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Wednesday, Jan 24th, 2007
Hard Services, Soft Products – Today’s Product Development Reality
(Product Management Experience Series)
Product or service? It used to be that products were defined by their tangibility and services by their intangibility—or simply services were what products were not. Today, the boundary between what is a service and what is a product is increasingly blurry (e.g. is the Blackberry a product or a service or both?). To be more competitive, businesses are enhancing their products with services (“softening products”), and enhancing services with products (“hardening services”). But, to do this successfully, it is essential to understand the nature of the relationship between tangible and intangible elements of offerings. For example, the degree of association between a service and objects (iTunes and iPod, Cingular wireless service and Motorola Razr) or a service and places (e.g. Best Buy and Geek Squad). Each option carries with it implications for effective new offering development, “packaging” and marketing.
During this session we will discuss:
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Our perspective on how to view the service product relationship as a continuum
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Implications for business and marketing strategy
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Our own attempts and key learnings – as a service company -- to “productize” our offerings
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Relevant best practices for softening products and hardening services
Presenters
Mike Cucka
Mike is a Partner at Group 1066. He specializes in new service development, marketing strategy and branding for services providers. In doing so, he looks for ways for these firms to help their customers build clear "mental models" of offerings. He has worked with Banta, Microsoft, and Gartner among others.
Prior to Group 1066, Mike was at branding firm Siegel & Gale where he focused on services branding. He started his career directing Marketing for the consulting division of PHH. He has lectured on branding in both the Daytime and the Executive MBA programs at Duke's Fuqua School of Business and taught the course “Creativity in Business” in the Hopkins Odyssey program in Baltimore. Mike has won marketing awards from organizations such as Print Magazine and The Business/Professional Advertising Association and his articles and commentary have appeared in publications such as CMO, C2M, and The New York Times.
Mike has an MBA from The Fuqua School and a BA in English Literature from Johns Hopkins.
Thomas Ordahl
Thomas Ordahl is a partner at Group 1066. His focus is the intersection of product development and marketing. He helps clients – including Microsoft and MasterCard -- innovate products/services and solve tough strategic marketing challenges by working with them to identifying strategic opportunities and the right approach to both delivering and marketing against them.
Before joining Group 1066, Thomas was a director and member of the executive management team of strategic branding firm Siegel & Gale. Thomas writes and speaks frequently on strategic marketing and product innovation. His articles have appeared in publications including; MWorld Magazine, Brand Republic, Chief Marketer and Sales and Service Excellence Magazine. He has also been featured in The New York Times, Business 2.0 and Forbes and has been a guest speaker at the Strategic Research Institute and the AMA Branding Conference.
Thomas received an M.A. in the liberal arts (Great Books program) from St. John's College in Annapolis, MD, and a B.A. in history with distinction from the University of Maine.
Event Logistics
Date : Wednesday, Jan 24th, 2007
Time : 6:30 - 9:30PM
Location: Group 1066
443 Park Ave. South
New York, NY
10016
Dinner : Deli Buffet
Format: Networking / Presentation / Networking
Cost : $30 - PDMA, $40 - Non-Member, $15 - Student
Early-Bird (until Jan 17th): $25 - PDMA, $35 - Non-Member, $10 Student
PDMA Members: Bring a Non-Member paying the above rate and your fee will be waived! Just let us know at check-in.
PDH : 2 PDH
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