1florian

Hi Noah,

The part where you talk about "baking marketing into the product" made me shiver… It's called design!

Smart design (assumed your aspirations are capitalistic) can look towards marketing the product and foresee how the product will be used or understood. But I think If you want to "bake in marketing", you need to at least redefine the terms. Answers.com says marketing is…

A. The act or process of buying and selling in a market.
B. The commercial functions involved in transferring goods from producer to consumer.

If you were so inclined you could, under definition A, stretch the term indefinitely. But please don't…

Don't get me wrong, there are many smart people that work in marketing, and I love to have their input on design. The problem is that most marketers that drive development initiatives drive them against the wall because their goal is to sell the product –which is marketing– to as many people as possible. With sales as the primary development goal, control over the design shifts away from the designer and power to the marketer whose role is now perceived as more important, because they are closer to the people with the money.

I think it's great to start a dialogue between design and marketing as long as both sides can retain some common sense and stand up to the man for what they believe in.

The clear disadvantage for the marketing folks is that they are sitting closer to the space cadet CEO's in this world, who only get excited about buzzwords and stock tickers and don't care to understand their actual product. So most marketeers are already impregnated with the lingo and familiar with the thought process and fuel it to compete. I don't think it helps being too close to people like the UPS head who replaced Rand's logo –which read: we ship stuff… with love– with a crest or swoosh with something that means absolutely nothing. Because the closest this guy gets to knowing his product is that he is dreading that he can't outsource it to india, like everyone else. Not the best buddies to have when you are trying to design something new.

All right, cut! The rant takes off like an rocket-ship. In the age of 4 minute attention spans, maybe somebody else will chime in and we can land the vessel safely together to make this a better world… or plot a course for another.

;)

Florian

October 30, 2007

2Noah Brier

Hey Florian, I think we're actually on the same page. You can call it whatever you want, but my point is that the biggest thing that sells product is the product itself. The better you make it, the better off you are. With that said, I think marketers (best case scenario) do come armed with quite a bit of insight into culture, trends and buying behavior and including those insights initially can be a huge boost down the line. Check out the original Baking Marketing Into Products entry for some more of my thinking.

Thanks so much for the comment, would love to hear some other thoughts/feedback.

October 30, 2007

3florian

I would have liked to see you in action with this presentation :)

…but from just looking at the deck I agreed with a lot of your points, the one thing I see differently is the "unbundling" bit. Under marketing 2.0, page 12. I think of these bundles are more like viral glorified links to something deeper, unless they are content carriers themselves: Barney's (Simpson's) short "Man getting hit in the groin by a football" comes to mind.

It's true we get bombarded with bits more and more. But a lot of these turn out to be tasty bites that makes hunger for wanting the 30 minutes, hour or days to go deeper, rather than replacing other content, like movies, tv shows or even books, they just make you aware of them.

Then there is also the backlash against shallow cool links or info/entertainment blips too, they do a lot of damage I think: When nothing is surprising any more because you have seen something much cooler last week, your personal stories aren't as exciting as the latest blip on youtube and everyone yawns when you ask if they have seen this.

It's not always on my radar but when it becomes obvious to me I feel the urge to flush my iPhone and loose myself in the thickest book I can find.

October 30, 2007

4El Gaffney

i have to agree that slideshare is fantastic. to florian's point about wishing he could see you present it - even seeing your notes (without having to download the presentation) would be nice. unfortunately this is not currently possible. fortunately, i've asked slideshare support, and "amit" (a real person!) got back to me in less than a day telling me they plan to include it in the future. what's on slide 31 (or is the gray box meant to represent something:).

also the idea that networks start to lose value at a certain size is something i've always felt about companies, especially when it comes to corporate culture. how the f does google do it? it seems that quote is more about exclusivity - who's not allowed in matters. and this openness debate (as it relates to facebook and now opensocial) is one we'll be hearing more about (of course privacy will also enter into it). wow - i need to do some more thinking but figured i'd put it up for others to make mo' betta.

November 1, 2007

5Noah Brier

Seth, the gray box is this video about web 2.0.

As for the curve of a company, I agree with you and in fact thing Google is going to see a drop at some point in the near future as a result of their hiring practices . . . then again I've been saying that for a year or so . . .

November 1, 2007