We write a lot here, and we hope that it helps you. Now I’m looking for your input. Can you help? If you do, I will feature you on our blog. But I need the responses within 1 day!

The request

I am looking for examples of positioning that takes the buyer by surprise. The classic example of this is AVIS, as told and retold by Ries and Trout in their classic books on marketing and positioning. AVIS was not the leader in its category, so it claimed a different position: “We are only #2, but we try harder.” Very few companies would be willing to admit that they have a #2 position, but AVIS did, and it was a successful move.

Why? Because Hertz – then the market leader – could not dispute the claim. “At Avis, the lines are shorter!” How could Hertz argue with that? Hertz is/was the leader, so they must have longer lines! (This was before the no-checking Gold service.)

I believe that positioning statements need to be surprising. Too many positioning statements are ineffective because they are boring, and frankly, not believable.

Some examples of useless, un-believable positioning:

• your companies claim to be a leading vendor when you are really a trailing vendor in your space
• you are not leading in the main space, so you say you are the leader in a space that no one cares about

Boring. Ineffective.

Can you help? Find examples of surprising positioning statements!

I would like your input here. Please comment below, or email me, with examples of positioning statements that are surprising, unique, and disarming.

Fame will be yours

I need your responses within 1 day. I will write an article discussing the responses. All the super-compelling examples will be highlighted on our blog, with a shout out to your LinkedIN profile, a picture of you if you like, or a link to a page or article about you.

- Alan

On behalf of Saeed, Alan and myself, I’ll be speaking on November 17th at the 2009 AIPMM Product Management Educational Conference in the Battle of the Bloggers. Come and see me prove that three heads are better than one when it comes to Product Management blogging. (The full conference runs Nov 16th & 17th)

This is part 4 of the series. Here are links to Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3.

In this part, I’ll take a look at whether the industry can get out of the mess it’s in.

Looking back

Before looking forward, let’s take a look back at some ads from a couple of decades ago.

Click each image to enlarge.

Notice something about these ads? They all look rather similar. Pictures of (similar looking) computers and lots of text! Check out those headlines. “A new way of personal-professional computation”???? What’s that all about? Is it a personal computer or a professional compute? Well it’s both (and neither)! Ouch.

And that’s one fine looking set of muttonchops on Issac Asimov in the Radio Shack ad!

Even Apple was not immune to kind of advertising.  Here’s the original Macintosh print ad. A double-page spread! Click images to enlarge.

Cool. Did you catch the specs on the Mac? 64K ROM, 128K RAM, 32bit MC68000 processor, and even a clock/calendar chip!

Comparing these ads to advertising today, it’s  clear that things have changed for the better in 25 years. Apple certainly leads most other technology companies in their sophistication, but then, they’ve been at it much longer than most other technology companies!

As every industry matures, so does the audience for it’s products. Forty or fifty years ago, a lot of advertising for cars talked about engine horsepower, size (in cubic inches), acceleration, top speed etc. The only metrics that are frequently mentioned today are mileage or fuel consumption (and sometimes number of cup holders!). But that’s because those are important to us.

In personal technology, few consumers, truly care about the processor in their device. Quick, what kind of of CPU does you iPod have? What about a Blackberry? What about an iPhone? The Palm Pre? The Motorola Razr? The MacBook Air?

If you know any or (even worse) all of the CPUs in those device, you’re a serious geek.

But for the vast, vast majority of people, it doesn’t really matter one bit. Those days are behind us. We have matured and so has the industry. Of course, there are still many companies that talk in “speeds and feeds” or mumbo-jumbo, but in a maturing industry, they pay a price. The segment of the market that listens to the “tech-speak” is shrinking steadily.

Looking forward

If we try and look 25 years into the future, how will things have changed? Technology will have become much more embedded and ubiquitous in our environment.

The days of the big desktop computer will be gone. We will carry, wear and perhaps even embed devices within our bodies.

A second full generation of people will have reached adulthood living in an Web-enabled world. The word “offline” will be an anachronism. Augmented reality will be our reality.

In a world like that, how will people relate to technology? How will companies need to communicate with the market about their products?

The current “craze” known as social-media will be old news, and will just be part of the communication process vendors have with their customers. Consumers, particularly younger ones, will likely give up a lot of what is now considered “personal” information to companies, in exchange for individualized products and services.

In the context of the digital world, “Give me what I want, when I want and how I want” will simply be a common state of affairs.

Remember the phrase “personal computer”? That of course was shortened to PC, which is still used today, but few people think about the “personal” part explicitly anymore. Messaging and advertising will become “personal” in the future as well.

And of course there will be those that do it well, and those that do not.

So getting back to the original question – Can we get out of this mess? – the answer is yes, but it will take time. But for those of us who are at the forefront of this change, let’s see if we can’t make that change happen just a little bit faster and easier and ensure we don’t get emails that promise to help do things like  “Design a Monetization Strategy to Enhance Strategic Goals while Protecting Core Assets” any more.

Saeed

Related Posts

• Taking the “mess” out of Messaging (part 1) – the problem
• Taking the “mess” out of Messaging (part 2) – reasons behind the problem
• Taking the “mess” out of Messaging (part 3) – some solutions

If you in the Bay Area on Thursday November 5, make sure you take some time in the afternoon to attend the Product Management Open House at Forrester Research in Foster City.

Location: Forrester Research HQ
Address: 950 Tower Lane, Suite 1200, Foster City
Time: 4:00 to 5:30 PM

More details can be found here.

Kindly RSVP  Marsha Versen (mversen@forrester.com, 650.581.3851) if you are interested in attending.

If you have questions about the event, please contact Tom Grant (tgrant@forrester.com, 650.581.3846).

I honestly miss being in the Bay Area because of the numerous events like this one. They’re great for meeting new people or connecting with old friends.

Tom, I hope you have a successful Open House. Make sure you take some pictures and post them on your blog in the near future.

Saeed

Continuing this series (click the links for part 1 and part 2), let’s look at the following question:

• How can we get out of this mess?

Given the problems cited in part 2 – laziness, review committees, truthiness – it’s not easy. There are many other reasons of course, and the combination of them makes it difficult to change the behaviour of an entire industry.

Differentiate yourself

It takes effort, skill and planning to create great messaging. Like many other things, it’s difficult to describe what makes great messaging, but you know it when you see it (or read it, or hear it)!

Messaging should be a weapon of differentiation for companies. Tied very closely to positioning, messaging can impact audiences in ways that no technical achievement can. The now famous 1000 songs in your pocket message for the original iPod was simply brilliant.

Why? It was completely focused on the value to the customer. It spoke directly to them, was conscise, appealing and spoke about the iPod in a way completely different from any of it’s competitors.

Watch the video, and observe the story it tells.

The “dude” is sitting behind his Macintosh, listening to his music and clearly enjoying it. He then transfers it to his iPod, puts on the earphones, selects a song on the iPod with the thumbwheel, and within seconds is enjoying the song again. He then tucks the iPod in his pocket and dances out the door. The voiceover comes on and in only 6 brief words, speaks volumes to the audience:

iPod. 1000 songs in your pocket.

In 1 minute, Apple demonstrated how easy it was to enjoy music on their portable player, and focused the audience on the 1 thing they wanted the audience to remember. It worked amazingly.

Now, someone else — not as savvy as Apple and their advertising agency — would probably have promoted the iPod as follows:

• Comes in 2 models with 5 GB and 10 GB hard drives
• Capable of holding 1000 or 2000 songs respectively (in 160Kbps MP3 format)
• Patented thumbwheel interface
• 2-in backlit LCD display
• 60-mW high output amplifier
• Battery life of 10 hours (your mileage may vary)
• Firewire port with 400 Mbs transfer speed
• 3.5 mm headphone jack

In fact, if you looked at how other competing music players were advertised, they actually were marketing technical specs. Instead of benefits, they actually spoke about things like the amount of RAM they provided or the audio formats they supported.

It amazes me that in the 25 years (yes it’s been about that long) since the original commercial that introduced the Macintosh to the world, very few technology companies have been able to match the simplicity, clarity and effectiveness of Apple’s messaging.

And the obvious question is, yet again, why?

Rules for getting it right

It takes culture, commitment and command in the craft of communication for a company to create consistently compelling commuiques like those of Apple.  For the rest of us mere mortals, we can try something a little more mundane to mend our messages.

For whatever reason, people seem to think that in business writing, all the rules they learned in school are no longer needed. But that couldn’t be further from the truth. Follow these rules (created by none other than George Orwell himself) and see what a difference they make:

1. Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.
2. Never use a long word where a short one will do.
3. If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.
4. Never use the passive voice where you can use the active.
5. Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.
6. Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.

If you want more detail on any of these, check out this article.

• 6 rules for effective writing by George Orwell

And here’s the original essay where he first wrote these rules (way back in 1946).

For business writing, one other rule is needed.

Apply the “So what?” test to everything you write. If what you’ve written doesn’t provide a good answer the question “So what?”, rewrite it, and ask the question again.

I’ll stop there.

In the next part, I’ll discuss whether the industry can ever fix the messaging problem for good.

Saeed

Related Posts

• Taking the “mess” out of Messaging (part 1) – the problem
• Taking the “mess” out of Messaging (part 2) – reasons behind the problem
• Taking the “mess” out of Messaging (part 4) – the future

In Part 1, I provided a couple of examples of very poor messaging. The first was from an email that I received that contained lines like:

“Design a Monetization Strategy to Enhance Strategic Goals While Protecting Core Assets”.

The second was from Cisco’s corporate overview page where they described themselves in such information-free language that it could have been virtually any company.

I then asked the following open questions.

1. How did we get into this mess?
2. What can we do to try and get out of it?
3. Is it even possible to get out of this mess?

There were some good reader comments related to these questions. Here’s question 1.

How did we get into this mess?

1. Laziness

Aaron had a response to this question.

Could it be that, as a company’s product lines and # of target markets increase and diverge, it simply gets too difficult to be more specific, so we fall back on generalities that appeal to almost everybody? Many, many, company web sites have this problem.

Who is the audience for the message, particularly on something like a website? It’s not “everybody”. To me, “falling back on the general” as Aaron states, is a form of laziness. Many companies don’t put effort into understanding who their target audience is, and specifically communicating to them, so they generalize.

The main people any technology company should be thinking about when writing for their website are prospects and customers.

Provide clear, straight forward language that is easy to understand and your prospects will actually give you credit for it. Why? Because you’ve made their life easier.

Prospects are looking for information about you and your products. The easier you make it for them, the more likely they’ll contact you or click on one of your calls to action. And believe me, a clearly messaged website will almost immediately differentiate you from most of your competitors.

The next group that you need to pay attention to is customers. You’ve already sold them something. In theory they are using and like your product or service. Help them when they come back to your site by making it easy for them to find what they need. Maybe they are looking for add-on products. Maybe they need something to help them sell your product internally in their company.  Regardless, they are your allies, so make their life easy as well.

For everybody else – analysts, investors. shareholders etc. – they can and will get the information they need through other means of communication.

2. Review Committees

Linda believes one source of the problem are review committees:

I’ve seen lots of companies fall into the committee editing trap. A good writer presents some tight, well-crafted copy, and then everybody swaps in their favorite buzzwords and sound bites. What you get is blather.

Unfortunately this is quite common. Everyone has an opinion on what should be said or what one word implies vs. another or not wanting to leave any “stakeholder” out of the wordsmithing process, and you get mumbo-jumbo. Everyone can write, but only a few people write really well. Unfortunately good writing is not something you can measure explicitly, and is subject to a lot of (poor) interpretation.

3. Truthiness

The issue of “truthiness” also comes to mind as a reason for messaging problems. This is not the Stephen Colbert truthiness — about knowing (or believing to know things in one’s gut) — but truthiness as messaging that has some truth in it, but also contains a lot of implied meaning that is left to the interpretation of the audience.

Often, “wiggle-words” are used so that the company can appear to make claims about the merits of their products, or can hide gaps and deficiencies they know exist.

The word “support” is a common wiggle-word. Many companies claim support for 3rd party products such as operating systems, databases etc. But for those of us who’ve worked on the product-side of the house know that the details matter.

Another wiggle-word is “enables”. What does “enables” actually mean? Two sticks (used properly) enable someone to create fire, but it’s not a great way of doing so.

There are lots of example of ambiguous or meaningless language (e.g. create customer value) that can be placed under the banner of truthiness.  But truth be told (pun intended), companies are doing themselves and their customers a disservice by not speaking clearly and concisely.

BTW, I’ll cover questions 2 and 3 (listed at the top of this article) in future posts.

Saeed

Related Posts

• Taking the “mess” out of Messaging (part 1) – the problem
• Taking the “mess” out of Messaging (part 3) – some solutions
• Taking the “mess” out of Messaging (part 4) – the future

While there are many places I’d love to be in mid-November, there’s definitely one place I really want to be (but can’t)  on Tuesday November 10, 2009.

And before I say anything else, let me tell you this is not a paid promo piece from the PR firm that promotes the Cranky PM.

Where would I like to be on Nov. 10? I’d like to be in San Francisco where the Cranky PM will appear live (from 2:30-3:00)  and speak at the Business of Software conference.  Last year, Steve Johnson was the big hit at the conference. This year, let’s help the Cranky PM!

As readers of our respective blogs may have noticed, We’ve had an ongoing, healthy online conversation(!) over the last couple of years. Here are a few from this blog:

• In Search Of: CrankyPM.com
• What’s the deal with Personas?
• What’s in a name? A PM by any other name…
• Saeed vs. Cranky PM: Fight!

And here are a couple from hers:

• On Engineering Meetings: Redux
• Three things the CPM doesn’t want to hear

Now, I’m sure there will be people who go to the CrankyPM’s session simply for voyeuristic reasons. What does she look like? Is she a she at all? Do her legs look like those in the picture? Is she as funny in person as she is on her blog? etc. etc.

I think people should go there to support her. I’m pretty sure that being a popular anonymous blogger has it’s benefits. But being a frequent speaker at conferences is NOT one of them.

So here’s a tip of the hat to the Cranky PM, and whether she decides to reveal her identity or not, try to support her by attending her talk.

And for those of us who can’t be there, please live blog or tweet it if at all possible!

Saeed

We’ve compiled a pretty extensive list of Product Management related blogs. There are almost 60 of them so far.

It’s interesting to see some of the patterns in the blogs and how they’ve positioned or differentiated themselves from each other. Here are some of the 50+ blogs in our PM blog roll, and some comments/advice for some of them.

Named Blogs

A bunch of bloggers named their blogs after themselves: Let’s see now… Carl has a blog. So does Roger. As does Grant and Joao, Rob, Tim and Tyner…. er, I mean Scott.

OK, am I alone, or did a lot of you at first think Tyner Blain was a person? BTW, did I miss anyone?

Hmmm..there must be some female PM/PMM bloggers out there with blogs named after themselves. Or are most egomaniacs men?

<Adjective> Blogs

First there was Good PM, and the Cranky PM. Then came the Purist PM. Now, there’s the Brutally Honest PM.

• Good – Jeff, good to have you blogging again. When’s the next post?
• Cranky – more frequent posts please or is the crankiness subsiding?
• Purist – good blog, but why are there no date stamps on your blog posts? Is that a Blogger “feature”?
• BHPM – I’ll be brutally honest. You’ve only had 1 real post. It was on October 4, and it’s about cloud computing. Let’s see some more frequent honest brutality.

Product Management <stuff>

There are  a number of blogs with some what similar titles. And in another striking similarity, they are all quite good! I have a soft spot for Product Management Zen because it’s tagline contains the word balance, which is one of the words I use to define Product Management.

• Product Management Insights
• Product Management Musings
• Product Management Tips
• Product Management View
• Product Management Zen

We’re Strategic

Strategy is a big part of Product Management, so of course we have the following:

• Product Strategist
• Product Strategy
• Strategic Product Manager

We podcast

I really enjoy the podcasts on both of these blogs. And, full-disclosure, I’ve been in podcasts on both blogs.

• The Heretech – my podcast with Tom Grant where we have a long discussion on important topics related to Product Management, yet never utter the word “agile”.
• Product Management Pulse – my podcast with Michael Ray Hopkin, where Michael and I discuss what makes a great Product Manager.

Blogs from Around the World

I’m happy to see PM and related blogs from many different countries. I’m sure there are many more out there, so if you know of some, or write one(!), go to the Blog Roll page and let us know about it in the comments. We’ll add it to the list.

BTW, in this case, “around the world” means NOT in the United States! At the end, I will give a bit of a shout out though to my Canadian blogging pals. There’s a bunch of us up here and we need to stick together. Otherwise, in alphabetical order by nation:

• Australia – Brainmates
• Ireland – Joao Rufino’s Blog
• Malaysia – Product Management Matters
• Portugal – O Guia Do Gerente De Productos
• Russia – swpm.ru
• Spain – Web Product Blog
• United Kingdom – Effectivus, Purist PM

And the Canadian Contingent:

• Ateala
• Product Management View
• RocketWatcher
• Strategic Product Manager
• Write That Down

Take look at the Blog Roll and let us know if there are other blogs we should add.

Saeed

In light of the recent posts on Bill Campbell (1, 2) and some of the comments debating when to hire a PM, I was pleased to read the following in Entrepreneur magazine, about the early days of a company called RingRevenue and why VC’s decided to invest in them.

“Part of our secret sauce is that we know how to cost-effectively acquire and manage large groups of phone numbers,” Spievak says. “We build platforms that allow affiliate networks to bring on higher-margin products like financial services, and track the calls that result from those ads. It’s a win for advertisers, affiliates and affiliate networks.”

The company was also running lean, which is always appealing to investors. “Here’s what I liked,” Suster says. “They were six engineers and a product manager and a CEO, and nothing else.”

The last line speaks volumes: a CEO *and* a Product Manager. Who knows what will happen in the future, but at least, they’ve started out the right way!

Saeed

Tom Grant has a post a couple of weeks back with a Product Management/Marketing playlist. As Tom wrote:

If you were to make a musical version of what it’s like to be a tech PM, here’s what you’d put into the soundtrack.

I like the idea, but as a PM, I couldn’t simply create a “me-too” list.

So here’s my variation: The PM parody playlist. i.e. PM/PMM oriented parodies of famous songs.

• Bugs in my Product – The Monks
• We built this Product – Starship
• I left my code in San Francisco – Tony Bennett
• Sympathy for the Tester – Rolling Stones
• Gimme Data – Rolling Stones
• Software Product Management Blues – Bob Dylan
• Shock the Market – Peter Gabriel
• I still haven’t got what I’m asking for – U2
• Roll Over Product Owner – Chuck Berry
• Take me to the website – Al Green
• Market Love – David Bowie

I’m sure there’s many others. Any that you’d like to add?

Saeed