Here's a thought: put the cart before the horse

While you're in the product development stage, consider how you're going to brand the product.

Without giving away my actual age, I was involved in launching several important products while with IBM in the late 1960's. I even sat on the naming committee for a year or two.

For months prior to launch, marketing, systems design, manufacturing and field engineering would battle toe-to-toe over specs and features and tests and options.

Hardly ever was anyone concerned about how the product would be branded until it was ready to be released from engineering.

Then we scrambled. Then we were asked to position and name the product; create data sheets, publicity kits, presentations and sales manuals; set up press conferences, key customer announcement meetings and systems engineering workshops. We wove a brand from whole cloth.

We came up with marketing communications programs in a vacuum, and we did it in weeks, not months. That's how IBI came up with scintillating brands like System 3 and System 7.

Now I may be prejudiced, but wouldn't it be better for all concerned if the brand was developed first? Establish a brand story which describes the customer need, the competitive stance, the benefits of a superior product. Put a name and a face to the product and then set about fulfilling the dream, the passion of the product's potential.

Now instead of compromise and trade-offs, everyone would have the same objective, to fulfill the promise of the brand.

Given the mindset of the "60s", we'd have been putting the cart before the horse. And today, we now the cart became the automobile.

Martin Jelsema
Signature Strategies
Helping smaller companies profit from the power of branding