Which came first? The product or the marketing?
February 5th, 2009Posted by: J.W. Crump Posted in Mainstream Media
Reading this article by Seth Godin made me think about the role of marketing for a product or service before it’s actually created. As he states in the final line of his entry, “If someone comes to you with a ‘great’ product that just needs some marketing, the game is probably already over.”
A recent film comes to mind when I think about this concept. Movies in general do a lot of marketing beforehand, including toys, games, and soundtracks released well before the actual film. Cloverfield did an especially good job of this by creating many social media outlets for the film, including memes, YouTube ads, and separate websites for fake products placed in the film (one of the fake ads is shown below).
By the time the actual movie premiered, I felt like I was watching something that was already part of my daily life. And this is the goal of marketing. It made me want the product to such a high degree that I couldn’t imagine not having it.
Some would argue that you can’t market something that doesn’t exist. That’s hogwash. I could market something that doesn’t exist almost as easily as I could market something that does. Using the example of Cloverfield once again, they rarely showed any actual clips from the movie. The social media outlets contained items whose appearance in the film was under complete speculation.
I would even argue that long-term marketing might lead the product creators to fantastic ideas for things that could improve the product. This is especially true if they listen to feedback from their Internet audience. Comments such as “This would be great if it also washed dishes!” could lead to new ideas for the finalized product.
My advice? Immediately start thinking about how to market your new idea as soon as you think of the new idea. In the long haul, it’ll save you a lot of blood, sweat, and tears. Hopefully, it’ll even make you some money!
