Wasn’t it Homer Simpson who observed “Everything I really need to know I learned from TV?” Well, there definitely are a lot of things we can learn as product managers from the culture that surrounds us. The following lists some of the high and low points from 2006, and the lessons they teach us about defining, creating, and marketing successful products.

  1. Letting your customers dictate your product features is not necessarily a recipe for success. When Snakes on a Plane started getting a lot of buzz on the Internet, the producers chose to reshoot parts of the movie using concepts and even dialog created by the fanboys. The result – a very disappointing $30 million gross domestic box office for a picture that **should** have been on everyone’s (at least the fanboys’) Must See lists. Of course, it **was** the director’s fault in the end.
  2. The “blue belt” scene (starting at about 55 seconds in) from “The Devil Wears Prada” reminds us how many factors are at play in bringing a product (in this case a color) to market successfully. Looking at the iPod again, it wouldn’t have been successful without iTunes, or without its excellent design, or without ubiquituous broadband, or without $0.99 songs. Apple’s competitors tried all the other combinations, and none stuck (and now Microsoft is trying as well – we’ll see what happens with the Zune).
  3. Jennifer Hudson in Dreamgirls showed that the packaging is the least important part of the product. Originally passed over for the part of Effie in Dreamgirls because she was too fat, all the critics are now touting her for a Best Supporting Actress Oscar nod. In a **musical**, it’s all about the **singing** – and Hudson sang the house down.
  4. The number of movies that sucked this year reminds us again of what a difficult job product management is. A director is the product manager for a movie – ultimately responsible for what gets into the film, and usually for what goes up on screen, just as a product manager is ultimately responsible for what goes in the box. There are tens, often hundreds, of people whose work has to be coordinated, there are requirements (the script) and specifications (the shooting script). There’s a budget and a schedule. There are stakeholders, often with their own personal money at stake. There are hundreds of decisions to make, everything from who will play the parts, to the tone of the movie and its look, to which hand the lead actor should use for his cigarettes. Just getting a movie completed is an immense accomplishment. And when a movie sucks, or fails at the box office, it’s usually the director’s fault – it’s because of bad decisions the director made.
  5. And finally, K-Fed (aka Kevin Federline, aka FedEx, aka Britney Spears’ ex) showed us that the bottom line is **the product has to be good**. What makes a product good is ineffable, but the market knows, and it knows it **quick**. K-Fed’s CD sold just over 6,000 copies its first week, despite all the hype about him since he and Britney hooked up.

    6. (I think with this post I can make my Entertainment Weekly subscription tax-deductible!)

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