The Fine Line of Using a Tragedy in Marketing

The different examples could be seen in US this year. Many brands seemed to be trying to jump on the 9/11 “bandwagon” in social media. They want their content to be sort of “relevant.” But they have to walk a very thin line on the best of days. And on days like 9/11, they need to be ultra cautious. And if they cannot be then perhaps their social media content teams can take such a day off.

AT&T is unfortunately such negative example.

AT&T (@ATT) twitters at 7:18pm - 11 Sep 13:

We apologize to anyone who felt our post was in poor taste. The image was solely meant to pay respect to those affected by the 9/11 tragedy.

(https://twitter.com/ATT/status/377843723058835456)

Also good article describing thing this topic at the faculty blog of University of Pittsburgh Joseph M. Katz Graduate School of Business

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Hiring a product manager

Source: cooper.com via Lumir on Pinterest

Without product management the organization would get along fine, at least for a while. On the other hand without engineers, sales people or designers nothing would get built, sold and the product would look like crap.

BUT in the long run a great product management usually makes the difference between winning and losing products and companies. Product management is a sort of mixture of engineering, design, marketing, sales, business development and much more.



Now the time has come to hire a product manager? But how to find the right one? What are the most important skills?

There is a basket of attributes, what is important for the company to evaluate any candidate:

1. Business skills


2. Domain expertise


3. Communication skills


4. Technical upbringing


5. Hustle

Of course the assigned weight to the attributes can vary from company to company.

In reference to the listed attributes above the interview should contain these key sections, together with a few example questions:

Customer Leadership & Communication Skills: 15-20 minutes

Imagine you get this job and I am a prospective customer for the product you are now responsible for.
I know nothing about your product or your company.
Let’s role play how you would interview me about my “must have” problems and whether or not your product solves them for me.

Team (Engineering and Design) Leadership Skills: 15-20 minutes

How do you earn respect from the engineering team?
How do you get a team to commit to a schedule?

Cross-Functional Leadership and Management Skills: 15-20 minutes

Can you talk to me about the sales model of a product you have managed?
How did you find prospects for the product?
What did you do that made it easier for the sales team to sell the product?
Can you talk about a situation where you were instrumental in closing a sale? What did you do?

Sources:
http://iterativepath.wordpress.com/2013/02/15/how-do-you-hire-a-product-manager/

https://www.kennethnorton.com/essays/productmanager.html

http://www.venturegrit.com/dont-hire-a-product-manager-without-these-key-leadership-skills/

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Feedback Cycles important for Product Development

Actually already at new born babies we can see the passion for feedback cycles. The baby get bored very fast, if there is no feedback on its action. With an action it causes an effect and if there is no feedback loop then it is not interesting anymore…

The same behavior we can see also at our customers when they evaluate a product. The feedback loops play a critical role in the decision phase and distinguish between successful and unsuccessful products (services).



If we are aware that then it has to be take into consideration already in the analysis and design phases of the product development.

Feedback loops consist of a few simple steps:

A person cases an action and this cases one or more effects. These effects are presented (communicated) back to the person. This cycle is repeated continuously.

In my opinion there are a few most critical aspects like

Effect
- in case of decision in the project, the expected outcome should be shown immediately to the client. This feedback increases the client’s confidence by making that decision.

Quantifying
- taking decision is difficult if the client does not have any possibility of comparison. Only if the client has quantified comparison an informed decision can be made.

Environment
- presentation of the data without the underlying information cannot be used effectively for the decision finding. Current environmental conditions have to be provided for example in form of the historical data.

Acceptance
- the providing of the understandable data to the client supports the self-confidence of the client by the handling with the product. The concern is it to make comprehensible decisions and to encourage to the responsibility willingness.

Product manager, designer and developer should not underestimate the above-mentioned aspects of the fundamental human behavior and expectations.

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Building up marketing capabilities

Our company is currently dealing with design and development of self-service platform based on cloud-based services. The technical background of this new platform is clear and the first milestones have been achieved…

But the essential question is how to communicate widely the benefits of this online platform to the potential customers. Therefore, and in order to take the next step of negotiating with interested clients, a successful marketing strategy has to be developed.

“In my opinion everybody in the organization is a member of the marketing department.”



This is probably my most important realization that the whole team can help drive business growth and help with SEO and other marketing initiatives. Gone are the days when the marketing department consists of a few individuals… If we want to be successful, we should take a look over to the US companies, where every member of the company is involved in content creation (blogging, images, videos, flyers, etc). Also social media and building of new relationships belongs to the common marketing activities.

Companies, who recognize this, have typically a better culture and higher employee engagement, and are typically ahead of their competition.

People do business with, and link to companies, who have a face behind them. So it is important to have some individuals who are the face of the organization.

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