Promise anything. Then deliver.

Satisfying a customer's practical as well as emotional needs has been a bedrock of consumer product development for years. Today, however, the study of customer experience forms the foundation for new product development and for the creation of features, functions, and appearances in the world of B2B products as well. Branding to capture the product's tangible and intangible promises is now driving the commercialization process across a growing range of industries.

Consumers, even from early adolescence, clearly understand that a brand is more than a logo or clever tagline; it's something that defines their experience with the product in a number of important ways. That's why the makers of consumer products place a great deal of emphasis on cultivating, maintaining, and protecting their brands. And they've been doing it for years.

But branding is not just limited to B2C markets. If anything, brand-driven product management is redefining how B2B companies develop, launch, update, and extend their own product lines. Today, all across the business community, from the board room to the shop floor, an awareness of brand management as a strategic asset is growing. So too is an awareness of how brand value can be created through thoughtful product design and effective service delivery.

That understanding begins by recognizing the value customers derive from your product, and then leveraging the promise of that value into all aspects of your brand offering. Think of it as brand-centrisity.

But it's not simple. If anything, brand-driven product management is an extremely complex task. It not only means cultivating a distinctive market position, it also requires marshalling the technical savvy to deliver on that brand promise. Even the best-conceived and most clearly a rti culated marketing campaign will fail if the product's design and support services don't live up to the brand vision. It is the role of Product Management to provide the leadership, direction and motivation that ensures alignment between the product's vision and its delivery on that promise.

A Brand-Centric Look at Product Design

How can you build brand centricity into your product management process? Start by thinking “inside out” – by identifying the key stakeholders inside your organization who create the brand experience. Then, use your product management process to build best practices around those individuals so they can better deliver on your brand vision.

Design is key. In most B2B technology companies, as in most consumer product companies, the product's design plays a critical role in the brand vision. And the product management team is ultimately responsible for managing that aspect of the brand experience. As a result, a product manager's success hinges on his or her ability to guide, empower, and motivate the product design team to deliver on the brand promise.

That doesn't always happen. Take the case of one enterprise management software product whose brand vision was to give business users the ability to make software changes for which they had previously needed programmers, and to do it in real-time, right from their desktops. It was a compelling vision, according to industry analysts, and prospects were intrigued. Yet the company kept losing deals to competitors whose products unabashedly required programmers. Why? Because it was still much too geeky. During the sales demo, non-technical users discovered that the user interface was not at all intuitive and hard to use. Bottom line: Bad Design. The product failed to deliver on its brand promise.

Could brand-driven product management have overcome this challenge? Perhaps. But in any case, a combination of brand-centric product management best practices could have greatly increased the likelihood that the product would meet the expectations of the brand vision without suffering the humiliation of going to market with a failed product.

Here are some of the ways of going about it:

•  Gather customer-centric requirements . Collect and write marketing requirements with the customer experience in mind. While the technology visionaries in your company will be critical, giving them too much influence over marketing requirements puts you at-risk of having “product centric” rather than “customer centric” product development. Listen carefully to the voice of the customer. Input from hands-on end users through interviews, surveys, and contextual research, including usability testing, is invaluable in ascertaining user needs and expectations.

Case in point: McKesson Provider Technologies relies heavily on user research as for input into their requirements, according to product marketing manager Randy Quinn. Using time-and-motion research, they study workflow in hospital pharmacies to better position their new product development efforts around customer needs and the intrinsic benefits customers can gain by automating the dispensing of medicine.

Sales people are often a great source of market intelligence and insight. After all, they are face-to-face with customers every day.

•  The MRD and “soft specs”. Consider re-casting the content of your Market Requirements Document in terms of the customer experience – both the tangible performance benefits customers expect and the intangible benefits that satisfy their perceived needs such as trust in the product or sense of control. As you specify features and functionalities, include “soft” specs related to those intangible aspects of customer experience. At SAP, for example, product design is divided into two categories: technical and visual. The visual aspect covers the “soft” specs of product development – ensuring that the product gives users the ability to customize the look and feel of their own end user interfaces without sacrificing product performance or the consistency of SAP's own brand graphic standards. The technical design, which is also user-centered, addresses delivering on the promised functions.

•  Testing, testing, testing. Build later-stage testing processes to determine whether the product is actually delivering on the “soft specs.” Consider medical device manufacturer MEDRAD, whose brand promise is to deliver unequaled reliability and confidence in their products, people, and services. Taking the time to make sure products actually deliver on their promise is critical. According to marketing services manager Grace Nah, verification that the product design will deliver on its promise is part of a rigorous lab and market testing process. “I can't tell you how many times I have heard people emphasize that that our products must be ‘right to market,” she said.

•  Lessons learned. A corollary to Brand-centric product development is continuous improvement. Once the product is deployed, solicit customer feedback and use it to fine-tune marketing requirements for future releases. MEDRAD, for example, conducts monthly customer satisfaction surveys to test brand perceptions regarding reliability and trustworthiness. And they take customer perceptions seriously. Executives from different parts of the company have formed a customer satisfaction advisory board, which meets monthly to review survey results and respond to customer feedback.

Beyond Product Design: Consider All Internal Stakeholders

Of course, your product design team isn't the only group in your company that's involved in delivering on your product's brand promise. Other stakeholders impact the brand experience too. In high-tech marketing, they include your customer service and professional services staffs. Beyond that, you need to consider the impact of anyone in your company who helps define and deliver the intangible benefits customers derive from your product. Among these not-so-obvious stakeholders are the account reps who sell the product, the documentation specialists who create the users' manual, and the client training team.

There are also a number of other best practices that product management can use to help align stakeholders with your product brand vision. Try to engage all your employees as ambassadors of your product brand vision. Make sure they understand their role in delivery of the brand promise, and recognize them for their successes. You don't have to do it alone. Involve your marketing communications people in developing an internal brand campaign. And get human resources to build your brand proposition into personnel practices, such as new employee orientation, newsletters, and performance metrics.

Be careful messin' with the brand

After going to all the trouble of creating a distinctive market position and brand promise, be careful not to sabotage it. Abrupt changes to a well-established brand can be unnerving to customers and employees alike. Six years ago, B2B global computer software giant SAP, widely respected for its history of innovation, had a strong and loyal customer base. But the company was late getting into cyberspace. So in an attempt to catch up, it embarked on a major re-branding initiative, which included a restatement of their brand architecture and positioning, a new logo and tagline, a global adve rti sing campaign, and turning their product brand into their corporate brand. For a time, the change led to tremendous marketplace confusion.

However SAP's brand repositioning involved much more than changing the company's external marketing efforts. In fact, its external campaign was merely the tip of the iceberg. Inside the company, aligning its key corporate strategies with its brand's positioning was viewed as a critical element of branding success. Product Management took a close look at customer's interaction with SAP's products. The company then worked to fine-tune the design of its products to meet its brand promise, which included ease of use, and to demonstrate their commitment to enhancing customer experience with the product. As part of that process, it formed a Consumer Labs group to improve user interface with the products, and a Design Services Team in the CEO's office was formed to make sure new product development was driven by market insight from customers, competitors and market forecasts, not by its own engineers.

Today, SAP is recognized as a global technology brand leader. It enjoys a towering 62% market share and has more than doubled its revenues since 1999 – including 13 consecutive quarters of double digit growth through 2005. And in Interbrand's rating of most valued brands in the world, they have climbed to #34 – outranking the likes of Apple and Xerox and even beating some of the best-known consumer brands like the Gap and Harley Davidson.

So yes, you can affect major changes in your brand. You just can't do it lightly.

About the Author

Joan Tesla is the Director of Marketing for Confluence, a provider of investment data management software solutions. Ms. Tesla's more than 15 years of marketing communications experience spans high tech, financial services, healthcare and non-profit. Most recently she led marketing for Haley Systems, a software provider for business rules management. Previously, she led strategic branding efforts as Vice President of Marketing for United Way of Allegheny County . Prior to United Way, Ms. Tesla served as Marketing Director for knowledge management technology provider ServiceWare, where she contributed to brand building and lead generation efforts. She also managed marketing activities for Federated Investors' institutional mutual funds and Eckerd Health Services (EHS), a prescription benefit management provider.

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