Marketing and related slime

How wrong I was.

I realised the other day that the complex web of procedures and processes that I viewed as marketing can actually be expressed in a much simpler fashion. Of course, I may be skirting around some of the nuances in the science of marketing with my definition, but we'll leave all that complicated stuff to the MBAs. As far as I can tell, having been involved at both ends of the marketing machine¹ in various roles, the point of marketing can be expressed as a holy trinity of concepts:

1. Trick people into buying your product, no matter what.
2. Don't get caught doing it.
3. Something about suits and aftershave.

That's pretty much it.

In my experience as a product designer/developer, dealing with marketing people is difficult, because the idea of people wanting to buy your product due to its inherent quality is not something they're familiar with.

To be blunt, they don't understand the concept. At all.

Talk to them about the advantages of your product, and they'll stare uncomprehendingly at you, in much the same way as when you tell them the speed of their car is unrelated to its colour.

This can be pretty depressing. To re-emphasise the point, if you work in product research and/or development, no matter how diligently or accurately you work on your product, slaving to imbue it with as much quality as you can, the destiny and success of that product lies almost entirely in the hands of someone who thinks Winamp skinz are kewl, or who asks you to explain the difference between 8-bit and 16-bit colour "...just one more time." And this person doesn't care two hoots about your product; the only thing they care about is what they can hang it off, or what related publicity wave they can ride.

Never mind about the "Our product is great!" publicity wave - they aren't interested in that. By way of example, the last software project I worked on was tied irrevocably to a particular date, because the marketers said the best publicity point was the anniversary of the death of someone involved in the project.

I am not making this up³.

So maybe you can see why this wears me down. For the record, the entire team eventually rejected the deadline and effectively quit the project rather than cave to such crass stupidity.

Whenever the question of quality came up, the response reminded me of this section of the fantastic book, Peopleware:

"People may talk in glowing terms about quality, or complain bitterly about its absence, but when it comes time to pay the price for quality, their true values become apparent."

A Big Boy Did It and Ran Away

This is not to say that the problem rests entirely with marketing staff. I would prefer to be able to say that, but it's not completely correct.

To be sure, there have been plenty of low quality projects and products over the years, which is perhaps where the current marketing state comes from. The products suck, so we can't sell them on merit - hey, we'll just sell them anyway, using whatever tricks we can to fool the poor schmuck who's going to pay out for this thing.

This is a partial defence, but it's no excuse. It's an abdication of responsibility. The very people who should be pushing for the highest quality product they can get - the marketers - are encouraging this culture of obsession with drop-dead dates and selling seasons and just getting the damn thing out on the shelves. They are selling themselves short, because they then have no material to work with, except their usual smoke and mirrors and SKUs and USPs.

In my own particular field of video games, I am hard pressed to remember a game that shipped late that resulted in compromised sales figures. The only ones I can think of are a few isolated cases where the product was 2-3 years late (and, coincidentally, of poor quality).

I can think of plenty of games that were rushed out of the door by the publisher, and sales were affected hugely.

The quote I often hear which encapsulates this very well is this:

"A good game is only late until it ships.
A bad game sucks forever."

If marketing luck out (and it usually is luck) and the product sells well even when it sucks, then the developers may well be grateful for the resulting financial advantages, such as bonuses or royalties (yeah right, in Bizarro World), but most of them still won't feel that marketing has done a great job.

This is partly due to cognitive dissonance - the developers know they have made a shoddy product, and no matter what rewards they get for it, most of them will still feel there is something wrong somewhere. They'll no doubt take whatever money they can get, but they sure as hell won't be proud of what they've done - it wasn't up to the standards they expect of themselves. If you don't see the problem with this, then I recommend you buy Peopleware and read the chapter "Quality - If Time Permits", and especially the part about the "flight from excellence".

Game Publishers in particular often talk about the difficulty of building a stable business - but how on Earth can they expect to build a stable business when their long term plan only ever stretches to the end of the financial year?

Look at that Tick!

In recent years, another spectre has come to haunt people who are trying to make the best products or services they can. It's called Branding.

Branding is based on the fundamentally broken concept that people buy your product or use your services simply because they've heard of you.

The concept is broken because brand recognition is simply one of the factors influencing a person's decision. Quality of the product or service also has an effect.

Damn! There's that quality thing again! Why won't it just go away? It's almost as if it's important.

If you're not familiar, here's the reasoning (and boy have I heard this a million times):

"Nike have huge global brand recognition, and they sell lots of products, and they have that cool logo, and advertise lots. So all we have to do is get a cool logo and advertise lots, and we'll be a raging global success!"

That's a nice story, but it leaves out one thing - quality. Or in some cases, having a tangible product or service at all. Nike do advertise a lot, and do have a widely recognised logo, but there's also the point that their products are not crap.

Oh, sure, you might not like the products yourself, or you might be ethically against them due to various alleged work practices, or they might not make the most durable trainers ever, but, even though I've never worn a pair of Nike shoes in my life, I know enough about the way the world works to know that they won't fall apart after 4 weeks. They will last. They might not look their best after a year, but they'll still function as intended (with the possible exception of some of the flashing lights).

Which is the point I'm making - kids might think Nike shoes are cooler than some other brands because of the lifestyle marketing, or people might pay a bit more than you'd expect for them, but despite all of that, ignoring the logo, ignoring the branding, ignoring the surreal television adverts, Nike (and most other companies like them) survive, to a large extent, because they're not selling crap.

In other words, man cannot survive by Brand alone.

Quality counts.

Footnotes:

1. The marketing machine is not, of course, actually a machine, per se. This is because science has so far been unable to construct a machine powered entirely by polyester and horse-shit.²

2. To be fair, the backroom boffins could probably knock up something that ran on unleaded Blue Stratos, but I wouldn't want to ride it.