“Never forget that the underlying driver is a passion to produce product messages that resound with our well understood buyer personas.”

This rule may seem unnecessary; after all, isn’t the point of having rules to share and learn from other people’s experiences and research?

We believe this is a Zen type of statement that is telling us to balance in-depth marketing knowledge with the need to retain passion and creativity.

The late Steve Jobs was extraordinarily successful at breaking the rules and was famously quoted in Fortune for saying “We do no market research. …. We just want to make great products.” Taking his statement literally and ignoring the good advice from Rule #7 on market research would be a career threatening move for most of us and certainly has contributed to the high rate of start-up company failures.

So, how do we reconcile this apparent contradiction? The value of Jobs’ contrarian approach for us ordinary mortals has several aspects. The first is the importance of having a deep passion for our products, with our marketing tools being a means to express that passion. Jobs’ own words prophetically said it well: “We don’t get a chance to do that many things, and every one should be really excellent. Because this is our life. Life is brief, and then you die, you know? So this is what we’ve chosen to do with our life. …. And we’ve all chosen to do this with our lives. So it better be damn good. It better be worth it. And we think it is.” His insight reminds us that all the valuable marketing ideas from this book’s contributors and other sources are very important, but they are tools to be utilized to accomplish our marketing goals and express our profound underlying desire to succeed.

Another aspect is the importance of deeply understanding our buyer personas to the point that they become living entities that drive our work. Again, Jobs clearly understood his buyer’s persona and took full responsibility for meeting their needs: “Our DNA is as a consumer company — for that individual customer who’s voting thumbs up or thumbs down. That’s who we think about…” There was absolutely nothing subtle about this statement. He told us that, as marketers, we own our personas and are fully accountable for our ability to translate their real needs into succinct, compelling marketing messages.

There are many other aspects of Jobs’ apparent rule breaking legacy that can help us, but one final one is the importance of interpreting market data based on the real, underlying customer needs and not necessarily on the customer’s ostensible requirements statements. At the risk of being trite, we’ll close with Steve’s comments on asking what people want: “So you can’t go out and ask people, you know, what the next big [thing.] There’s a great quote by Henry Ford, right? He said, ‘If I’d have asked my customers what they wanted, they would have told me, ‘A faster horse’ ”. That traditionally applies to product managers, but also applies to product marketing when we use customer interaction and understanding and research to develop winning messages.

Articles:

• The fourth video in our Adventures in Product Management series: The Sales Team & Innovation
• Agile Requirements: Not an Oxymoron
• Handy comparison chart for all types of primary research

More Articles:

• Explaining what you do: a Product Manager’s Perspective
• Are Twitterers just talking to an empty room? 
• Security: Could Epsilon’s apparent dereliction of duty lead to increased government regulation?

Ever find it challenging to describe what you do as a Product manager? We put together a humorous cartoon to help you out – check it out!

Articles: 

If You Don’t Know, Just Say So! Honesty Builds Credibility!
by Eric Krock

Product Management Tips and Best Practices: Humility
by Eric Krock

Recent Blog Posts:

Is there demand for product management cartoons? A simple test.

Will people really purchase and manage a tablet and a computer?

Gamification and Engaging Your User

Articles:

• “Is Your Product Bug Tracking Database a Productivity Issue?”
• “Stop Reading Here: How to Make Email Both Short and Detailed”

More Praise for 42 Rules of Product Management book!

“This is very valuable for anyone involved with the process of taking new products to market…you get a fresh perspective on each page…it makes for great reading”  Amazon.com review

280 Group Press Books

Extra Product Management Rules!

We had too many great rules that were submitted by our authors to fit into our new book, 42 Rules of Product Management. In order to share them with our readers we have been updating our blog with the bonus rules, we couldn’t keep them to ourselves!

Recent Blog Posts:

·“Rule 45: Know your audience and tailor your communications appropriately” An excellent rule from Sarah Gaeta, of Plastic Logic, to keep in mind while communicating with others.

·“Rule 46: Find the problem that customers will pay to solve-and solve it!” Mara Kreips, of AIPMM, shares a real gem with us. We wish we could have included it in the book!

Now that the holiday season is in full swing, it’s time to start thinking about your career goals for next year. Is it time to read a new book about product management, get some training, become certified or hire a consultant or contractor to help you get more work done? If so contact us and let us know how we can help.

Articles:

• “Rule 46: Find the problem that customers will pay to solve-and solve it!” Mara Kreips shares a great rule with us – we wish we could have included it in the book!
• “Rush to Failure” Barbara makes her blogging debut with a thoughtful article about a common response to pressure.
• “Why Microsoft won’t dominate online services any time soon” Brian Lawley voices some concerns about Microsoft’s online services.
• “Rule 44: Focus on Breakthrough Innovation for Products” We loved Janet George’s extra submission for our book. See below the fold!
• “Product Management Rule 43: Life is Short” This is the first in a series of additional rules that couldn’t fit in the book.

Extra Product Management Rules!

We had too many great rules that were submitted by our authors to fit into our new book, 42 Rules of Product Management. In order to share them with our readers we have been updating our blog with the bonus rules, we couldn’t keep them to ourselves!

 Articles: 

“Rule 44: Focus on Breakthrough Innovation for Products” 

We loved Janet George’s extra submission for our book.

“Product Management Rule 43: Life is Short” 

This is the first in a series of additional rules that couldn’t fit in the book.

‘Cookies’ Cause Bitter Backlash” – Wall Street Journal, September 19, 2010 [Part 2] 

Re-spawning a program after you think you have deleted it is the way that “scareware” applications work.  Scareware refers to the phony anti-virus programs that pretend to scan your system and warn you that your system is “infected” with viruses.  If you buy the program, you can get rid of this virus.  Of course, the only real virus is the scareware program itself, planted on your system by cybercriminals.

Andreesen’s new “Rockmelt“ Browser – First Take

I got an invitation from a colleague of mine this morning to try Rockmelt, a new browser from a company backed by Marc Andreesen. Unlike the other reviews I have read of it, in my first look here I found a lot to like.

Thoughts on Basecamp

I want to like Basecamp… I really do, but I just can’t seem to get behind it. I was introduced to Basecamp a few months back while working on a huge project that desperately needed a portal. This project had many parts, associated files and many members from different companies who had never met face to face. While I think that Basecamp has a few things going for it, I have a few issues.

Articles

• What every product manager needs to know about security and privacy
  If you aren’t on top of security and privacy for your product you may be risking its reputation (and your career!)
• Determining the optimal mix of marketing and launch programs
  Use this handy guide that outlines the pros, cons and costs of a variety of marketing activities.
• Five goals of a project manager
  Does your job also include some project management? Find out from a project management expert what he considers to be the most important goal for project managers.

If you are in Silicon Valley please join Greg Cohen of the 280 Group and Author of Agile Excellence for Product Managers on 7/21 at a Meetup: Managing People and Products the Agile Way.

Our recent webinars are now available in the archives for viewing: http://aipmm.com/aipmm_webinars/:

• All About Product Management Certification
• Real World Strategies for Prioritizing the Product Backlog
• Quickly and Easily Integrate Research Into Your Product Planning

Articles

1. How Product Management Can Save SaaS
2. Best Phone Ever: Blackberry Bold 9700
3. Dear Facebook: Please Stop Changing My Email Preferences

Brian Lawley and Greg Cohen of the 280 Group will be doing a book signing for their books “The Phenomenal Product Manager” and “Agile Excellence for Product Managers” at the Product Management Education Conference on Monday, May 24th in San Jose. Brian is also doing the dinner keynote “Black Belt Product Management”. Join us if you can!

Articles:

1. Privacy, Product Management, Facebook & Google
2. Five Questions To Ask To Ensure Global Launch Readiness
3. Stunningly Awful Sales Prevention Demos

Becoming twice as effective as a product manager…

In May, I presented at P-Camp 2010 Silicon Valley on Lean Product Management.  I challenged the audience to consider what would be required to become 100% more effective as product managers.more…

White Paper: How to choose a product management or product marketing training program

When it comes to choosing training you want one thing: the absolute best. Don’t settle for less. more<

Customer input during the product lifecycle. What gets in the way of getting solid and usable customer input?

In March I spoke about this  rather spontaneously during the final session of the 2010 Silicon Valley P-Camp - the third annual Silicon Valley ’un-conference’ focused entirely on Product Management topics/issues. more.