Conifer Consulting

Launching your Product: What to Avoid

by Reena Kapoor

I've worked with many clients to help bring new products (and services) to market and even when the offering has real value to offer and a strong, differentiable place to occupy in its universe, I find some common mistakes get in the way. Often a launch that can be great, is simply good or worse, mediocre.  Such an undesirable - and in many cases, undeserving - fate can be avoided. I offer here a check-list of some of the most common mistakes I've observed. These are based on my experience helping consumer-focused companies but they apply just as well to business-to-business (B2B) enterprises:

Authenticity: the new consumer sensibility

by Reena Kapoor

An excellent talk on TED by Joseph Pine on What Consumers Really Want. He talks about how we've evolved from economy that was based on commodities, to goods, to services and now its about creating and selling experience.  In this context, authenticity is the new consumer sensibility and it's what consumers want to experience.  We're hearing this with social networking/web 2.0 taking off as well.  But the question remains: what is authenticity and how do we (as businesses) render it effectively?

Recent Interview with Center for Ethics & Entrepreneurship

by Reena Kapoor

I was recently interviewed by Prof. Stephen Hicks of the Center for Ethics & Entrepreneurship about marketing and related issues for entrepreneurs.  The publication and interview are targeted at students at the center but I thought some of the content may be of interest to you. 

Here is the link: http://www.ethicsandentrepreneurship.org/20090126/january-2009-issue-of-kaizen/

Hope you enjoy it.  I would appreciate any thoughts and/or feedback.

CPG brands: Discerning your website audience

by Reena Kapoor

Recently I advised a consumer packaged goods (CPG) brand on their brand website strategy.  This is a non-trivial question because often what gets lost is not just the content but also the true audience for such a website.  How many times have you looked for the website of your favorite consumer good brand and arrived there only to find that while it has an abundance of information, you simply cannot find what you need? Often this is because the website is trying to say too many things to too many people.  A website offers a tempting podium to tell the whole world about your fabulous brand and it’s hard not to get distracted. 

Partners Revisited – Seven Watch-Outs

by Reena Kapoor

Jeff Thompson, my partner at Aventi Group, and I recently worked on a project where we helped an important client revisit and optimize their channel strategy. The problem was that our client who sells directly and indirectly to the SMB segment, had partnerships agreements in place with over 9000 partners.  But what they did not have is a clear picture of which partners were performing or even active.  Note that this is a client for whom the SMB segment (yes I know it is not one monolithic segment) is key and selling through partners is very important. Also our client is a leader in understanding this segment and providing incentives for making their partners successful in selling to SMBs. 

Finding a home for Product Management: Part 2

by Reena Kapoor

So it took me longer to get back to my blog than I thought  (I had to be out of the country at short notice). But I want to get back to reasons for why product management belongs in marketing - and not in engineering.  The first factor was of course around defining marketing properly (it's much more than marketing communications).  Another key reason is that product management needs to reflect the voice of the customer and market realities in the product requirements.  If product management is part of engineering then this imperative risks being lost. 

Finding a home for Product Management

by Reena Kapoor

Product Management is a key function in any company involved in innovation; and that includes all the tech companies I have the opportunity to advise.  And often I ask myself this question: where in the organizaion should this function reside? More often than not the choice posed is: Should product management report into Marketing or Engineering?

Consumer Product Management & Other Follies

by Reena Kapoor

I've worked in consumer product management in a few different industries — tech and non-tech — and want to talk about that I've observed about successful product management.  Even that terminology "tech vs. non-tech" in itself is telling.  I started my career nearly 18 years ago in the new product development function at Procter & Gamble (P&G). We defined requirements and developed the detergent formulas that would go into products like Tide, Cheer, etc. And while that was not a "hi tech" job, it was very driven by technology — AND consumer need.

More on Successful Positioning

Today we met with one of our clients, a leading software infrastructure player, who we had helped  reposition a key product in 2005. This repositioning was a significant shift because our work recommended moving the focus from a well established albeit entrenched market to a smaller market segment. This strategy would enable them to focus on solving a major customer pain in a clearly superior and differentiated way.

Successfully Implementing Positioning in Organizations

by Reena Kapoor

I've now worked on several strategic positioning projects for clients and have come to the realization that the harder part is not developing strong positioning for companies or their products.  The greater challenge actually lies in implementing it successfully. Don't get me wrong.  Developing strong, distinctive and meaningful positioning is crucial.  And, contrary to popular belief, it actually takes effort and skill to create it.  Sridhar Ramanathan — a dear friend & partner — of Pacifica Group actually wrote a blog entry describing the characteristics of good positioning. He's right on.

But I am sure you've heard the countless stories where a lot of time was spent and a fancy positioning was created only to gather dust.  While positioning can be targeted at any stakeholder, for the purpose of this article, I am going to focus on positioning targeted at customers.  I want to talk about how and what determines that a positioning will be successfully implemented.  Some of it has to do with the development process, some with characteristics of the output and some with your internal company workflows.