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And what position are they going for? The point is this – everyone can look at the current site and come away with a different understanding of the position/app

And what position are they going for? The point is this – everyone can look at the current site and come away with a different understanding of the position/approach of Exec. The designer is working with the constraint of 1. the name 2. the product/service from what he reads and understands from the current site. Unless he has the brief or sat down with the Exec team, there's no way he can nail it down. And neither can you (unless, ofcourse, you know exactly what Exec is and their approach/target audience/demo graphics etc). ie: They could target more than young professionals - what about people who have disabilities? Maybe they can set up a weekly Exec service for groceries for handicapped people. Exec is a startup and they're no doubt iterating their product, and customer discovery and all that jazz. I feel it's unfair to look at a site, then comment on the design, when neither knows Exec's target customers (even when Exec is still discovering themselves).

tptacek 15y ago
You're missing the argument. Obviously, Exec can position however they'd like. But positioning as a luxury good in an wide-open market with mainstream-market pricing is not a particularly great strategy. Do you know what the fully loaded cost of a full-time PA is? Way higher than Exec'ing jobs. If they're targeting the market of people aspiring to have FT PA's, they're leaving a shitload of money on the table and needlessly narrowing their focus. This thread is a good case study for nerdly misconceptions about marketing. I suspect that to a lot of HN readers, "marketing" means "what feelings you're expected to have while using the product", like, "this is gold and black for the same reason that Github has Star Wars imagery on their 404 page". No. Marketing is first and foremost about subsetting people into groups, predicting what those groups will pay for a good or service, and then picking the group. The "feelings" business serves that goal, not the other way around. So, first, you'd want to decide "am I going after the same people that Hertz #1 Club Gold is" (ie, the kinds of people who spend 5 figures a month solely on travel expenses) and then say "let's class up the website a bit".
adrianhoward 15y ago
The point is this – everyone can look at the current site and come away with a different understanding of the position/approach of Exec. And that - in the right circumstances - can be a very, very good thing. I've seen designers sweat blood to get that kind of feel :-)

tptacek 15y ago

You're missing the argument. Obviously, Exec can position however they'd like. But positioning as a luxury good in an wide-open market with mainstream-market pricing is not a particularly great strategy. Do you know what the fully loaded cost of a full-time PA is? Way higher than Exec'ing jobs. If they're targeting the market of people aspiring to have FT PA's, they're leaving a shitload of money on the table and needlessly narrowing their focus. This thread is a good case study for nerdly misconceptions about marketing. I suspect that to a lot of HN readers, "marketing" means "what feelings you're expected to have while using the product", like, "this is gold and black for the same reason that Github has Star Wars imagery on their 404 page". No. Marketing is first and foremost about subsetting people into groups, predicting what those groups will pay for a good or service, and then picking the group. The "feelings" business serves that goal, not the other way around. So, first, you'd want to decide "am I going after the same people that Hertz #1 Club Gold is" (ie, the kinds of people who spend 5 figures a month solely on travel expenses) and then say "let's class up the website a bit".

adrianhoward 15y ago

The point is this – everyone can look at the current site and come away with a different understanding of the position/approach of Exec. And that - in the right circumstances - can be a very, very good thing. I've seen designers sweat blood to get that kind of feel :-)