"The raven chides blackness." Troilus and Cressida, Shakespeare
This post is a quick post on debunking the cliché that the marketing makes the product. I'll also address the cliché that the critic is the source of truth.
Oddly enough this is a paradox. A fun one to consider, but a paradox nonetheless.
Software companies have a new challenge, but it is the same challenge as any business still adopting old school thinking.
The old school marketer believes that a message ABOUT a product experience makes the difference.
All marketers have to face that products are the marketing. Any product that can't deliver on the needs of the user will likely fail.
Conversely, in the social age, products that deliver on the needs of their user will likely succeed.
The age when a marketer or a critic can stamp a product, a movie, a restaurant a failure (or "not up to snuff") is gone. The masses decide...
The zeitgeist is that the adopters decide--not the marketer, nor the expert. News spreads fast, and unfounded criticism i.e. contempt before examination surfaces quickly.
In regards to critics, many examples are in the restaurant industry where a food critic (after one meal and sometimes without one) grinds a personal axe to express dislike for a restaurant. The restaurant's "fans" create such backlash the restaurant's business shoots through the roof AND the critic's reputation as a capable food critic is permanently lost.
I do feel bad that the paid local food critic role has largely gone away. The convention was quaint. Yelp has proven that what the masses and what one's friends think of the food is WAY more important than what the pundits say.
Unmeasured criticism expressed without a full data set (nor any direct experience) doesn't work anymore. Everything eventually gets washed through the filter of the crowd. The crowd adopts the product, the crowd assesses the product, the crowd recommends or doesn't recommend the product.
The product is the marketing.
The raven chides blackness... and the proof is in the pudding.
