Re: marketing: master or servant?
Hi,
I am not sure why I answered this post. I am certainly not
opposed to calling in the marketing folks to help sell Debian. And
yet, deep in me, there is this irrational unease ...
>>"Marc" == Marc Lepage <mlepage@cgocable.net> writes:
Marc> As a software developer who's taken more than a few marketing
Marc> courses, I'm not sure I agree. In its pure form, marketing helps
Marc> bring a product (or service) to market - hence the name.
Can marketing understand a developer not caring about whether
his product gets any market share? Or caring more about a percieved
`it feels right' more than any marketing ploy?
At times, as a programmer, I have written code for the sheer
joy of creation. And I do not need external validation -- and I
certainly am not making money on it.
Can you understand what makes me tick? I think that other
developers possibly can. I am afraid that it may be too alien a
concept for people from marketing (as I'm sure their deepest moments
of professional joie de vivre is a closed book for me)
Marc> But that doesn't mean that marketing always merely takes an
Marc> existing product and creates interesting ways to sell it. They
Marc> can (and should) be involved in the design process as well - in
Marc> the *creation* of the product. So, they can help bring a product
Marc> from idea, through development, to market, then to customers.
And if marketing folks have not been involved in the project
till the end, when they come in and start telling me how to dispose
of my work; umm, I have this atavistic feeling
Marc> Either technology is pushing this flow, or customers are pulling
Marc> it. Ever try to sell customers something they aren't convinced
Marc> they need? It's hard. And it's not good to sell a willing
Marc> customer something you know is an inferior product.
Can you understand that it is my muse that is dictating the
effort? That my code is written for me? That I don't have customers
here? I have people who walk to the same drummer. The code is
dedicated to them.
Marc> I think meeting half-way is the best. One group has to create an
Marc> excellent product, and the other has to bring it to market
Marc> successfully. They can work together to achieve this.
If market domination was my goal, you would be entirely correct.
manoj
--
We give advice, but we cannot give the wisdom to profit by it. Duc de
La Rochefoucauld (A word to the wise is--unnecessary.)
Manoj Srivastava <srivasta@acm.org> <http://www.datasync.com/%7Esrivasta/>
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