ProductMarketing.com

What is a Product Manager For?

Jacques Murphy asks "What is a product manager for?" His definition is "A Product Manager fills in the gaps between different functions and departments in order to make sure that the product develops and makes progress, with the aim of making the product perform better relative to the competition." Read the full article... .

Cooper: The Origin of Personas

Alan Cooper writes, "The Inmates Are Running the Asylum, published in 1998, introduced the use of personas as a practical interaction design tool. Based on the single-chapter discussion in that book, personas rapidly gained popularity in the software industry due to their unusual power and effectiveness. Had personas been developed in the laboratory, the full story of how they came to be would have been published long ago, but since their use developed over many years in both my practice as a software inventor and architectural consultant and the consulting work of Cooper designers, that is not the case. Since Inmates was published, many people have asked for the history of Cooper personas, and here it is." Read The Origin of Personas.

What is "Marketing" at Microsoft?

Heather writes, "So I thought I would start off explaining a little bit about what is considered marketing here at Microsoft. I'm not really sure how we came to know a number of business functions as marketing, but it is what it is (or kind of is what it kind of is). There are gray areas that I probably don't have enough space to debate here (actually, I probably do later...are you interested?)...like technical evangelism. Hybrid roles that require a focus on not only core marketing talent but also deep hands-on technical expertise. That's for later. For now, let me explain what we know of as marketing here at Microsoft." What is "Marketing" at Microsoft?

Instant Messaging at Work

David S. Marshak, Sr. VP and Sr. Consultant, Patricia Seybold Group recently wrote an article called Instant Messaging at Work: Key Policies and Practices for Leveraging IM in Business. David recommends that companies establish policies in several areas: Expectations of privacy and responsiveness; Logging in; Availability; and Courtesy and Respect. Read more at Instant Messaging at Work.

Seth's Blog: Maybe I'm just cranky

Seth writes, "Have you noticed that people who want you to help them are getting a lot more insistent? My incoming spam from countries I'll never see seems to be more persistent (and with ever more spelling errors). Incoming 'personal' notes from people two or three handshakes away are now insisting that I help format PowerPoint presentations, introduce them to just the right hiring executive, contribute to their next project or drag myself downtown for lunch to discuss how I might give them some advice. The beauty of the web is that it introduces us to thousands of people that might never have crossed our path. The problem, it's becoming ever more clear, is that friction is rapidly disappearing. People who would hesitate to say 'hello' at a cocktail party think nothing of sending a 1245k attachment. Then, when you're foolish enough to send a courteous reply, they escalate into phone solicitation. Yikes. Are we more desperate or more comfortable? I think it might be both. I know I'm more aggravated."

Valley of the Geeks--The New High-Tech Dictionary 2.0

Valley of the Geeks--The New High-Tech Dictionary 2.0: "We've all seen them. They're everywhere -in news releases, on shrink-wrapped products. You hear them at trade shows where they pile up like zeros in Bill Gates's bank account. They're the common technical and marketing terms used, misused, and abused in our industry. Now for the first time ever, a collection of software industry buzzword definitions. "

Valley of the Geeks--Gartner Magick Quadrante

The Consultancy Gartner Group has announced a new, updated version of their 'Magic Quadrant'. The Gartner quadrant, debuted in 1620 when the Mayflower landed at Plymouth Rock and has been the hallmark of high-tech marketing ever since. However, company insiders felt that the quadrant was often ambiguous. 'Everyone knew you wanted to be in the upper right hand quadrant,' a spokesman said, 'but no one ever knew why. And more importantly, vendors were unclear of how to get into the upper right hand quadrant. Rather than focus on vague terms like 'vision' and 'ability to execute', we've made it much simpler for everyone involved." See the updated quadrant at Valley of the Geeks.

There is such a thing as a 'bad' customer

"If you can't leverage something that you are doing for one client across your entire client base, then you should take another look at it, " Donna Novitsky says." Read more in Ms. Fix-It.

Fast Company | Too Much to Do, Too Little Time

"This notion that you've got to be 'connected' at all times is just plain crazy." Does this sound familar? Read more in Too Much to Do, Too Little Time.

SoftwareMinds Releases Best Practices Report on Software Product Management

SoftwareMinds offers Software Product Management: Best Practices, an in-depth study of the discipline's best practices. The report enables companies to benchmark themselves against their peers. This study, the first of its kind, is a collaboration with Pragmatic Marketing, the world's leading product management and product marketing training company. Learn more...

the consumer is buying solutions

"At this year's CeBIT technology fair, computer and telecoms companies are trying to muffle the jargon--aiming their pitches at people indifferent or even hostile to geek talk who still love the gadgets. 'The consumer is not buying these acronyms, the consumer is buying solutions,' Rudi Lamprecht, head of Siemens' mobile phone division, said as he introduced his company's new phones."

Is your product positioning sesquipedalian?

Merriam-Webster Online: Main Entry: ses-qui-pe-da-lian Pronunciation: 'ses-kwuh-puh-DAIL-yun' Function: adjective Etymology: Latin sesquipedalis, literally, a foot and a half long, from sesqui- + ped-, pes foot--more at FOOT 1 : having many syllables : LONG, as in "sesquipedalian terms" 2 : given to or characterized by the use of long words, as in "a sesquipedalian television commentator"

Intel Strips 'Gigahertz' from Computer Chip Names

Chip speed in CPUs is like horsepower in auto engines, an irrelevant metric. Taking a page from automobile marketers, Intel will now assign model numbers to its chips and eliminate measurements of raw speed from its product names. After spending two decades convincing us that raw chip speed is important, they now must teach model numbers to the consumer. It's a branding challenge: when you're building a commodity product, you market the brand; when you're building a product that can be differentiated, you market the differentiation.

Aunt Tilly--the non-technical persona

"I've just gone through the experience of trying to configure CUPS, the Common Unix Printing System. It has proved a textbook lesson in why nontechnical people run screaming from Unix. This is all the more frustrating because the developers of CUPS have obviously tried hard to produce an accessible system--but the best intentions and effort have led to a system which despite its superficial pseudo-friendliness is so undiscoverable that it might as well have been written in ancient Sanskrit. GUI tools and voluminous manuals are not enough. You have to think about what the actual user experiences when he or she sits down to do actual stuff, and you have to think about it from the user's point of view." Read more in The Luxury of Ignorance: An Open-Source Horror Story.

Seth's Blog: Worth a thousand words?

Seth's Blog: Worth a thousand words?: "Art directing your brand (or you) is not a dumb thing to do. In addition to satisfying one's vanity, it's a chance to establish an image that might last a long time. The top half of my head, for example, first showed up in Fast Company and then on Permission Marketing. The time spent working with Brian Smale (a great photographer) clearly paid off in building the image of the brand."

TinyURL--a handy utility

A 24-year-old Web developer from Blaine, Minnesota, launched TinyURL.com in January 2002, a free site that converts huge strings of characters into more manageable snippets. The site's popularity has skyrocketed as Web savants use it to pass around Web-generated maps, news clippings and newsgroup postings.

Online social networks

Alan Armstrong writes, "Online Social Networks are sweeping the technorati at a phenomenal rate. These networks aim to connect people who don't know each other for mutual gain. The theory is that if you are looking for someone of a particular description, for example a contractor, you should be able to find one who is recommended by a friend. Or by a friend of a friend. Or by a friend of a friend of a friend. And so on." Read Online social networks.

Creating White Papers that Drive Sales

White papers can be extremely useful sales tools for IT solution sales people, serving as education and decision-support materials for customers. However, too often, white papers are developed in a corporate marketing vacuum--disconnected from real-world sales contexts--and inadvertently, they address topics that neither sales people nor prospective buyers find useful. Read Creating White Papers that Drive Sales.

How Product Managers Help Development

Product Managers are in the unique position of having dual citizenship, with passports for both Marketing land and Development land. In fact, you find you can't predict whether a company will have its Product Manager positions reporting into Marketing or Development. Regardless of where Product Managers are placed in the organization, they can provide vital assistance to Development in its goal of building a great software product. They provide an outside, business-focused perspective, but in a level of detail that reflects an interest in and understanding of the technology that is used to build the product. Read How Product Managers Help Development by Jacques Murphy.

March 2004: Profile of Product Marketing

Product Marketing is typically defined as the group that plans the go-to-market strategy, responsible for launch planning, determining appropriate vehicles for awareness and lead generation, and providing product content to marketing communications and the sales channel. Read March newsletter: Profile of Product Marketing.