Rethinking Products:
A Formula for Product Success
Companies make products, but customers make products successful.
The brand plays a vital role.
At Tenaya Group, we help companies leverage new product development
with a new concept of brand, and a new way of thinking about products.
A New Approach
Brands integrate products and customers, and the best time to
begin this process is during new product development.
We work with product development teams to expand the dimensions of
what a new product can do (and mean) at the customer level.
The key is to conceive the new product as a platform for customer growth,
as opposed to a fixed and delimited "thing" that has to be "sold."
To do this, we move beyond the two standard models of product commercialization. These are:
Company > Product > Customer
and
Build It > Brand It > Sell It
These models can be made to work, of course, but in the long run they can trap
you in the fixed role of "vendor," which is far removed from your
preferred role as partner and value creator.
Re-thinking the Concept of "Product"
To avoid the above trap, we refine the concept of "product."
We illustrate our approach with the simple but effective:
2 X 2 = 4.
We ask, where is the product here?
From school we know that 4 is the product of 2 X 2.
The 2's are factors.
This expression becomes the operative metaphor.
We ask the development team to consider their "product" not what they
have in the lab, or in the factory, but as the end result of a similar expression:
Company X Customer = Product
That is, the real "product" is the result of what
you do times what the customer does with it.
Think of your company and your customers as factors
that create the product. Thus, the real meaning of your product
is on the far side of the customer.
Based on the above, the product is a customer result.
When you think of the product as coming last, not first, a world of
opportunity opens up to you.
Your Brand: The "X" Factor
How does your brand fit into the above formula? Your brand is the critical "X" factor.
It is the multiplier between Company and Customer. The better your brand,
the stronger your product. Thus:
Company X Customer = Product
where X is the power of your brand.
Value of this Approach
Once development teams grasp these relationships, they can refine
the front end of the product development process:
- Think of yourself and the customer as factors in a larger equation,
with the real "product" as the result of your partnership.
- Allow for three platforms:
- Product platform
- Brand platform
- Customer platform
- Plan the new product on the far
side of your traditional customers.
The goal of your product is to grow the customer into a new market space.
- Realize that you're not strictly in the "product" business.
You're in the context business. The context that counts is what
the customer does with your product. That context is your future.
The more context you can deliver, the more attractive your product
at the platform level.
- You and your customer are on the same side of the equation. You
are co-creators of product success.
This approach helps combat marketing myopia, that debilitating condition where
companies view the world through their products, instead of their customers.
