In large companies, the folks involved with product development are functionally separated from the folks in marketing. It works something like this…
The folks in product development do an assessment of their assets. They look around and see what machines they have available to them, the vendors they have relationships with, the raw materials that are laying around and the skill sets their engineers and workforce have. Added to this is the burden of the “type” of business they are in (i.e We make cars….)
Piling all this together, they do a little brainstorming and come up with a product or an incremental change to an existing product. To be sure they are on the right path, they may put together a focus group or two designed primarily to confirm the top designers ego. A widget is born from this story line.
Then marketing gets a hold of the product and realizes that the story the product development team has created in the design of the widget is in conflict with the story the company’s customers want to hear. So, in proper marketing form, they “make up” a story to fix the problem with the story the product developers have built into the design of the product.
What happens then? A customer acquires the product based on the story the marketers have sold her but then experiences a completely different story when she goes to use the product. The tragic result is a customer that is fundamentally unhappy with the product and an erosion of the trust the company may have had with this client in the past.
It doesn’t have to be this way. Marketing and the folks in product development need to work closely together in the creation of something new. They need to take the time to craft a story built into the product itself. A story that will resonate with the client because it is the story she wants to hear in her life at that moment in time. A story that will be successful in the marketplace because it is not made up but is successful because it is real.
(Note: I chose a picture of the Pontiac Aztek to reinforce the point. This car/truck was produced around 2005 and has been routinely voted the world's ugliest. All the kings men and women in Marketing couldn’t fix this beast…consumers aren’t stupid)