So there you are: the item manager for a boring product. How usually have you caught yourself gazing longingly at some of those iPhones, Kindles, or several other such highly desirable product and though to yourself “Now why couldn’t I be the Product Manager for a cool product that way?” I have one message for you – overcome it. It turns out that there are other product manager who’re in charge of products which can be even less cool than yours and they are doing some pretty amazing things to create their products successful…
How One Goes About Buying Bullets
I’m sure that there are some of you on the market which have quite strong feelings about guns and such 30-30 ammo for sale. Let’s put those feelings aside for some minutes and have a closer consider the problem of, what else, bullets. If you are not an avid survivalist or hunter, you almost certainly haven’t purchased bullets before.
It turns out that people really value what gun they buy. However, bullets are almost an afterthought purchase. Sorry about this bullet product managers. Rob Walker at the New York Times got thinking about the product conundrum when he researched a business called Alliant Techsystems (ATK)Building The Better Bullet (Brand)
The next line of bullets that ATK introduced was called Fusion. With the product line the item managers at ATK were targeting (sorry!) the 25-35-year-old deer hunters. In order to catch their eye, the organization created a brand new “aggressive” box design and even went so far as to incorporate a foil label. They basically pimped the box.
Both of these products gave the ATK product managers the experience that they needed in order to gain the confidence that they needed in order to do their biggest product launch to date. They recently rolled out a brand new line of bullets for duck hunters called Black Cloud. Now they are showing that they understand what needs to be done to turn a commodity product into a must-have product.
ATK has partnered with a favorite TV personality (in duck hunting circles): Phil Robertson who is called the “Duck Commander” ;.They’ve also gone ahead and made a couple of “viral videos” in order to build some buzz around their new ammo. Just showing that bullets also play a role in the 21st Century, they’ve gone so far as to create their own social networking site called StormChasersNetwork.
Simply to top things off, they have also ensure that the box for the Black Cloud product virtually jumps from the shelf. They dressed it up in a bright color scheme that is made to catch a hunter’s attention and remind him of the very first light of day (which is the better time to be hunting ducks).
What All Of This Means For You
I can’t say for several what sort of product you are in charge of managing. However, I could bet that it’s probably slightly more interesting than the usual commodity product such as for instance a bullet. In reality, irrespective of how boring you might find it, it’s probably a lot more interesting than the usual bullet.
With only a little luck this story about how the item managers at ATK could actually see beyond the straightforward fact that these were faced with trying to sell more of a commodity product that one other bullet makers should inspire you. What the ATK product managers did was to step into their customer’s shoes and identify how they begin to see the world. If they knew this, it became clear about what they had a need to do.
Take some time contemplating not what your product does, but instead what your visitors will do together with your product. This may point just how forward for how you can turn your boring commodity-like product into something which will remove such as for instance a (what else?) bullet.