Product Management - The Longest Race - Part 2

In a recent blog (here) I discussed the product management and marketing lessons that could be learnt from the recent Nike 10K night race in Tel Aviv. I discussed the event planning (impressive and complex) and the event objectives (which were probably significantly more than just a fun run).

In this blog I will discuss some of the results of the event.

As a runner I can say I had an amazing time, and that on the whole this was an impressively run event.

However, the main question is what did Nike think? What KPI's did they set in advance for the event (number of runners? low number of problems? set up/clean up time? News minutes? Facebook group members?) Were their targets met? More importantly were the targets the correct ones or were they chasing the wrong things - were they were focused on their own issues and not on being customer centric?

During the course of the race itself there were other aspects of product management in action. Every once in a while there were music and water stations, we can consider them to be product features, helping the customers to enjoy the experience more, to engage with them - what will make them happy customers that will come back next year and recommend to their friends?

On the assumption that they plan to run a similar event next year, how, are they acquiring data and how are they planning to review and improve?

On the subject of next year we can consider product extension; will they feel the need to enhance the offering - perhaps by offering a shorter or longer version or by diversifying into a cycle race or triathlon? Perhaps there is a market for more than one event a year?

There were strict rules, we were all supposed to wear the official race shirt and run the course in an orderly manner. There were a few people who ran but I guess hadn't registered, and so ran in their own shirts and there were a few who wanted to stand-out and so ran in other shirts (last year's race etc) - on the whole this caused no problems to the runners. However, we can certainly view them in the context that the product was excellent, but, that it wasn't perfect - it was fit for purpose. Of course, since we mostly followed the rules, then we were complying with a certain standard, specification or protocol.

The race had a strict delivery schedule - it had to be ready on time and it had to work adequately well on the night. So part of the secret here is in team work and execution. The PM&M can have designed the perfect race, but if his project team didn't get the water in the runner's hands or publish the results then the product experience would have been irrevocably tarnished in the eyes of many of the customers.

So in conclusion I had a good run that evening and I believe that the experience was shared by the vast majority of the runners; I suspect that Nike felt that it was a success, but, that they have some points to improve or change in the next year. Overall this was a fine example of the craft of product management and marketing.

More importantly, I hope that by looking at an event that is outside of our day to day we can see the implications of strong product management leadership on all aspects of product design, management and marketing in general.

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Welcome to JET - The Craft of Product Management & Marketing.

Our motivation for writing the blog is simple, we want to share our experience and the fun that we have in leading the development and deployment of technology systems.

We have had the privilege of doing some mega product management tasks, both with real bleeding edge technology and also on the scale of the product development. As you can see from our profile we are very experienced in the field and can and do walk the walk and not just talk the talk. Our recent experience is in the Telecom space, but, most of our insights work across the technology domain and indeed in many other product spaces.

We are very hands on in our products and have spent face time and energy with customers, sales guys and the development and operational teams that are key to getting a product to market on time with the right functionality, at the right time and at the right price.

Over the years we have had many successes, but, along the way we have made many mistakes ourselves and we have seen many mistakes being made. It is really true that mistakes are part of the secret of future success, but, then again it is far more fun to learn from success than to learn from failure.

We believe that if we have to learn from mistakes then we should learn from new ones - it is so 90's to repeat old ones.

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Product Management & Marketing - The Longest Race

A few weeks ago, I was fortunate enough to run the 4th Annual Nike Tel Aviv 10K night run. Now 10K isn't the longest distance in the world, but it is long enough to enjoy the atmosphere (amazing) and to reflect on many different things whilst running.

Sad to say perhaps, but, whilst pounding the streets I managed a few thoughts on product management.

Organising a run with over 15K runners is a real task - coordination with the city, the police, bands, official running shirts, refreshments, web site for registration and results - clearly a massive project & clearly some top class organisers were behind this event.

However, there were many product lessons to be learnt. The race organisers claimed that the other Nike night runs in Europe have been abandoned this year and that our race was the sole survivor. So clearly we see that there was some effective market segmentation and strong brand/product recognition in the local market.

On the subject of brand recognition Nike (not normally slow in these areas) let the competition steal a trick on them - guess which company managed to get its posters on lots of billboards along the route? (So a clue then - Adidas) - so some poor promotion & competitive positioning here.

One of the main questions that we should consider is what is the product and what is the Key Value Proposition that they were promoting? Trivially, this was a race, but probably that isn't really the intention of the organisers; it was probably more along the lines of

to produce a mass street happening in an important city; promoting an active good time to sporty people who are likely to identify with our brand. The aim is also to attract people who previously would not have taken part in an event like this to participate.

This emphasis makes for a completely different plan driving them towards providing bands and music along the route, promotion on Facebook even the choice of the date - 10.10.10.

The local product management obviously worked hard at getting buy in from stakeholders - both in house (Nike management) and outbound keeping the city interested despite this was no longer a global effort. Not to mention trying to maintain product momentum in keeping the customers (we runners) very happy.

I guess we will never know, but it would be interesting to find out - if with all the cross branding (water, yogurts and granola bars) & other cross product promotion (Nike stores) what were the financial objectives of the event? Did the race actually make a profit - not that this is necessarily the objective. It would be acceptable to under-take a loss making activity in the right context. It would also be interesting to know (given this was a unique event this year) whether there was a process of strategic review of alternatives.

So much for the planning and product development, in the next post I will discuss some of the results (product, not my personal time) and suggest some possible conclusions.