My Facebook reel. See my prior post.
Tag Archives: product marketing
Half Truths
Product marketers always have to guard against spouting half truths.
Well, except for those who revel in them.
A classic example is Randy Newman’s statement “In America every man is free.”
This line, and the one that follows, are from Newman’s song “Sail Away,” a lesson in how NOT to market a product. In this case, a free trip from Africa to America.
I may return to this video later.
Maybe These Artificial Luxuries Can Only Compensate (Taking Stefan Gladbach Seriously)
Product marketer Stefan Gladbach (the guy who masterminded the “A PMM Christmas” video) has dispensed some sage advice on how to be a millionaire.
Here’s the “too long; didn’t watch” version.
- Be deceptive about wealth.
- Sell garbage.
- Lose morals.
But because I am a product marketing expert (albeit in biometrics, not monetization), I have improved on Gladbach’s inferior suggestions.
Rather than arranging for Robin Leach-inspired “rich and famous” Ferrari/Rolex photo shoots (Stefan’s first point) and laboriously writing up an expensive course (his second point), I assigned the tasks to AI. This offers the added benefit of satisfying Stefan’s third point, losing all morals.
So here is my course, thanks to Google Gemini. But don’t tell anyone that.
Marketing a Biometric Product Without a Biometric Product Marketing Expert
Bob and Judy had left television production and started a biometric company. Bob handled sales, Judy engineering. As their company grew, they both realized they needed help.
Bob turned to Judy one day. “What we need is a product marketer, but not just any product marketer. We need a biometric product marketing expert. I know a guy-“
Judy cut him off. “Forget it. Any so-called expert is hampered by legacy. We need new thinking.”
As they used to say, you won’t believe what happened next!
All the features
Ron, their new hire, was a fast learner who listened to Judy for hours, soaking up everything she knew until Ron understood every feature perfectly.
Ron assembled his product marketing materials, clearly differentiating the superior technical advantages of his product. Bob then took the materials out on a sales call.
That afternoon Bob returned, dejected.
“The prospect threw the brochures in the trash.”
“Why?” Ron asked.
“They didn’t make sense and didn’t speak to their needs.”
None of the use cases
Ron belatedly realized that the materials didn’t address the benefits the prospect would realize from using Bob and Judy’s biometric solution. And the owners realized that Ron needed to understand the biometric market so that his materials resonated with customers.
So Ron studied the market carefully, spending a lot of time with cops and forensic experts before rewriting his brochures to infuse them with industry knowledge.
A well-prepared Bob flew out to meet his next prospect, a well-known sports team in Chicago.
And returned the next day, dejected again.
“They loved the first hour,” Bob reported, “although all the talk about investigative leads confused them. Then they asked about consent.”
Ron, fresh from police station booking rooms, was confused. “Who needs consent to take bionetrics?”
“Sports teams, banks, hotels, office buildings, hospitals, you name it,” Bob replied. “Especially in Illinois.”
Fumbling Towards Insolvency
Maybe “insolvency” is harsh, but if a biometric firm doesn’t have the embedded knowledge to speak the language of its prospects and customers, the firm’s success will be limited. Immediate expertise is impossible.
Bob, Judy, and Ron may be fictional, but lack of biometric expertise happens in real life. I still remember the time I worked with a company that was bragging about its three-year old NIST FRTE facial recognition accuracy rankings. I gently explained that FRTE results change monthly, with better algorithms appearing all the time. Those old results were worthless.
And your product marketing will be worthless also, unless you understand the many products and many markets.
Bredemarket can help you speak the language of your biometric prospects. Talk to Bredemarket.
I Peeked at Bredebot’s Post Drafts
Looks like he will have interesting things to say later this week. His thoughts concern product marketing.
Found Another Job
What if Bob and Judy found ANOTHER job: this time running a biometric company?
They would need help…
Keeping the Content Excitement Alive
New content creation carries a level of uncertainty.
- Will this future blog post raise awareness about your company’s product?
- Will the case study assist those in the consideration phase?
- Finally, will your formal proposal result in conversion?
This uncertainty itself creates a giddiness as you await the results of your product marketing. Will this be the one?
So how do you maintain that inner excitement?
Easy.
Never give final approval on the content.
And you can continue to imagine the “what if” rewards.
Bredemarket’s failure
Now this highlights a terrible failure on Bredemarket’s part.
Because my goal isn’t to get you into a “what if” euphoria.
My goal is to complete the work and get it out.
If you’ve seen my descriptions of Bredemarket’s services, the final goal is always clearly in sight. I produce a draft, you review the draft, I revise, you review again, I provide the final copy, and you publish it.
Well, that’s the intent.
Business lost…or was it?
I turned a simple blog post draft over to a client, and two months later the client hadn’t reviewed it. I ended the project right there.
So did I lose business? Not really. For short projects I am paid at project completion, and this project was never going to complete.
So if your goal in life is to work on product marketing without ever completing anything, your company is not a fit for Bredemarket.
My clients and I are getting stuff done.
If that’s what you want, let’s talk. https://bredemarket.com/mark/
Who In Your Company Knows What Due Dates Are?
Proactive project management is possible, as the (anonymized) Bredemarket example later in this post illustrates. But first I am compelled to talk about an uncomfortable topic, due dates.
What is a due date?
Some people in a company don’t know what a “due date” is. If the work isn’t done by this Friday, it will get done by next Friday. Or whenever.
But there’s one part of your company that lives and breathes due dates. I talked about this in March 2025 as it relates to Bredemarket’s clients.
“I still enjoy the satisfaction when my client submits a persuasive, compliant proposal. A day before the due date, even.”
Which is better than submitting a proposal AFTER the due date.
Why does Proposals care about due dates?
Why does Proposals tend to care more about due dates than, say, Product Marketing?
Because the latter due dates are set internally. And the “agile curse” is that you can, and often do, change anything on a whim.
Contrast with proposal due dates that are set externally by an outside entity such as a government agency that receives funding for a particular fiscal year. Funds that you use or lose.
How can others implement due dates?
For your organization’s product marketing initiatives, do you adopt a “we’ll do it when we get to it” approach?
You don’t have to.
Last week my client and I were getting proactive about an end customer’s anticipated requests. I was recording these in Excel.
Then I added an “anticipated due date” column.
Which allowed me to ask a question.
To preserve client and end customer confidentiality, I have obfuscated and fictionalized the question that I asked.
“Hey, Fernando, the widget manufacturer says that they will want a user guide, whatever that is.
“I doubt they’ll want it when they deliver their green widget pitch in Brooklyn next Tuesday, but is there a chance they’ll need it when they meet with Jay Leno’s folks the following week?”
Proactive project management involves transparency between the outside project manager (me), the client, and the end customer. Since we knew that the end customer was meeting with the organization of Jay Leno, we could ask the right questions and schedule a deliverable before the end customer even asked.
And we had a due date.
So what?
But what does this mean for you?
It means that Bredemarket can proactively manage your projects, whether they involve content, proposals, or analysis.
I provide product management consulting for identity, biometric, and technology products. In fact, I am a leading biometric product marketing consultant. (Among others.)
If you need an outside consultant to manage your product marketing projects, let’s talk.
Let me help you…forge your future
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I Went Too Far
If the image wasn’t too much for you, what about the reel?
John E. Bredehoft, (Semi) Super IC
I read Tamara Grominsky’s weekly newsletter, and the 177th edition caught my eye.
It opened as follows:
“What does the future of PMM leadership look like?
“The Super IC role is so hot right now.”
For those unfamiliar with the “IC” acronym, Grominsky was referring to an individual contributor, as opposed to a manager of people.
The Super IC
Grominsky credits Elena Verna with the “Super IC” concept:
“I’m talking about employees with no direct reports who can do work that used to take a whole team (all while still getting paid like a leader). I’ve been calling this new role the High-Impact Individual Contributor.”
But I prefer “Super” to “High-Impact,” because it’s a lot more visual.
Perhaps I got a little too carried away with Tamara Grominsky’s “Super IC” idea. But at least you can’t accuse me of imposter syndrome.
But one distinguishing feature of both Grominsky’s and Verna’s definitions is an extremely capable lone wolf who, due to today’s tools, can do what used to require an entire team. Grominsky expressed it as follows, using the common “PMM” acronym to refer to a product marketing manager:
“Now, with tools like Claude Code, a PMM can vibe code the landing page, build an interactive demo, create a dashboard, and ship experiments themselves. The work that used to require a team and a few weeks can happen in an afternoon.”
In Verna’s case, she is currently living the “Hi-C” dream.
“My role is basically to parachute in and out of different projects and teams wherever I can create the most leverage. But mostly, I just have a huge block of IC work that I’m doing on my own. I’m running campaigns. Driving partnerships (did you see my latest LinkedIn x Lovable perk?). I’m coding my own growth optimizations and product updates. These are things that I used to rely on a large Growth org to do… now, I can do it all with just me, myself, and I.”
Now I’m not sure that I can do this for an organization as an outside consultant, unless I am REALLY embedded into the organization. Sure I can perform a number of the required tasks (although my vibe coding needs a bit of work).
But I don’t know that I can do this on behalf of an organization that does not employ me. The organization would be understandably leery of an outsider having all that power.
But certainly an organization’s EMPLOYEE with appropriate experience and authority can take the reins and call the shots, contributing directly to growth.
What about a SEMI Super IC?
But things are not binary, and it’s possible to be somewhere on the continuum of IC-dom: a SEMI Super IC, as it were.
In that case, I as the Semi Super IC would take care of most of the work, and just toss a completed artifact over to my consulting client for the final steps.
In this case, I (as Bredemarket) take over as much of the load as possible.
- I do NOT require you to provide me with a briefing book. I use my own questions to effectively assemble everything that a brief would contain.
- While I DO need you to review what I delivered, there have been many times when my clients have accepted my drafts without question.
- The one big barrier to a lone wolf delivery model is the need to access your tools for the final distribution. One of my clients actually gave me privileges within the company blog and the company LinkedIn account, and I regularly posted things directly to LinkedIn on behalf of the company. In any case, there was no need to transfer content from my Microsoft Word document to the client’s own tools.
So you can see how Bredemarket can serve as a powerful “super” individual contributor, freeing you for other priorities.
If you need my superpowers within your organization, why not set up a meeting with me?
Sorry for sharing it again, but now I’m strutting around proud.
Bredemarket 