Conifer Consulting

Talking to Your Customers – A Survival Strategy

This is a post from guest blogger Jennifer Berkeley of The Insight Advantage who is a well-respected market researcher in Silicon Valley.  Jennifer has meaningful insights on how to talk to your customers - especially in these tough times.  I thought her thoughts would be of interest to you all. You can reach Jennifer at: JBerkley@TheInsightAdvantage.com.  Here is what Jennifer has to tell us:

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?

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. 

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.