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Tony Fadell: Engineers Build the What. Then Call Marketing at the End. That's Why Products Fail.

By Tony Fadell · Investing · 1 min read

What normally happens — brilliant engineers, designers, scientists put together these 'whats.' They develop it and then at the end they call in marketing and say: now tell a story about this. Marketing creates a fictional story. The product comes out and falls flat on its face. Because the marketing doesn't match the product.

Key Points

Engineers build the 'what' but never articulate the 'why' — then marketing invents a fictional story at the end
Write the press release first, like a movie treatment — audience, features, pains, price
If you don't have the story at the beginning, you don't know when you're done

Stop impressing the geek next to you. What is the superpower you're bringing or the pain you're killing for the end customer?

The What Without the Why

Fadell: In the early part of my career — General Magic, Philips — I really worried about just putting cool things together. As an engineer you go, that's cool. Then other geeky friends go, yeah that's cool, because we knew the bits. But that's all 'what.' It's not 'why.' We're not articulating it for ourselves.

What normally happens — brilliant engineers, designers, scientists put together these 'whats.' They develop it, develop it, develop it. Then at the end they call in marketing and say: now tell a story. Marketing says — well, why do people need this? They create a story around the product. But the product was born out of 'whats,' not 'whys.' So marketing tells a fictional story. The product comes out and falls flat on its face.

They develop it, develop it, then call marketing at the end. Marketing invents a fictional story. Product falls flat.

The Press Release — Like a Movie Treatment

Fadell: Think about a movie. A movie starts with a treatment — the audience, the characters, the storyline, the arc. Then there's a script. Then it's produced with all the flourish. The story was created at the beginning.

If you're going to do a great product, create that treatment for your product. I call it the press release. Who's the audience? What features do you have? What pains are you solving? The price. Use that as the measuring stick for what you do during development.

Create a treatment for your product. I call it the press release. Who's the audience? What pains are you solving?

Without the Story, You Don't Know When You're Done

Fadell: Along the way — oh, we're not going to get that feature done on time, throw it overboard. Or — we're not sure this product is right, add another feature, add another feature. Feature creep.

If you don't have that story you're going to tell at the beginning, you don't have that bar. And at the end, you don't know when you're done. When you have it, you can tell a cohesive, non-fictional story — and the product delivers on that story, or hopefully over-delivers.

Without the story at the beginning, you don't have a bar. And you don't know when you're done.