

Need advice - nyctravel

I have no idea if Hacker News is any good for this type of a post but I'll give it a shot.<p>I'm working with a travel group here in the US. Huge company with direct relationships with over 300,000 hotels. They're wanting to leverage those relationships into a handful of travel platforms. In a nutshell, I'm in charge of design, finding coders, managing the project, etc. I believe in their vision and they also have funding. At least enough funding to get us rolling but who knows after that.<p>Here comes the part where I need help. There's someone in charge of marketing who, in my opinion, has NO CLUE what they're doing. I just got a 30-slide PowerPoint with a "marketing strategy" filled with social media and marketing buzzwords. I know from experience that this person's strategy can't differentiate the product from competitors, especially when travel is so muddled as it is and since our competitors are going to be Orbitz, Kayak, Hotels.com, Expedia, etc. I don't want this company to waste their time and money building mediocre products, especially since I have a lot of time I'm putting in as well. How do I go about showing the CEO that this person's marketing strategy is going to lead us into an iceberg? How do I go about showing the CEO that he's about to sink a ton of money into the wrong marketing strategy?
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YuriNiyazov
Do you have significant marketing experience?

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nyctravel
No, but I have enough experience trying to launch two startups to know the
basics of what NOT TO DO.

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YuriNiyazov
That's insufficient. The only way to show why the guy is wrong is to show what
the right thing to do is.

Sounds like you are about to throw yourself into a political fight that you
are very likely to lose because you are going to step onto someone else's turf
without the appropriate ammo.

