Tag: growth

The experience

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If there’s one thing that everybody in marketing agrees on is that to effectively market a product or service you should not talk about that product or service.

And if you look around, you know that very few practice what they preach.

This video from Apple is something to aspire to.

There’s loads of products, actually there’s virtually no frame that does not feature an Apple device or solution (I stopped counting at 25 shots).

But it is not about the products.

It’s about the transformation that the product can produce in the world. It’s a story about taking a piece of paper and translating that idea into something concrete and worth presenting. It’s about the excitement, the fear, the tiredness, the anxiety, the juggling, the mistakes, the rebirths, the preparedness and the unpreparedness, the unsecurity, the will to make things happen.

Apple would be entitled, more than many others, to spend hours talking about their technology, their features, their apps, their ecosystem. But they understand that’s useless.

What matters is the experience. That’s what this ad is.

Replacing the fences

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You are given a straightforward task: replacing the fences that surround the garden of four houses (A, B, C and D).

Some people would have a plan, a modus operandi, something they have refined with years of experience. And let’s say that their plan is to replace the fences of house A, then the fences of house B, then the fences of house C, and finally the fences of house D. The problem they are solving is replacing the fences.

Some people would go around the houses first, and take note of the fences that are in worst conditions. They would make some sort of list, and they would then perhaps start by replacing the fences in house B, then the fences in house D, then the fences in house C, and eventually the fences in house A. The problem they are solving is making sure that the fences do not fall, and perhaps even cause some damage to the gardens or to the people who live there.

Some people would go around the houses, take note of the fences that are at risk of falling off, provide a temporary fix to safeguard gardens and people (for example, to house B and house D), and then go about replacing the fences with the plan they have put to test in their multiple years in the field (A, then B, then C, then D). The problem they are solving is making sure the fences do not fall and cause harm, while at the same time being efficient in completing the task.

The problem you are out to solve is rarely as simple as you believe.

And by the way, which one of the above is your company?

Product vs Marketing

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Is product more important than marketing, or is it the other way around? Should a start-up invest early in building an audience, or should all the resources go into crafting something that people will love? Will the product manager lead future development, or will it be the marketing manager?

These questions are a distraction, they put departments and professionals one against the other. And at the end of the day, it does not matter.

A better one would be: “who has the capacity to distance themselves enough from what we do to understand the needs of our audience?”. An even better one could be: “who can tell us where to go with no regard for where we’ve been?”.

A degree of neutrality is necessary, and sometimes it will come from product, sometimes it will come from marketing.

It’s the people, not the roles, that will make a difference.

Wishful thinking

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If you are a leader and complain about the fact that people in your team are not as committed, as present, as hardworking, as involved as you are, here are two things to think about.

You are the leader, and in most situations this comes with some benefits (not only monetary) that other team members do not get. So, the fact you care more is absolutely normal. You should care more, they will care less.

To change the situation, to some extent at least, you have to put in extra work. And that is an additional challenge. You have to sell a vision, a purpose, a reason (beyond salary) for the team members to feel that they are part of something bigger. You have to make it so that if they follow you they will enhance their public and self-image. You also have to praise them for their work, and to thank them for their contribution. You need to be present for them when they need it, and hide when they can go alone. It’s a difficult balance to strike between freedom and ownership, and it takes trust and time. If you have none of that, you are stuck at point one.

Any other approach to such a natural situation is delusional wishful thinking.

Communicate or manage

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Most change happens inadvertently. Some things, or more often than not many things, evolve and stop to be what they were in the beginning. Gradually, you change as well, and at some point you stop, look back, reflect, and realise that change has happened. It’s nobody’s fault (or merit), just the nature of things.

Some change happens because of an agent. That’s when a situation is no longer sustainable, and some person, or more often than not a group of people, decide to bring about change. At the beginning, it’s probably not very clear where they are going to land. But the intention is there, and eventually the context and its features are modified. Whether the agents are successful or not.

One way or the other, the people that are touched by the change rarely want to hear “this has happened”. They are often scared, they don’t know what’s going on, they see some of the fundamentals in their worldview shaken. And they want a forum where they can express all this and get some sort of reassurances. This process is part of the resistance to change, and it will happen, one way (in an organised, public way) or the other (in a dispersed, private way).

It’s the difference between communicating change and managing change.