Category: product

Cooking Up a Storm

Posted by joshua duncan – February 19, 2010

I had the following question asked of me last week:

How do you factor in customer complaints during your product development process?

It’s a great question to consider in this day of online product reviews, Twitter, Facebook, etc.  A lot of issues that may surface you try to address tactically, but how do you make sure strategically, you are making the right changes?

It was this post on the Smart Blog that really got me thinking about the importance of the process.  Derrick Hull writes on being prepared for good, bad, and ugly reviews from a restaurant standpoint but I think there is correlation to product development.  While you are back in the kitchen cooking up the next tasty dish, your customers are out front eating your current creations and if they aren’t happy, you need to know about it. More…

Being Remarkable Never Goes Out of Style

Posted by joshua duncan – February 1, 2010

I have been looking forward to reading Seth Godin’s latest book, Linchpin.  While waiting for the release, I went back and read my favorite book from Seth, Purple Cow.

Purple Cow was published in 2003, way before Facebook, Twitter, and social media became household names.  There are so many gems in this book it is hard to know where to start and the best part is that save for a couple of dated examples, Seth’s points are even more relevant today (the dated examples actually prove another of Seth’s beliefs that it is hard to maintain a remarkable position).

Seth’s thoughts on the end of mass media advertising:

After Advertising, we’re almost back where we started.  But instead of product succeeding by slow and awkward word of mouth, the power of our new networks allows remarkable ideas to diffuse through segments of the population at rock speed.

On the new rule:

Create remarkable products that the right people seek out.

and on ideas that spread:

It’s not an accident that some products catch on and some don’t.  When an ideavirus occurs, it’s often because all the viral pieces work together.

Read Purple Cow again or for a first time.   You won’t regret it.

The Fidelity Belly (part 2)

Posted by joshua duncan – December 31, 2009

Seth Godin has a post on his blog today that I think is another way of looking at the Fidelity Belly (one of my favorite new terms).

Seth’s advice is to avoid being a commodity (the Fidelity Belly) and work to change the playing field (High Fidelity).  From Seth’s post,

The scalable, profitable strategy is to change the game, not to become the most average.

The perils of getting stuck in the belly is that consumers don’t see you as offering anything special and instead look for the cheapest possible offering.  This is not a good place to be.

Wisdom Can Be Shattered

Posted by joshua duncan – December 22, 2009

Product Marketers crave data.  Data on the industry, the competition, customers, and just about everything in between.  Data helps build business cases, derive features, justify decisions, and launch new products all together.  The problem is that data can become an Achilles heel.

Jeff Stibel describes it perfectly in his article “Why Wise Leaders Don’t Know Too Much“,

Wisdom can be shattered by too much information.

More…

Changing to Keep Up – McDonald’s Internet

Posted by joshua duncan – December 20, 2009

Product planning isn’t always about adding new and differentiating features. Technology offers change, competitors update their products, and consumer preferences shift. The Building Strong Brands blog has a good post on this covering McDonald’s latest decision to offer Wi-fi:

Marketing isn’t always about growth. Sometimes companies have to focus on improving the product simply to keep up. This is one of those times for McDonald’s.

Read the full post here:
McDonald’s Internet: Points of Parity, Points of Difference « Building Strong Brands’

Starbucks Via – Instant Success, Long Term Failure?

Posted by joshua duncan – October 8, 2009

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Kellogg Professor Tim Calkins has a great take on his blog about the new StarBucks Via instant coffee.  Tim’s take is that the coffee is not bad but that it seems to run counter to the Starbuck’s brand experience.  Tim explains,

Starbucks has long worked to embrace the coffee experience, the crisp beans coming from exotic lands all over the world, the grinding noise, the wonderful aroma, the ritual of precisely measuring coffee and water and then waiting for it to brew.  Starbucks has taught us that coffee isn’t just coffee.  There is much, much more to it.

On the surface, you could argue that instant coffee makes sense for Starbucks, right?  You can definitely see how the case for it was argued from a product perspective:  Starbucks sells coffee, instant coffee is a big market, Starbucks should sell instant coffee.   At least it is a coffee product and not something as crazy as Burger King’s “Flame” body spray (who doesn’t want to smell like a whopper).

More…

Customer-Centric Thinking at NetApp

Posted by joshua duncan – September 24, 2009

I have been reading Dave Hitz’s book, “How To Castrate A Bull“, on the ups, downs, and ups of the company he founded, NetApp.  During his story, Dave provides great rational for the need of customer-centric thinking when developing new products.

In the early days of the company, his team was developing products for small departments and had a great understanding of the customers.  However, as the company grew and they started building solutions for large enterprises and government institutions, they realized they needed to include a new type of customer thinking.  Dave explains:

…..At a start-up serving customers like your-self, you unconsciously do the right thing; to mature that start-up  into a large company serving other large companies, you must learn to consciously study and understand their special needs….

….If you are missing customer-centric thinking, you get an elegant design that works great and ships on time, except customers don’t care very much about the problem it solves.  They might admire it as a technical achievement, but they won’t buy it.

Great advice from Dave.  As you start to expand your product offerings, you must recognize the changing needs of the new customers you are trying to win.

BTW, Dave chose a very interesting title for his book alluding to fact if handled properly, risk can be managed and profitible.  He also does include instructions if you do have a bull that needs tending….

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