By Marty Cagan · svpg.com · LinkedIn
Marty Cagan argues that no amount of marketing can rescue a genuinely bad product; asking marketing to make the best of a 'pig' produces 'lipstick on a pig.' He uses Macromedia's Flex as a case study. Flash was a great product, but Flex launched slow and buggy, with a sales force pitching it broadly, a lack of referenceable customers, defensive web content, and developer-only benefits. The essay concludes that wishing for a different product doesn't help; teams must be able to deliver on their promises, and that marketing cannot compensate for a product that doesn't measure up.
01Key takeaways
- Marketing cannot fix a product that fails to deliver; build a good product first.
- Make sure several marquee customers are successfully using the product and are referenceable at launch.
- Watch for defensive messaging on your website, which often signals unresolved customer complaints.
- Market to end users as well as developers, since end users ultimately decide adoption.
- Don't sell a product to markets it wasn't built for; ensure you can deliver on what you promise.
02Key sections
- The lipstick-on-a-pig problem
- Cagan defines the metaphor: marketing trying to sell a poor product. He prefers building a good product in the first place rather than relying on marketing skill.
- Flash as a success
- Flash succeeded by delivering rich, cross-platform experiences that users barely notice, showing what a strong product looks like.
- Flex and its problems
- Flex, meant to make Flash development easier, was marketed widely but was slow, buggy, and gave end users a poor experience.
- Symptoms of the failure
- The lack of referenceable customers, defensive website content, and a focus on developers over end users all signaled that the product was not ready.
- Lessons learned
- Cagan notes the product may have been sold to the wrong market, and stresses that a product must deliver on its promises, even at a company with strong people.
03From the post
“A partnership dedicated to teaching best practices to product teams and product leaders”
Summary and takeaways written by PM Atlas; quotes are short excerpts. © the original author.