When I first heard that the CEO of AirBNB, Brian Chesky, had eliminated the Product Management role, and transitioned that department whole cloth into Product Marketers, I was surprised – and skeptical.
Surprised in part because, AirBNB is a company whose product folks have had a serious impact on me and my own product practice – Lenny of course but also more directly Nick and James from the Transform team (who I got to know during my time in the modern data stack space). To think that a company that produced such thoughtful and successful product folks, was pivoting away from this mindset and methodology (which I’ve built my professional journey on!) was jarring, to say the least.
Was this part of a larger market shift? Was Product Management going the way of the Elevator Operator? Surely a little over-the-top, a dramatic overreaction from a former theater kid. But even so!
A quick Google will give you lots of hot takes and deep dives on what Chesky really meant, and how what they were really doing was shifting from the way that they had found themselves doing product, more intentionally to a revenue- and market-focused direction.
That being said, in hearing the news, my first reflection was more personal – I’ve had the opportunity to work with some world class product marketers, but that part of the overall Product Toolkit was an area where I felt quite weak – not for lack of interest or adjacency, but just, never happened to get around to it!
So, I did the thing any good Product person does when faced with uncertainty; I did some discovery! I reached out to the undisputed most talented product marketing professionals I know, and asked for help.
And help they did – after a few Zoom powered coffee hangouts, I felt as though I had passed through the Dunning Kruger horizon. The depth and complexity of the topic unfolded before me in an exciting (and nervous-making) way, like any topic does once you get close enough.
One aspect of my concern was validated almost immediately: while I had worked closely with marketing teams and marketers, my own toolkit could use some sharpening in this area. So, I set about doing just that sharpening – ingesting a lot of audio and text content, YouTube videos, and overall sort of soaking in the broad Product Marketing Content Ocean – and an ocean it is! There’s no shortage of folks who are happy to opine on the many aspects of the field.
Through this effort I did find two resources to be especially useful and continue to be folks I look to for expertise and value regularly, which I share here:
- Jason Oakley of Productive PMM – I subscribe to his newsletter, which shares regular quick-hit examples and analysis of interesting things being done in the wild.
- April Dunford – I will read, write, and listen to anything that April makes! I’ve been so impressed by her thinking, her storytelling style, and her deep and expert analysis. She has a podcast which is a great first stop.
It was through April’s podcast that I first started to think a lot about positioning – not something I had considered with much depth before, but something which, due to the topic itself or perhaps due to April’s natural charisma and engagement around the topic, really drew me in.
I think most folks have the experience of, occasionally, being really taken by an aspect of their own work, some line of thinking or research, or new approach or methodology, that can arise with a sort of renewed energy, a renewal of excitement and a new sort of lens on a great many things that you’ve been doing regularly without much new insight or novelty.
For me, the most recent example of this is positioning – in coming to better understand this line of thought and methodology, I’m find it applying to more and more aspects of my own work.
It has me so fired up, between the great fright that Chesky gave me, and the compelling nature of Dunford’s podcast, I did something I never thought I’d do. I bought a sales book.
I haven’t finished the sales book, but I am already seeing some unexpected intersections of how we thoughtfully market and sell to external customers, and how internal / platform product teams could more thoughtfully represent the value of their partners and work. There’s something here, and I’m stoked to dig in more.
All this to say, if there’s a kerfuffle in your industry, in your place of work, and it makes you nervous or anxious (as Chesky’s shift to Product Marketing did for me) it’s worth sitting with that internal landscape, spending some time interrogating that feeling, maybe having a coffee or two with friends or mentors. You may find there’s something new and exciting behind that anxiety that unlocks a whole new space in your journey.
Simon Ouderkirk 