So there you’re: the item manager for a boring product. How often have you caught yourself gazing longingly over at some of those iPhones, Kindles, or various other such highly desirable product and though to yourself “Now why couldn’t I be the Product Manager for an awesome product like that?” I have one message for you personally – overcome it. As it happens that there are other product manager that are in charge of products which are 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 a few of you available which have quite strong feelings about guns and such 30-30 ammo for sale. Let’s put those feelings aside for some minutes and take a closer consider the issue of, what else, bullets. If you’re not a devoted survivalist or hunter, you most likely haven’t purchased bullets before.
As it happens that folks really worry about what gun they buy. However, bullets are almost an afterthought purchase. Sorry about this bullet product managers. Rob Walker over at the New York Times got enthusiastic about this product conundrum when he researched an organization called Alliant Techsystems (ATK)Building The Better Bullet (Brand)
The next distinct bullets that ATK presented was called Fusion. With this product line the item managers at ATK were targeting (sorry!) the 25-35-year-old deer hunters. In order to catch their eye, the company created a brand new “aggressive” box design and even went so far as to include a foil label. They basically pimped the box.
These two products gave the ATK product managers the experience they needed to be able to gain the confidence they needed to be able to do their biggest product launch to date. They recently rolled out a brand new distinct bullets for duck hunters called Black Cloud. This time around they are showing they know what must be done to show a commodity product in to 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” to be able to build some buzz around their new ammo. Just to show 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.
Just to top things off, they have also be sure that the box for the Black Cloud product virtually jumps off the shelf. They dressed it up in a brilliant color scheme that was created to catch a hunter’s attention and remind him of the very first light of day (which is the best time to be hunting ducks).
What All Of This Means For You
I can’t say for many what kind of product you’re in charge of managing. However, I can bet that it’s probably a bit more interesting when compared to a commodity product such as for instance a bullet. Actually, regardless of how boring you may find it, it’s probably a whole lot more interesting when compared to a bullet.
With only a little luck this story about how precisely the item managers at ATK were able to see beyond the simple fact that these were charged with trying to sell more of a commodity product that the other bullet makers should inspire you. What the ATK product managers did was to step within their customer’s shoes and identify how they begin to see the world. If they knew this, it became clear as to what they needed to do.
Invest some time thinking about not what your product does, but rather what your visitors can do with your product. This can point the way forward for tips on how to turn your boring commodity-like product into something that will remove such as for instance a (what else?) bullet.