St6 EN - Products & Strategy (I)

Throughout my professional career, both as an executive and as an executive consultant, I have encountered numerous situations and lines of action by companies that hardly withstand scrutiny from the simplest logic of business.

One of the most striking, for its obviousness, is the lack of harmony between the nature of a product and the strategy pursued to market it. The most complex case, which deserves separate reflection, is one in which the chosen strategy conflicts or even contradicts the nature of the product it is applied to.

On this occasion, I want to share my thoughts on the other most common case of misalignment between strategy and product: as unlikely as it may seem, companies of various sizes and trajectories, more often than one might think, launch products to the market without a specific strategy to do so.

Within this phenomenon, I can distinguish two typical cases that arise from different reasons:

- More experienced and larger companies may fall into the temptation of neglecting the development
of a marketing strategy due to overconfidence:

o They ‘fall in love’ with their product: having extensive experience in the markets they operate in; they have managed to design a product that – in the opinion of its creators – is so perfect that they believe it does not need an appropriate strategy to accompany it: it will sell itself.

o They have so much experience with similar products and in so many markets that they simply apply the same strategy that has worked for them previously, without considering the particularities of the new product or the evolution of the market situations they are targeting.

- On the other hand, smaller companies, with shorter trajectories, or simply created or led by the team that develops the products, may believe that the product is
complete when it has the desired characteristics and is ready for sale in the warehouse. Due to lack of experience, they fail to understand that a well-developed
strategy for marketing in different markets is part of the intrinsic value of the product, without which it is an unfinished article.

This is another type of ‘product infatuation’ where, in addition to admiration for the achievement in design, they add the pride of parents towards their children.

In any of these cases, launching a product without an appropriate strategy for its nature or simply without any strategy is like abandoning in the jungle an inexperienced traveler (our product) who is unfamiliar with the terrain (the market) without a map (long, medium, and short-term objectives), without a compass (situation data and control), and with tools or weapons (investment, competitive information, positioning, communication, segmentation, targeting, etc.) not necessarily adapted to the terrain and the risks that lie ahead:

It will be a miracle if our poor traveler – if he manages to defend himself against the beasts with his fly swatter or cross the rivers with his sports shoes – manages to reach a village where he is welcomed!

Jokes aside, a professionally developed strategy is an essential part of product development, vital for both successful marketing and demonstrating its potential and strength to our shareholders and potential investors. Furthermore, the product strategy should precede or be developed in parallel with the initial stages of product development, as it inevitably has an impact on its optimal development.

Failing to understand this principle means starting with a handicap in the launch of any product, which is never attributable to external factors but to deficiencies in product design and development.

If we look closely, the common thread of both typical cases of lack of marketing strategy for a new product – both attributable to overconfidence and lack of experience – is relying solely on an internal vision of the development of the new product.

Having an experienced external vision at these early stages of product development will substantially reduce the likelihood of making this mistake.

PRODUCTS & STRATEGY (I)