewish world service isn't necessarily financed by a backer expecting a return on his investment. > I don't think emacs will ever convince any capitalistic organization to spend money on it. I certainly hope that's not the case, for my own sake.

"Commercial" suggests a highly flashy, low substance video. Something that peaks awareness and branding. Something that "looks like a commercial". A video that focuses on the one simple message: "There's something amazing out there called "emacs" which is associated with high performance computing". So when someone sees or hears about emacs again, their mind will be primed with the message. Or a (slightly less flashy) commercial that also includes some broad based testimonials. Still not too detailed, but focusing on the message: "This system is great for THESE PEOPLE WHO ARE LIKE YOU, for note-taking, success in life, organization, second-brain, etc." without getting too detailed. > And why is that the best way to convince people to use emacs? It's not the best way. The best way is clearly word of mouth and people who seek out this kind of thing. But this is simply another way... another mode of marketing.

> I've read a few posts here and there about the need to get more people into Emacs. You might be building off of a false premise.

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[Props to the ass clown who paid for Carole Baskin's endorsement](https://www.reddit.com/r/emacs/comments/igitos/carol_baskins_recommends_emacs/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3)

That's hillarious.

This should not be.

I probably wouldn't have switched to emacs if it had slick, sleazy commercials. The less of that garbage, the better.

Do you mean something like the “Emacs rocks” videos? https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVfFIUHWy-aNaF08m34sO81dsVr4L7uI-

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Thanks for the comment. Not like those videos. In reply to you, I've added an edit to my main post. Here's a quick link for you [back to the top of this post](https://www.reddit.com/r/emacs/comments/spcxu8/exciting_new_emacs_commercial/).

Thanks for the discussion! I've added in an edit to my main post above, giving (VERY rough) video comparison examples of what I mean.

I've added in some comparative video examples to my main post, above.

My premise is that the long term viability of vibrant communities (like this sub) requires a regular influx of new members to at least replace those who leave (or become inactive).

I've seen your edits, however still fail to get the target: the OneDrive video target non-IT, non-tech savvy users, the AWS one target equally non-IT pro but managers, essentially in all cases the target is "ignorant" people to be caught in the net for selling a service they use or they ordered someone else to use. Emacs do not benefit by such cohort of people. Of course you can create a similar video to attract tech savvy users, but to really attract them you need not just the showcase but also how to get it running on those users desktops, quickly and easily. And Emacs miserably fail on that point simply because most of it's development is done by long-timers that do have personal complex configs so do not care about defaults for newcomers and new users tend to land on "framework" like Doom, Spacemacs, Purcell, Prelude, ... regularly finding issues due to their lack of Emacs knowledge and lack of anyone that draw a pre-digested and up-to-date path to that knowledge. FLOSS flourished in the past thanks to universities where other FLOSS users pass the knowledge, showcase and work together with newcomers, in person. Flourished because most of the development was done by them, by end-users, non-IT companies that do develop the software they need, teachers, researchers, nerds who develop the software they need. Nowadays most FLOSS development is done by few Big&Powerful that do develop for their own needs that's normally goes against users needs. Long story short: FLOSS do miss "commercials" you ask because it miss a trait-d'union between users and developers that have lost years ago. This "tech issue" can't be compensated with advertisement, it can IMO only be compensating by constructing new communities where generic people interact together, like usenet in the past where *in the same open platform no one really own at a whole* different people use the same tools to interact each others and exploring around it's easy. A stupid example: when I start to like climbing I've look for it.sport.montagna (I'm Italian) and there I find *both* newcomers like me and famous climber together. I've learn much. Reddit today? There are almost unsearchable subs, you discover them by peer knowledge, where communities are mostly isolated in island and exploration is hard. Only the platform rule, only the platform know and censor. in that world there is not possible "target" IMO for such videos, because there is no "product" that can match reachable people desiderata. Talking about the power of Emacs do works, of course, because Emacs is powerful, is probably the best human-computer interaction environment we have in the world. But require time and effort because in today world peoples are not powerful, they are mostly slaves just able to click around and changing that demand a tremendous effort, it's not something doable in a snap. Most people though to be kept slave are inhabited, trained, to fly from a product/service to another in a snap, never learning something really useful for life, never having power in their own hands. So to showcase the power you need to change counterparts mentality before or you do not goes much further... With Emacs I can do many things most my colleagues (so people with similar work life and competences) do in a far longer/harder manner, but most of them while feel the wow effect seeing me in action do not want to invest enough time to reach the same proficiency in Emacs they simply think the outcome is awesome but the investment too big and in the end they feel well enough as they are. Of course, if just having emails in Emacs would be as simple as configuring thunderbird *many* will come. But no one write such automation because most already have a working home-grown one and do not have time, interest or knowledge to pre-cook that for a broad audience. In the past interaction bridge the gap, these day we have isolation...

Interesting thoughts, thanks! I just thought it would be a cool video to make, really.

I agree in coolness terms, my point is just in usefulness terms :-) I dream a "modern Emacs" that for instance offer a quickly configurable email solution "just set SMTP, IMAP, if and where you want to sync mails and there you go, after you can write down filters and automation on top", a quickly usable file storage solution (org-roam-node-find alike access, org-attach underneath and links, org-ql queries to see specific views of personal information) etc but while I craft something like that for me, in a complete messy spaghetti-code environment that work enough for me with scotch here and there to avoid a big bang, I fail to see something that can really be proposed without just offering "smoke" of false hopes like "hey se, me, myself and I can do that and you can't" or "hey, that's easy you can master your digital world in a snap" lying about how big and long is reach such level because no generic ready-made solution exists and so various Emacs-ers homegrown their own in years, alone, so never reaching a real "generally valid" sharable point...