If you like ProductBeautiful, you'll love ProductCamp Austin on June 14th - a collaborative un-conference/workshop on Product Management and Marketing topics. Anyone can participate - including you! Attendance is free; your only cost is your participation.
Using New Media for Product Marketing
Last week, I had the opportunity to participate in a Marketing roundtable hosted by Austin Ventures. Marketing leaders from several AV portfolio companies came together to talk about prescient topics. The topic was “What’s Working in New Media” (paraphrased). It was almost like a mini-ProductCamp, because everyone brought a single slide to talk about their online strategies and what was or was not working well.
Sam Decker, CMO of Bazaarvoice gave an interesting talk about how they are using their blog Bazaarblog to as both a new form of communications, and relationship marketing. It was refreshing to see a company actually have a blog strategy more defined than “let’s give the CEO a TypePad account.” Bazaarvoice targets specific bloggers in their space and treats them like royalty, and does smart things like proactively linking to them and farming their sites for content to create multi-blog conversations. They get it.
Online, everyone looks equal. I can go out and buy a URL and put up a WordPress blog, and in less than an hour have a turnkey site that looks just as good if not better than yours. At first glance, how is a potential customer ever going to know a credible from a non-credible source? You can’t control the blogs (so don’t try). As a Product Marketer, you can increase positive coverage through good relationships and demonstrating that you’re responsive to complaints over time. See The New Rules of Marketing and PR for a good book about this general topic.
One of the initiatives I’ve spearheaded at NetStreams is building a community site for our dealers, who are notoriously fickle. Sometimes they complain publicly on our forums and get other dealers riled up, which then spreads to our sales team, the VP of Sales, and the CEO. When we started the forums, I had all of the above people come to me the first time we had a negative thread demanding that we “take down that negative feedback.” That’s one of the worst actions you can take!
Marcomm looks at negative feedback from customers as they would a poor review in a magazine. It’s meant to be depositioned, explained away, and spun. Look at it from the customer’s perspective: they are telling you that you aren’t solving their problem, and worse, you’re not listening to them. Marcomm and PR speak…but don’t listen (unless they’re paying an analyst and then they have to pretend to listen). I love negative feedback, because those are the best opportunities to both get great product feedback and to demonstrate your responsiveness as a company.
When a negative thread or blog post shows up, acknowledge it. Reply to the post stating that:
- They’re right; this is a problem, and we recognize that
- We’re sorry that they had this problem and that we caused it (even if you didn’t cause it)
- That we’re going to do everything we can to make it right
Doing just those 3 things will turn around 99% of problem customers. In my case, just the basic acknowledgment of their problem was like finding as oasis in the desert to these customers, because we had done a poor job of responding to issues in the past.
Is your company doing anything new and interesting with blogs or other new media to influence your product plans or change your marketing strategies? Reply in comments.
Cisco Marketing Has Gone Crazy…Like a Fox!
Usually, when a big company decides to get hip to the newest Marketing trend, it’s like watching your Dad trying to dance to hip-hop: painful. Cisco is as big as they come, so I was really skeptical when I heard that they were putting a full court press on Product Marketing in new media like blogs, SecondLife , and Facebook (companies != people, you’re not my “friend”). Plus, Cisco has already had some bumps in the road with regards to blogging.
On the web, knowing your limits is key, and keeping the message light and self-depreciating is a skill that most big-company Product Marketers don’t have. No one wants to read a blog about heavy specifications; it’s boring. Believe me, as someone who is (gulp) responsible for some of that Cisco datasheet content, I can attest to how dry it is. Collateral might accurately convey information, but how do you capture mindshare and get in front of people in the first place? You need a hook, and Cisco’s trying to use new media for this purpose.
One innovative tactic Cisco’s using is an online game called Edge Quest. It’s silly, but fun - you “fly” a “hovering router” around a virtual arena picking up “packets” to upgrade your “ship.” It reminded me of Tron. Cisco is running an contest for $10,000 and new ASR router give-away for the highest score. Here’s what I see as the pros and cons:
Pros
- It’s different; there aren’t a lot of these advergames out there yet, so people will play out of curiosity
- iMedia Connection says that games like these offer better brand retention and key message absorption than other methods and…
- Games engage us at an emotional level…the place every Marketer wants to be! As much as we’d like to think that buying, especially B2B purchasing is rational, it’s not. Remember the saying “Nobody ever got fired for buying IBM?”
Cons
- Routers and switches are complex, high tech devices. I’m all for boiling down to key messages, but are they devaluing the product by associating it with a game? Would this be more appropriate for Linksys?
- Some people turn up their noses at games that are also try to “teach.” I think Cisco struck a good balance here, but some people will take any product info in the game as an affront. Dude - it’s free.
Overall I think this is a really cool idea and I’m curious to see how it goes.
The Cisco Team pinged me about answering some questions on this topic, so I’ll close with these:
How many hours do you game each week (sandbag accordingly if your boss will read this) and what’s your favorite one?
I’d say about 4 hours. I’m known as a merciless killer on Team Fortress 2.
What do you consider your biggest accomplishment in your gaming life? (Come on, I know you have one…! Mine was mastering the expert slope on the Intellivision ski game… If only my actual skiing were a tenth as good…)
The original NFL2K on Dreamcast had a bug where you could throw a long bomb to Randy Moss and get a touchdown every time. I exploited that and had over 200 points scored in each of 16 games against the computer, and ended the season with something like 20,000 yards and 450 TDs. Just like in real life!
How key is the speed and quality of your broadband connection when you play games, and how much (if any) would you be willing to pay your provider for a faster, better connection?
That’s a really interesting question, because 6 months ago I would have said “very important” and “yes.” Since then, I paid for the upgrade to RoadRunner Turbo, and I didn’t see much of a difference, so I went back to the standard package. I’ll still say yes, but only if I can get Japan-like speeds to my desktop. C’mon Cisco, make it happen!
I am sure you’ve seen lots of game contests where you play to win skins or stickers or a virtual t-shirt… but have you ever participated in an online gaming tournament where the winner won money, and how much of a draw was this prize to encourage you to participate?
I’ve played in online tournaments before that had money as a prize, but never with the expectation that I’d actually compete for the top spot, it was always about the competition and beating my personal best. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it since I didn’t win.
What will you do with $10,000 if you win the tournament?
To quote one of my favorite lines from my RTF-Production professor, Richard Lewis, “I have multiple projects in various stages of development.” I’m sure they could all benefit!
Also if you win, what would you do with the Cisco ASR 1002?
I dream of the day that I would actually need a router like that.
We have a lively debate going in the office along the lines of “fantasy edgequest” (you can tell we tend to live this stuff….): One camp says the eventual winner will be a technical networking type (and game enthusiast) who loves Cisco, the other says that pro gamers will come in dominate the leader board. What say you – which camp will dominate?
The Pros, absolutely. At this very moment there are teams training around the clock in China to win this contest. Of course they just want to win the ASR to reverse engineer it!
Our intent with this game is to find new ways to engage with our customers and to have fun in the process (not to create a separate gaming line of business for the Company…!) Is it effective, do you know more about the Cisco ASR 1000 as a result of playing, and should we continue to engage you with such games in the future?
Granted that I’m not Cisco’s target persona for this product, but I say at least this is different. It’s worth a try to get the feedback and then evaluate. The risk is that IT managers probably don’t want all of their vendors sending games to fill up their employees in-boxes. That will quickly devolve into “I can’t fix her laptop, I’m ‘learning’ about routers!”
The ROI may be tough to measure, but the great thing about Web 2.0 marketing is that the “I” does not have to be large, so you can try lots of different tactics and find what works.
Full Disclosure: I used to work @ Cisco until 2006, and still have many friends there.
Why ProductCamp Will Help Push Austin Over the Tipping Point
I have been asked a lot over the last two weeks about where the idea for ProductCamp Austin came from and why we are putting this event on. I wish I could say I came up with the idea - but that credit goes to EDIT: Luke Hohmann and Rick Mirinov at Enthiosys Brian Lawley from the 280 Group in California, who coordinated P-Camp Silicon Valley in March. But it goes deeper, because I believe Austin is at a tipping point, both for startups and for Product Management and Product Marketing.
GeekAustin got wind of ProductCamp and interviewed me about why Austin, why now, and why ProductCamp. Here is a sample:
Lynn Bender: You’re a local guy. Where did you get the idea to host a ProductCamp Austin. Have you previously attended one in another city? Have you attended a BarCamp?
Paul Young: I’ve been in Austin for 10 years, and had several opportunities to move out to the Valley, but always turned them down because we love Austin. One aspect of the Bay Area that I’ve always had a jealous eye towards is that their critical mass of technical and marketing people really lends itself to organization of great events.
Aside from the various BarCamps, the first ProductCamp (called P-Camp) was held in the Valley back in March. I looked at what they did and thought “we need that in Austin.” I sent out some feelers to people I’ve met through my Product Management blog (Product Beautiful) and away we went.
Austin just feels right at this point in time: the economic downturn hasn’t hit us as hard as the rest of the U.S., our housing never got mega overinflated like everywhere else, Californians still move here in droves because it’s so cheap, and we have lots of creative, technical, and marketing talent doing really cool things.
I had the opportunity to attend a marketing roundtable hosted by Austin Ventures last week where they showed off a new job site (site name and link redacted) they are working on. The really interesting tidbit was that they mentioned that the #1 reason that talent hesitates to relo to Austin is fear that if their startup fails, that there won’t be enough going on in Austin to keep a vibrant market for their skills.
ProductCamp is another cog in that machine; the fact that in a few short weeks we have a bunch of great sponsors, some exciting sessions, and dozens of participants already signed up validates that there is both an audience and an appetite for knowledge exchange about Product Management in Austin.
East of the Sierra Nevada, you can make a very strong argument that Austin is the center of the tech world. You don’t have to look hard for new about Austin startups. The time to step up is now Product Managers - are you ready to shape the future of Product Management?
ProductCamp Austin Announces Location and Austin Ventures as a Sponsor!
I’m happy to announce that we’ve secured a venue for ProductCamp Austin! ProductCamp will be held at St. Edward’s University Professional Education Center (PEC) on June 14, 2008 from 8AM - 6PM. Follow the link to add yourself as a participant, and to sign up as a speaker or volunteer. Everyone is welcome, and cost is FREE.
I’m also delighted to announce that Austin Ventures will be sponsoring ProductCamp! We’re looking forward to working with the premiere venture group in Austin to get the word out.
If you’re unfamiliar with what ProductCamp is, first read the primer on BarCamp, which the model on which ProductCamp is based. Then go to the official ProductCamp Austin wiki and add yourself to the participant page, and take on a topic as a speaker!
Why Product Management is Open Source’s Fatal Flaw
Free Open Source Software (FOSS) is great - I have released code under the GPL, LGPL, and similar licenses. There are mountains of FOSS available right now for download from sites like SourceForge and others that save businesses millions of dollars. More importantly, open source software offers feature sets and mixes that often aren’t available in commercial products because the market is too small, commercial companies don’t understand it, or the problems aren’t profitable enough to solve.
The great promise of open source is that you can have equal or more functionality than commercial software for free, and you have access to the source code if you have the desire, time, and skills to hack it into something new. This model was perfect when developers were writing tools for each other, like text editors such as VI and Linux. Most FOSS projects aren’t under the stewardship of a commercial entity (although some of the most successful ones are, such as RedHat, Firefox, and OpenOffice), they are built by and for a handful of developers “scratching an itch,” and they are not working with a Product Manager. Unfortunately, FOSS has become a victim of its own success, and today, open source developers are facing a problem that threatens to turn legions of users against the software they rely on.
Development: Leave Us the $Foo Alone!
Jeff Lash has a good post up about Delegating. There are some interactions you need to have - like regular tradeoff meetings with Development. As a general rule, programmers hate meetings. A lot of that has to do with the fact that prior to you, they had some “Marketing” airbag pull them into blahfests about “sustainable competitive advantages” and how we can get a that feature to “go viral.” Now meetings from Marketing (and by proxy Product Management) are dismissed as a waste of time.
Lead Architects in are alpha dogs. There’s only room for 1-2, otherwise they start to piss on each other’s territory and talk about how so-and-so isn’t pulling their weight or how they had to clean up the other’s code. Design planning and software requirements are viewed as nice-to-have’s, and often as Product Management you’ll find yourself in a situation where you’re bringing requirements to Development only to hear “Oh yeah, I heard you were working on that so I already built it.” Great! It’s done, on to the next feature…uhhhhh, no.
What you’ll find is that you got a half-implementation based on:
- What was easy for the developer to do over the weekend
- What was interesting for the developer
- What is based on the developer’s (incomplete) interpretation of the customer’s problem
When you push back on the implementation you have to do it gently to avoid bruising ego’s. Engineering’s usual M.O. is to say “this is what we’re offering, to do your (complete) implementation will take<$ridiculous_timeframe>.” Besides, who is going to call B.S. on the development estimate - they’re the one’s making it! Fox, meet hen house!
There are two ways around this problem. First you need to have the fortitude to call Engineering’s bluff. If you get a time frame of 6 additional months, say “OK. That’s fine. I’ll need to see a detailed schedule so we can determine what resources we need to hire to help you.” If the full implementation is that important, you should be able to drive a business tradeoff to get the resources to make it happen.
Second, you can avoid the problem in the first place with proper planning. Once you approve a product onto your Release Plan, form a Core Team and pull the lead developer onto it. He/She will grumble about the meeting but stay firm - you need the Core Team to drive tradeoffs and get ahead of the prototype that they’re going to build.
Often, Developers project verbal and non-verbal signals that meetings are inefficient uses of time, that they don’t need to be there, or that they could be doing “more important” work. Basically they are saying: “Leave me the F alone!” I’ve found that they feel that way because they don’t interpret their time as valued by Product Management or Marketing, or they don’t feel like PM has a good handle on the tradeoffs that need to be made. Whenever I get these signals from a Developer, these are my tactics:
- Be sure to start the meeting with an explicit statement about why we are here, what the goals are, and the expected output of the meeting
- If you start getting verbal or non-verbal signals from a Programmer (disinterested, checking email, sighing, rolling eyes, pacing around the room, etc), stop the meeting immediately and address the issue - “Joe, I keep hearing you sigh and roll your eyes, do you understand why we are here? Do you understand why we need YOU here? Is there something else that you need to be doing at this moment?” I’ve actually been in meetings where the developers had stopped working on a critical hotfix, without telling us that we were holding up their work, and were glaring at PM for running the meeting! Enable people to have a voice, because they might not speak up…
- If Joe agrees with the purpose of the meeting and his role there, and is still offering bad non-verbals, actively engage him with open-ended questions, much like you’d do on a customer interview.
- After the meeting, follow up one-on-one to talk about the importance of the design and tradeoff process, emphasizing that a good design solves a more complete problem set and reduces wasted work in Development. The only thing Developers hate more than meetings is doing work and having it go to waste or get mothballed.
…because it’s Friday, here’s an Office Space clip that always makes me think of Product Management and grin:
The Curse of the White Sunglasses
Mandy and I went to the mall this weekend to get her some new maternity clothes. While she browsed the Motherhood store, I took up a strategic perch outside so as not to bump bellies with a bunch of pregnant women. Next store was a sunglasses shop, so I figure why not burn a few minutes?
By the time Mandy got back to me (less than 10 minutes), I had convinced myself that I needed a pair of white sunglasses. Why? I have no idea. Mandy took one look at me and said “You look like an idiot. But if you like them that much…” But I didn’t like them - I was just obsessed with the idea of white sunglasses. The rest of the day, everywhere I went I saw people wearing them, kind of like when you buy a new car and you see everyone on the road who has the same model.
Features for features sake are the white sunglasses of Product Management. How many times have you written a requirement for a feature that you knew wasn’t needed? Everyone has. There are lots of reasons why PM’s do it:
- Obsessed with a feature (white sunglasses)
- If the competition has it, so shall I
- Executive loves this feature, too political to take out
- Boss loves this feature, is it worth the fight?
None of those excuse the fact that empty features are like white sunglasses - just like me, they make you look like an idiot. Take a look at the list of features and functions going into your next release. Are 100% of them things that you need in order to make a difference to your company and to your customers? How many of them are things you want to have?
Announcing ProductCamp Austin!
I’m happy to announce that we are going to be running Austin’s first ProductCamp. Much like BarCamp, ProductCamp is a collaborative, user run event, except where BarCamp is often focused around topics interesting to Developers, ProductCamp will be focused Product Management and Marketing topics.
ProductCamp Austin will happen on Saturday June 14th. Right now we are lining up sponsors and venues, and are focused on planning and execution. We need your help. No ProductCamp or BarCamp can be planned by one person. Thankfully I already have several people who have raised their hands as willing to step in and help shoulder the load, like John Milburn, Roger Cauvin and Rob Grady. If you’re interested in being on the planning team, please sign up for the Google Group. Developing…
Who *Really* Runs Your Company?
“We’re a Marketing driven company?” “We’re Engineering driven, but we’re trying to change that.” “We’re Sales driven.” I’m sure you’ve heard many of these and more. From the outside looking in, sometimes it can be difficult to tell who is driving the decision making at a company, but here is one sure-fire way to figure it out, before you make the leap.
Pose the question: “When a new product idea is generated, what is the first question that everyone asks?” Is it:
- How does that compare to the competition? Or, What is the pricing? (Sales)
- What is our projected Gross Margin? (Finance)
- What platform does it run on? (Development)
- What is the schedule? (Project Management)
- How will this impact customer sat? (Support)
- What’s the carrying cost for all this new inventory? (Operations)
- …
- …
- …
- What problem does this solve for the customer and are they willing to pay for it to be solved? (Product Management)
All of the questions that the other functional groups ask are necessary but not sufficient to determine if a product idea should be built. Product Management’s question needs to be answered first, then once you’ve determined that the idea solves a real problem you can ask all the other questions to see if it makes good business sense.
Grab Your Partner!
Problem: You have a great idea but need people with the right skills to help grow it into a real company. The McCombs Entrepreneurial Society has a post about PartnerUp, a new site that provides a solution (hat tip: VentureBeat) . Think of as LinkedIn meets Monster for startups. If you have an idea but need a business partner, adviser, or mentor, post and find people who are interested in the startup experience. If you want to try a startup, use it to find ideas that are at various stages of launch. They also provide ways to filter by compensation type: cash, equity, etc., and time commitment. Cool site.