Most of my background is in product marketing — emphasis on the word PRODUCT. I never had much in common with, or much interest in, the type of marketing that’s all about the glitz & scheduling. But my friends, now that I am in the throws of launching a product ( I guess the cat is out of the bag to a certain extent that Tripwire is up to something in virtualization), my life has become 100% about the Calendar (note the capital “C”). Everything I work on these days is an deadline contingent upon a deadline contingent upon another deadline and all leading to various connected events. Needless to say I’m having to think very creatively about pace, buzz, and activities in an entirely new way.

I figure all this stuff is good for me, but traditional product marketing lets me geek out on the technology, and I miss that. All those little things I love like creating a demo database, finding what’s cool and what’s not cool about the product… the more I get swept up in design decisions and media planning, the less I have to spend some time lovin’ the actual product I am marketing.

The good thing about a Calendar like mine is that it does show progress in a pretty concrete way. I’m looking forward to the day not too far from now when everything has already arrived. Then I can sit and fiddle with the technology. Like how you can’t really play with a baby until after its born.

launch planning, marketing; product marketing, virtualization, vmware

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 15th, 2009 at 4:59 pm and is filed under Virtual Marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.