October 10, 2006
Product manager gone bad
It's time to get digital!
This is an ad from a newspaper circular I've carried around for a long time, circa 1998 or so. It's finally time to toss the hard copy and leave it as a digital post-it note.
I've carried it and posted it in every office I've sat in, every cubicle, even at my home office.
It has been a constant companion and reminder for those of us who have called ourselves product managers and meant it.
Product Manager Gone Bad
I look at it and imagine the strange pressures on the person who put this together and the person who approved it...
An ad touting a new recipe for pizza... The Heinz Ketchup and Onion Ring cheeseburger pizza. Blecch.
What volume numbers did this product manager hope to hit? Did they just read the article "Ketchup loses ground to Salsa!" or have forwarded by an executive the new Forrester stat about declining marketshare "Ketchup drops 2% to 18.7% of all leisure-related condiment usage"?
Dunno. All I know is that these strange, unfortunately fathomable pressures caused them to get excited enough to produce this hideously misguided advertorial recipe.
Just looking at reminds me: Don't do that. And don't go back into the corporate world. Key reminders if you ask me.
Posted by BilFish at October 10, 2006 11:15 AM