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I don't follow. If you spend 10% of your time making something you then have to spend 90% of your time promoting... are you sure people really wanted that thin

by rjurney 17y ago

I don't follow. If you spend 10% of your time making something you then have to spend 90% of your time promoting... are you sure people really wanted that thing? Better to spend half your time doing customer development concurrent with product development, and go through lots of iterations with real, actual breathing customers, to arrive at something people want. Then it will sell itself. Marketing after-the-fact can't fix a turd.

Alex3917 17y ago
The idea that good products sell themselves and "marketing after-the-fact can't fix a turd" is largely a myth. Look at Hendrick's gin. It tastes like Pinesol, but because they came out with this clever marketing campaign saying "only 1 in 1000 gin drinkers prefers the taste of Hendrick's" it's now one of the hottest selling new liquors on the market. And I have friends who've never even been to a gin tasting who swear backwards and forwards that it's better than Hayman's or Bulldog or whatever. Hendrick's sells itself on quality only in the sense that the marketing is the product. Now if you're making something like a car then clearly taking a strategy like Hendrick's is going to catch up with you, like it did for GM. But the fact is that you can make just as money selling gin as you can selling cars, so why go through the pain of designing the car?
- rjurney 17y ago
  My suggestion is to do your marketing up front, concurrent with development, to get incremental buy-in and iterate concepts until you find a good one, instead of on the back-end. I find you have much better results that way. You can arrive at something that 'sells its self' by aggressive customer contact and pre-selling. But in fact, it didn't 'sell itself,' you just did your marketing up front to make sure you built something people wanted to pay you for. As to marketing being able to sell bad products, I reply: New Coke. ;)

by rjurney 17y ago

Alex3917 17y ago

The idea that good products sell themselves and "marketing after-the-fact can't fix a turd" is largely a myth. Look at Hendrick's gin. It tastes like Pinesol, but because they came out with this clever marketing campaign saying "only 1 in 1000 gin drinkers prefers the taste of Hendrick's" it's now one of the hottest selling new liquors on the market. And I have friends who've never even been to a gin tasting who swear backwards and forwards that it's better than Hayman's or Bulldog or whatever. Hendrick's sells itself on quality only in the sense that the marketing is the product. Now if you're making something like a car then clearly taking a strategy like Hendrick's is going to catch up with you, like it did for GM. But the fact is that you can make just as money selling gin as you can selling cars, so why go through the pain of designing the car?

rjurney 17y ago
My suggestion is to do your marketing up front, concurrent with development, to get incremental buy-in and iterate concepts until you find a good one, instead of on the back-end. I find you have much better results that way. You can arrive at something that 'sells its self' by aggressive customer contact and pre-selling. But in fact, it didn't 'sell itself,' you just did your marketing up front to make sure you built something people wanted to pay you for. As to marketing being able to sell bad products, I reply: New Coke. ;)