In the last post, the Cranky Product Manager mocked Crypto-Descriptions of companies and products. Microsoft and Oracle were the targets of her crank-osity. She’s sure you loved it, because after all, who doesn’t love a good public bashing of Bill’s and Larry’s spawn?
Anyway, inspired by the ensuing discussion, the Cranky PM figured it might be fun to see if she can create the Worst. Positioning. Statement. Ever., but still have it be believable as something a real software company would say.
Here’s her attempt:
DysfunctoCrank is a business agility platform for organizations in financial services, manufacturing, healthcare, energy, business services, and government who want to accelerate their businesses and achieve improved Return On Agility(TM).
Thoughts? Can you do better? (and by better, the Cranky Product Manager means worse.)
{ 31 comments… read them below or add one }
You forgot the TM on DysfunctoCrank (TM).
LOTS of room for more adjectives in there! Something that provides clear differentiation, like scalable, easy-to-use, integrated…
how about this one: “XXX provides real-time mobile web technologies and products that connect your world in real time …mobile digital lifestyle application, providing an integrated social media and contextual advertising platform.”
Whatsizface and Timo, the CrankyPM wishes she had thought of those enhancements herself. Dagnabbit.
AnnoymousPM, do you work at XXXX?
no at this time…
The thing the Cranky Product Manager loves about this positioning statement is the Google Ads that are now appearing — one is for a “Business Agility Platform”, which swear-to-God the Cranky Product Manager thought she made up all by herself.
Oh, and look at all the Agile Development / Scrum ads!
(CLICK ON THEM because Agile Development ads pay nicely, and the CPM really needs a triple-venti-skinny-vanilla-no-foam-extra-hot-latte. Now.)
Love the social popping up there. How about something life cycle and a sauce of best practices?
Agree that any position’s insufficiently vague without “best practices” and “scalable solutions.” Also posit your categories are too specific.
“DysfunctoCrank provides a scalable, best-of-breed agile platform for organizations in fiscal services, product generation, social media, health maintenance, and public-facing services who need proven, actualized best practices for improved Return On Agility(TM).”
Don’t for get cloud and as a service angles – your valuation goes up by 2x if you include those terms. VCs just love it.
DysfunctoCrank is a leader provider of cloud-based, massively scalable, seamless, best-of-breed, tailor made agile platform delivered as an agile service (AAAS – Agility As A Service) for organizations in fiscal services, product generation, social media, search engines, health maintenance, government, Olympic organizers who need proven, industry leading, vertically optimized horizontal solution that incorporates decades of best practices for improved Return on Agility(TM).
#prodmgmt – New Cranky Blog Post! : A Prototype for the Worst Positioning Statement Ever http://bit.ly/aEjfbD
RT @crankypm: New Cranky Blog Post! : A Prototype for the Worst Positioning Statement Ever http://bit.ly/aEjfbD (return on agility LOL!)
Nice! Here’s my suggestion of how to ‘improve’ the latest mumbo-jumbo, I mean, corporate description:
DysfunctoCrank is the leading provider of open-source, cloud-based, massively scalable integrated architecture with best-of-breed, tailor made agile platform that delivers seamless agile service (AAS – Agility As A Service) for global organizations in financial services, product generation, social media, search engines, health maintenance, government, Olympic organizers who need proven, industry leading, vertically optimized solutions empowered by end-to-end delivery of world-class services that incorporates industry best practices for improved Return on Agility (TM).
Can’t forget about world-class something, there’s always a world-class in there.
ROFL. This is fun. Great job, everyone! SAP will hire you any day now!
Sorry to disappoint everyone, but there is no way that any large German software company of my acquaintance could hire you on this excellent showing of product management teamwork. The ones I know are the least agile, have no capability in the cloud, and don’t use SCRUM. Social media is still a research project and when did you hear of a global (yet German) search engines?
Just to tighten up the team’s prose a little more for online maketing purposes, I think I would use the term “Agility As A Scalable Service”. You’ll find that if SME principals could obtain highly scalable AAASS on a pay per use basis, the uptake would be asstounding.
Nowadays anything to do with Social Media, Cloud and SaaS is in vogue….
How abt this ???
“DysFunctoSocialPlat is a social media platform hosted on the SaaS model which can power your digital marketing campaigns and helps you connect with your stakeholders.”
Prototyping the Worst Positioning Statement Ever http://is.gd/91OzV (by @CrankyPM)
I LOVE the term AaaS! Although, come to think of it, not enough to actually kiss it. Maybe a little pat.
the Cranky PM's Worst Positioning Statement has been out-done by @matthewglidden. http://tinyurl.com/yc4nqe5 #prodmgmt #prodmktg
RT @crankypm: Cranky PM's Worst Positioning Statement has been out-done by @matthewglidden. http://tinyurl.com/yc4nqe5 #prodmgmt #prodmktg
Enjoying this @CrankyPM blog article (and comments) http://crankypm.com/2010/02/prototype-worst-positioning-statement/
DysFunctoDeSade’s innovative products span the complete solution space, for both Social and Media. No other vendor is as involved in S&M as DysFunctoDeSade.
Clearly, you people don’t do enough marketing. Not one of you included “2.0″
awesome thread, thanks!
DysfunctoSoft provides comprehensive, intuitive, multi-platform scalable solutions for accelerating your business’s ability to reach its goals and stay ahead of the market… whatever those goals may be in whatever market you have an interest.
How ’bout … ?
“Just do it.”
A magical and revolutionary device at an unbelievable price.
From @crankypm: A prototype for the worst positioning statement ever http://bit.ly/blAn6d
I know I’m late to the party, and since I’ve been OUT of high-tech product management (woot!) for almost a year I’m behind on the latest buzzterms I might just embarrass myself, but here goes my mods to Daniel’s version:
DysfunctoCrank is the leading provider of patented open-source, cloud-based, massively scalable integrated architecture with best-of-breed, tailor-made agile platform that delivers seamless agile service (AAS – Agility As A Service) for global organizations in financial services, product generation, outcome-based STEM education, social media, search engines, health maintenance, government, and Olympic organizers who need proven, standards-based, ETSI and CENELEC compliant, industry leading, vertically optimized solutions empowered by end-to-end delivery of world-class services and products-as-a-service that incorporate industry best practices for improved Return on Agility Technology Systems (RATS) (TM).
As a veteran of product management from both of those organizations, I can tell you firsthand that there are organizational legacies and fallacies that result in an over-abundance of cryptic and non-descriptive positioning statements.
AND to take it one step further on the Oracle side, I would suggest reading a few recent Oracle data sheets from Oracle.com. They are getting shorter and less & less specific all the time.
There are several commonly reused templates used by product management and product marketing that were around from the days of more successful launches, that may or may not have been successful as a result of having really good templates for positioning statements and value prop statements.
Nonetheless, at Microsoft, for example, if you are launching something new, as opposed to a new version of an established product, you are most likely going to use a template from, say, the Office group. Why not use a positioning statement template from a multi-BILLION $$ product group?
But these are so cookie-cutter that you end-up just filling-in blanks that seem to meet Cranky’s sample of a really, really bad postioning statement and just includes a laundry list like a target vertical industry list, target market persona list, differentiated features list, etc.
Sometimes you can almost directly reverse-engineer the marketing statement to guess what the questionnaire looked like on the template.
It turns out shortly after I read this that I met a partner who gave me their brochure. And it was stunning in it’s “non-saying-ness” that I had to share:
“The basic management principle of the XXXXX Company is to create added value for its clients and thus enhance their existing corporate values by providing them with advanced services. We want to be a corporate group that can contribute to dreaming up the future society by gaining insights into the paradigms of tomorrow’s society and making them real. We believe that by helping our clients enhance their own corporate values, our own corporate worth will also be enhanced.
We now live in an information society where knowledge plays and essential role. … XXXXCo provides high value-added cross-industrial and cross-market services, creating synergy by assigning effective and adaptable teams of highly qualified professionals….”
I talked to them and I still have no clue what they do. I couldn’t make this up. It definitely wins buzzword bingo though.
Well, I once worked for a recently-merged software company with a completely chaotic product line.
“MERANT Egility(TM) is the framework for rapidly enabling existing
businesses to compete in e-business. MERANT Egility defines the enterprise challenges companies must overcome to e-enable the enterprise: creating the new, transforming the existing, integrating the enterprise and managing the application environment.”
They disappeared into the maw of another acquisition, after spinning off the profitable divisions. The acquiring company’s home page is now sprinkled with “agility”. Not to mention “Scrum”.
So the only thing worse than “agility” may be “egility”. Unless it’s “iGility”, I suppose…
Software marketers, beware: RT @crankypm: A Prototype for the Worst Positioning Statement Ever ##prodmgmt http://is.gd/91OzV
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