Positioning
Products for Normies, Products for Sickos
Some products are made to have a perfect balance of features. They are "good enough" for "most people." A milquetoast Wirecutter pick. Those are products for "normies." But some products are made for the extremes, the edges. Those are products for sickos. (As a
Opinionated Is Good
In a user interview years ago, a customer said he found his Tortuga backpack to be too "opinionated." I got a little obsessed with that idea. A product should be opinionated. A designer—and by extension, his products—should have a point of view. Opinions are good. You
Simple is Sticky
The product that's the easiest to understand wins.
Making the Bug the Feature
Learn how Third Culture Bakery turned a bug of gluten-free pastries into a feature.
More This, Less That
> A product’s position is a “location” in a more abstract space — the space of trade-offs. The decisions you make about which features to build and how to integrate them places you “closer” or “further” from other products. I love positioning. The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing [https://www.
Getting Specific: Tortuga's V3 Strategy
At Tortuga [http://www.tortugabackpacks.com], the V3 project was all about getting more specific. Going more niche. The Outbreaker backpack [http://www.tortugabackpacks.com/products/outbreaker-travel-backpack] isn't just a new product, it's the next iteration of Tortuga as a company. For the launch, we redesigned
Optimal Newness
Raymond Loewy has been called "the father of industrial design" and credited with "invent[ing] Americana." I'm embarrassed to admit that I only learned about him recently from a misleadingly-titled Atlantic article [https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/01/what-makes-things-cool/508772/] . The article
The Target is Not the Market
While re-reading The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing, the following paragraph from Chapter 13 struck me. The target is not the market. That is, the apparent target of your marketing is not the same as the people who will actually buy your product. Even though Pepsi-Cola’s target was the
The Shopping List Test
In The Target is Not the Market [https://www.fredperrotta.com/target-not-market/], I highlighted a lesson from The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing [https://www.amazon.com/22-Immutable-Laws-Marketing-Violate/dp/0887306667/?tag=fredperrott01-20] . In this post, we look at the companion book, Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind [https://www.amazon.