
Useful Marketing - what can we learn from Dannon? - JarekS2
http://jareks.disqourse.com/useful-marketing
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some1else
Years ago when I was in helping an ad-agency turn digital, myself and another
hacker kept persuading management to add value in form of complementary web
services (small apps that help the consumer automate or introduce information
technology in the product's domain). They ran back to old school marketing
during the recession, but we managed to make a few highly successful web
applications that still nurture the user-brand relationship to this day.

The problem with some people in marketing is, that they view the emotional
branding paradigm as an excuse for slacking on delivering real value. Their
idea is, that you can completely disconnect the content from the image, and
just paint pictures or write stories however poor the product design or actual
communication with the user is (sometimes there's almost no communication,
just top-down bombardment).

In highly successful examples this leads to focusing on joy instead of flavor
(drinks), image instead of performance (cars), healthy lifestyle instead of
product utility (sports apparel). However, often the product actually lacks in
some way and nothing is done to compensate for it. Instead, marketers try to
drive the consumption by shifting the focus from the actual product to some
vaguely related subject or a fairy-tale that strikes a chord with the target
audience.

To tell you the truth, I lost faith in marketing as a separate service. I just
felt that products should be superbly designed, so as to market themselves or
allow marketing to focus on the actual features of the product. In software,
that's stupid-simple. The product _is_ the useful set of features. No need to
add value in form of vaguely related useful attachments. I think Evernote is
doing a great job at this.

I do understand that some product categories just can't innovate any further
(most of Dannon's portfolio), so they must resort to emotional branding and
adding value in form of additional useful features, collectibles, or god have
mercy on their poor souls, gamification. I'm just glad software doesn't have
that problem. We can just keep innovating and improving our product in tact
with all the new disruptive technologies and methodologies, adding value with
product design at the core, not by adding flourishes and perks.

