A gold piece from the ‘Purple Cow’ by Seth Godin
Fifteen years ago, when Jerry Hirschberg was starting up the U.S. design studio for Nissan, he was invited to the long-range product planning meetings as an observer a courtesy extended to him by the marketing people.
The meetings were all about vague pronouncements about future cars (“all entry-level cars should be as generic as possible”) and plenty of spreadsheets about advertising spending and projected income. They were also the most important meetings the company held to plan it’s long-term future. The designers were mere tacticians.
Jerry proved, in short order, that he was much more than an observer. He demonstrated that designers not only had an important role in this process but should in fact dominate it.
If post-design, post-manufacture marketing is dead, what replaces it? Design. Not the pure design that builds the very success of the product’s marketing into the product itself.
The semantics get funky, but the facts are clear. The person with real influence on the success of a product today gets to sit at the table when the original seeds fora project are being sown.
If you are a marketer who doesn’t know how to invent, design, influence, adapt, and ultimately discard products, then you’re no longer a marketer. You’re deadwood.
“Make a list of all the remarkable products in your industry. Who made them? How did they happen? Model the behavior(not mimic the product) and you’re more than halfway to making your own.” — Seth Godin on the Purple Cow
