How your POV drives product and market
Wednesday, July 19th 2023
I have been reflecting more on the importance of developing a POV for a number of reasons.
One example is that it helps give sharp lines to the product offering and the target market.
Although the two inspirations I draw from are Apple and Starbucks, I think the lessons are even more important for individuals.
This POV is actually the baseline of all of your marketing and customer acquisition and product development. If you have a different POV, then you're able to shape so much more of what you do find your customer. There's a lot of really complicated enterprise positioning statements, but really if you think about it being most successful ideas are just straight up POVs and from there entire businesses come out.
So what is an example? So I would say Apple, which is always the hard example to follow, but it's probably one worth doing. They came up with think different, but that actually came from something far deeper than within Steve Jobs, which is computers are a bicycle for the mind. This is very different from anything that other computer titans at the time, including Bill Gates thought.
This is a very different point of view of the world that I think shaped so much of what makes Apple great. Let's break it down. Bicycle for the mind actually put humans and their creativity at the center wasn't about efficiency, it was about enabling them to do more better at a faster.
In fact they got into the education market, artist market and many of these others so much more quickly. I think some other points of view, if you kind of drill down into it include things like Starbucks, that point of view. But the coffee place is a third place.
He didn't focus on the quality of the beans, although that was certainly a part of it. But he had this concept that the coffee house is a third place outside of work at home and from there informed a lot. Very little of their marketing and as shown in the quality of their coffee, very little of their coffee itself actually focused on the features or the characteristics of the coffee itself.
Yet lo and behold, Starbucks is in fact everywhere. It has in fact become an ubiquitous third place. I think the same thing starts to apply to people and perhaps more so when somebody has a very clear point of view.
It may be different from the rest of the world, but I think that's exactly what you want. Many very powerful consulting careers have been built on the backs of this poor conviction, even when it's wrong. A good example would be consultants who have best selling books, but they have a unique point of view.
Think about any product that would come to this. So for example, Angela Doctor came out with this notion of grit that is driving characteristic. Think of the number of people who have bought into this told it, retold it, she brought a completely new point of view.
Is it entirely true? It's probably mostly true. True enough people want to do this. Coming up with a point of view is difficult, but in fact everybody has this.
Developing my own POV
For example, I myself have a point of view, but it's probably pretty common, most people. And guess what? You don't even need to have one that's that compelling. I'll give you an example of somebody who got a massive Ted Talk but his statement was we should be more engaged at work.
It seemed to me like a very obvious statement I'm garnered just by that saying work should be more engaging. Millions of views and thousands of paying customers all around that very concept. So it doesn't have to be that compelling.
The more compelling it is, however, the better point of view can also speak certain. That's true, but in a different way. Saved I haven't heard too many people who have made the center of their messaging NPC versus mutants.
It's sort of the same idea, but it gives me a lot of areas for you to develop the product and the marketing. It also implicitly does positioning. Meaning I am aware that there is something actually quite odd about anybody who wants to not follow the NPC script.
And instead I am embracing that and saying that it's superpower. But guess what? I'm also saying by using the mutant analogy, it leads into my product. Because when I borrow from the X Men narrative, the mutants there all needed what they needed a Professor X.
They needed a certain set of circumstances. And that is exactly what I'm positioning myself at that aligns to a certain mutation of my own to be the Professor X and to create my own version of the Mutant Danger Room. So I'm going to continue to flesh this out and share with you how I think this works for you and for others.
Is a POV just languaging on top of generic offering?
I think a POV is definitely languaging. But that doesn’t make it bad.
In fact, as I think about it (and inspired again by Category Pirates), Languaging is Your Edge.
It’s sort of like how traditional enterprise marketers believed (incorrectly) that if they could get analysts to buy into their definition of the new category they are building, they are willing.
Language does play a role, but not if you’re talking to yourself or to an echo chamber.
An extreme example: when television sitcoms started to talk about “Googling,” Google made a huge leap forward to capture mindshare. An old school example is to “Xerox” something instead of “make copies.”
I read about how Tim Ferris used the catch phrase “lifestyle design” and owned it for a while.
Languaging is impactful, however, not when it’s just a mix of self-made words, but words that convey your POV in a condense short hand.
How to do that?
Gotta write about How to develop the shorthand for your POV