“If you do not know where you come from, then you don’t know where you are, and if you don’t know where you are, then you don’t know where you’re going. And if you don’t know where you’re going, you’re probably going wrong.” Terry Pratchett
Guiding a product to a new brand position must begin with a clear understanding of where you are in users minds, the product and go-to market strategies must lend themselves to what you want to become, and the end position must be attractive*.
A Product Manager recently presented my team with a word cloud with a big, bold REBELLIOUS in the middle. This is the brand they want for their product and a radical departure from how it’s been marketed for decades. The revealed launch creative centered on REBELLIOUS.
Questioning reveals: No existing user survey to identify current positioning and no particular aspect/feature of the product that screams REBELLIOUS. REBELLIOUS was selected by three folks sitting in a room with no concrete data and driven solely by a desire to fill the market gap left by the market leader.
How’d this happen? A new PM looking to be a rock star. A desire to be bold and aggressive in a new role. Maybe some inexperience doing user surveys?
Folks, if you have an active, contactable installed base in the seven digits then do a survey. Properly understand the starting point. 15 minutes on Google reveals a myriad of survey questions you can leverage. One hour to draft email and pull lists. A week for responses. This is 2019, leverage the web and get yourself up to speed.
p.s. I’d like be 7′ 10″ and a multi-billionaire professional ball player. Alas, the product does not match the dream. I better stick to endurance races.
**Basic rules of segmentation apply: you need a meaningfully big base, a base with money to spend, a base you can get messaging too, a base that will respond to the message you communicate (i.e. They, not you, consider your inspirational position meaningful).