The one thing we marketers want more than anything else is people’s time. We have all kinds of metrics to track it. Indeed, it’s the thing we track most, more so than spending and usage.
You are likely focused on the next round of innovations in the pipeline and how you will elevate and communicate the attributes and features of these new products at launch. Familiar territory for the vast majority of day-to-day marketing assignments and priorities. Yet the consumer has other priorities, driven by existential shifts and concerns that increasingly interfere with and refocus their goals and aspirations.
The most consequential brand decisions are often made before anyone calls them brand decisions.
The adage that history repeats itself is no more apparent than the current state of affairs at Nissan North America. The Wall Street Journal’s interview with Christian Meunier, head of Nissan NA, is so frighteningly similar to 1999 that I had to catch my breath. Yet, as with a lot of executives and marketers, the current plight of a troubled brand is a new situation, as if this state of affairs has never happened before,...
Each year, research firms such as CB Insights analyze why both startups and new products from mature companies fail. On average, about 80 percent of VC-backed startups fail (and those are the best of the startup world), and somewhere between 40 and 60 percent of new products launched by mature companies also fail. Invariably, the primary reason for failure is “no market need.”
