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Product Marketing

Thank you folks: Being polite is a good thing for a brand.

: Image via Wikipedia

So a recent set of ad placements thanking the American public for a loan is causing a little bit of an uproar, at least in some cirlces. I’m not sure that the response in the video below on the Chrysler and GM‘s ad placement is warranted. I would like to get just a little more facts on the ad placement than I have, without it, I can only use deduction, reason and logic.

So to put it in context, one of the largest spends in the advertising industry is by the automakers, so it may not be that bad of an idea to help prop up that industry or live up to your contractual obligation. I suspect Chrysler and GM may of had a contractual commitment which required some placement of an ad, so to view this as incremental spending could be tough. So the question for the brand managers and marketing folks was more than likely, something like: “So we can place another ad on 0% financing, the latest GPS features or thank folks – what should we do?”

Without the facts around the placement, it’s hard to draw any real conclusions. Missing from the Fox “Outrage” piece was someone confirming this wasn’t already paid for or a resource confirming the $200,000 spend for a full page in USA Today. Without that type of validation, this Fox news report doesn’t have the necessary diligence to justify some of the assertions. Sensationalism may be what they wanted at Fox, rather than news on this piece.

So here is the video which provides an overview of the ad spend and general information for your review:

In an Effort to be fair and balanced, a couple of questions based on the video:

So was it $200,000 per ad or $250,000 per ad? If it is 200K, then how do you get to half a million?
Who are the 10 autoworkers whose jobs would be saved via avoiding a $400K spend since they make only $40,000 fully loaded?
Why would you take out an ad in Detroit thanking america, since the Detroit papers aren’t all that national? Shouldn’t the Detroit ad be something like “WE DID IT!!!! Your cousin gets to keep his job for now”?
What marketing executive would think it is reasonable to spend an incremental amount on a thank you ad in this highly charged economic environment?
From a proportional impact perspective, do you think YouTube would really have reached the right taxpayers?

PLEASE NOTE: I have no validation that the spend was already under contract, but I have no reason to think otherwise, as I don’t think any reasonable business types would spend so much money with media outlets and NOT have a contract with negotiated non-standard/discounted rates based on annual commitments and monthly placement requirements.

January 3, 2009 by Jon Gatrell

As if the definition of product management wasn’t tough already

: Image via Wikipedia

I’m not sure where guest2739cfb from slideshare gets his or her ideas, but Product Management training should rarely involves the ability to actually use MS Project, read reports maybe, but not use it. The only way that should be an important skill is if the Project Management Office is somehow managed by Product Management, which isn’t that good of an idea – kinda a church and state thing.

Product Management Training – MS Project Training

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January 1, 2009 by Jon Gatrell

I have no idea what this says….

and yet I understand it perfectly. I guess that’s the point of this presentation which provides insight into effective presentations.

presentation design

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December 29, 2008 by Jon Gatrell

Metrics and Product Management

I always thought social science and language arts were the most important courses to have mastered for life and your career until I became a product manager. In product management, I quickly learned that math and specifically the ability to use excel based on your fundamental math skills was critical. Fuzzy value props and interesting word choice when positioning your product internally will only get you so far. Ultimately you need to find a way to validate the impact you and your team is having on the business. This presentation looks more at the value of roadmapping features/release value, but you have to start somewhere to define in a concrete fashion what is being delivered and this presentation directionally works.

In the end it’s just math and process, plus it’s always a good idea to instrument your processes anyhow and prioritize deliverables or the market, the business and your existing customers. While Olsen’s position that Product is in the middle of the market and development covers the main concept, the reality is Product owns the interface across all functional groups where it relates to their given product. Even with that concern with the presentation, which starts early on, it is a very accurate way to look at how to define meaningful metrics on Product Management execution and putting an important variable into the mix, the customer. As an aside, slides 29-38 can be ignored, I’m sure the talk track makes it more meaningful, but it transitions into some UI wonkiness and online specific design uses cases.

Product Management by Numbers: Using Metrics To Optimize Your Product

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