People find software in the strangest places
To download “JIRA”:http://www.atlassian.com/software/jira or “Confluence”:http://www.atlassian.com/software/confluence you need to fill out a standard “Where did you hear about us?” question. Someone at work recently pulled all the answers down, and I spent a fascinating half an hour today learning exactly where people find out about our software.
All the standard answers you’d expect were there – Google, searches, ads, announcements, news, TV, radio, blogs etc – but some of the more amusing ones caught my eye.
(Note that all answers in quotes are unedited, real person responses to the question. If you want, put on your best David Letterman voice if you want extra personal amusement credit.)
h3. 10. Word of mouth
You expect people to hear about good software through word of mouth, but “word of joe”, “mouth to mouth” and “mouth of cow” weren’t so expected.
h3. 9. Open is as open does Sir
Open Source is a big deal for us (see “Open Source Whores and Bigots”:http://blogs.atlassian.com/rebelutionary/archives/000490.html) so I have to nominate this person for one of the most amusing answers: “From your almost annoyingly brilliant idea to make all major os projects use Jira and Confluence 
“
h3. 8. It’s a family show
You’d be amazed how many family related entries we have. Direct family like “My mother”, “My father”, “My son”, “My brother”, “My brother-in-law” and “My sister” all featured heavily. More amusing were “from ur director’s sister” and “From your Mom”. (Is my mother marketing for us now?)
h3. 7. Love is in the air
Who said intimate relationships can’t result in commerce? “I love you”, “Spouse uses it at work”, “Wife uses JIRA at work”, “my boyfriend” and even simply “my love”. Who knew?
h3. 6. We have someone up above to thank
One of the most popular ‘clear BS’ answers was “God”. Do we have someone somewhere helping us we don’t know about? I’m not sure if He is more or less believable than the psychic user who found out about us “in my dreams”.
h3. 5. Omnipotence is everywhere
The most flattering (but least useful to us in terms of any marketing value) answer as to where people heard about us is “Everywhere”, which was blessedly common. Variations on this theme included “Everybody everywhere”, “Everyone knows JIRA!”, “everywhere (serious)”, “Everywhere, damnit!”, “everywhere, you’re famous 
“, “rhetorical: where haven’t I heard about you? everywhere” and my favourite “Everywhere. Apparently, you guys rock!” Apparently?
h3. 4. The tao of blog marketing
Marketroids the world over are in love with the power of blog marketing. Blogs are the future of marketing this, that and everything in between. As you’re reading my blog, you probably have some opinion of myself, but here are three from the answers: “From some smart guy’s blog” (I hope this is me?), “From that nice Mr Cannon-Brookes weblog” (My Mum would be proud) and “Some dickhead’s blog” (which I hope is not me).
h3. 3. The tech industry downturn
For many, getting a pink slip is a bad thing. For someone selling good software, perhaps it’s not such a bad thing at all? High churn in the tech industry is the strangest form of viral marketing I’ve learned – from the many answers like “used at my previous employer”. Beyond that we move to demanding second-time users “bought it already at a previous company – deserve a t-shirt” and even the thrice lucky, twice unlucky crowd “This is my third job, and my third recommendation of JIRA.”
h3. 2. We clearly don’t drink enough!
It appears that alcohol features prominently in our word of mouth marketing. Locations like “At the pub” and “At the local bar” both made semi-frequent appearances. For the San Franciscan / JavaOne crowd the “Thirsty Bear! ” strangely paralleled “A guy in a gay bar”. But the most alarming reference to imbibing whilst sharing software tips has to go to “Alcoholics anonymous”!
(if you’re still reading along in your David Letterman voice, now is the time to get the little Paul Shaffer in your head to give you a drumroll)
And the number 1 most amusing “Where did you hear about us?” category:
h3. 1. The simply bizarre
Not much to say about this group, just shrug your shoulders.
* “On the toilet” – marketing 101: put your ad where the eyeballs are.
* “Somewhere in outer space” and “an alien” – perhaps I should ask our VP of Marketing exactly what he’s doing?
* And my personal, all time favourite: “On a trash can with some rats” – now I know I need to ask him!
To pick nits, “omnipresence” is everywhere.
I can explain the “mouth to mouth”.
I’m quite sure that the comment was made by Germans. Since the word by word translation of the saying “Word of mouth” would be “mouth to mouth”.
So if you travel in Germany, you shouldn’t use the word by word translation from English to German (Wort des Mundes) but use “Mund zu Mund” instead.
Wonder where the “Word of cow” people came from?
Maybe “Word of cow” is short for “Word of cow-orker”?
“Word of cow” I think is some foreigner’s translation of some idea like “from the horse’s mouth”, though I still can’t think of which context this would make sense in.