An easy prediction: Product fails due to packaging

Ick! What happened to my water!? Is this some sort of practical joke? Nope - sealed bottle... must have been contaminated and then sat in the hot car for several months and started growing...or... wait... maybe it's actually not water? Maybe it's an actual water-like drinking fluid intentionally colored to look like skunk juice! No way... Is it? It is!! Why didn't I figure that out sooner.... Why was I so quick to judge this poor product as water gone bad? Maybe because it's IN A WATER BOTTLE! What marble head decided to do that - to put a ghastly green tinted, skunked-out-water-looking substance in a container that has become synonymous with bottled spring water? It makes me almost sick just looking at it, how would I ever bring myself to drink it? The failure here, or my prediction of failure - to be fair, is in the packaging only, not in the product. The product could be the absolute best Green Tea drink on this side of the universe, but nobody will ever know. I can only think of a few paths which brought our targeted product manager to the decision to use that water-bottle container:

1 - Mr. Efficient: He saw no need to create a whole new package when they've already got warehouses full of those handy plastic bottles.

2 - Mr. Impatient: He was in a huge hurry after tasting this breakthrough refreshment (from a vat, no doubt, certainly not from the container in question) that he needed the fastest path to market... and was told "we have this warehouse full of containers from the water division..." and took the fast path for fear that competitors might discover green tea as a marketable refreshment (?).

3 - Mr. Wrong: He actually thought that the container itself was the breakthrough. Calling the whole team together one morning, after months of trying to figure out how in the world they were going to unload all this disgusting green tea, and said "I've GOT IT! We'll ship it in water bottles! Water Bottles I tell you!! That will make people think 'Refreshing! Clean! Tasteless!' - Brilliance, I tell you! Brilliance!"...

4 - Mr. Victim: He created the best drink product he possibly could, but has no involvement whatsoever in the packaging decision... his own forehead is red from how hard he slapped it the first time he saw his own product on the shelf.

I can't even bring myself to taste it... so don't ask...
If I turn out to be wrong, and this drink becomes the new Monster Energy drink phenom, I promise to drink a bottle of it.

Your whining sales person is living in my house

A friend was recently complaining to me about their woes of selling products to corporate IT departments - knowing that I can relate to their pain from a previous life. He's sure the people working at the target company would love their product - in fact they've told him, but he can't convince the corporate IT guys. This is no surprise, given that the IT guys are in the business of risk aversion as a priority over innovation or risk taking - even if there is a huge potential gain in productivity or revenue or whatever... (I'm not sayin' that's right, I'm just sayin' that's how many corporate IT groups operate)... So.. my friend's product continues to grow (albeit slowly) by appealing directly to the people working in operational jobs within the company... under the radar of their IT group.

We've seen many products succeed by being offered directly to the end customers rather than those in charge of purchasing - either by chance (the end customers find it and fall in love with it) or by design (the product is targeted to the end customer directly as a sales method to get around those in charge)... then the end-customers sell the product to their guardians from within - they become moles.

So it struck me that kids are probably the most powerful moles - little sales people living amongst us... How else could you sell sneakers with concealed wheels in the soles - you can't market those to sane parents directly (apologies to the 95% of my parent-friends who have purchased these). But when a kid whines for a few months about getting this seemingly insane product - the parent has about one choice to stop the whining - and that sells product. Drug companies selling perscription drugs directly to the public, inject every doctors office with whining patients who suddenly start requesting certain drugs... TV Show producers get their target audience to sell their product when they "ask their cable company to add the Freak-of-the-Week-Channel" (they probably bought ads on Desparate Housewives for that specific show).

Who is your end customer? Are they whining enough to sell your product for you? Just be forewarned - if I ever get a hold of the people who put candy bars in supermarket checkout lanes, I'll lock them in a room with my kids for a few hours during a good sugar high from their fabulous, artificially flavored food-stuff.. and I'll leave them there during the post-sugar-high crash too...

Deadbeat dads = Fisherman?

Someone must have done a study and found that either there are an unusually high number of deadbeat dads who go fishing, or, that fishing is a major cause of responsibility neglect... Knowing how crazy I was about fishing a few years back (but only before having kids... really...) I think the latter is more likely the case...
Anyway - tonight, I needed to buy my fishing license online... and before I could complete the transaction, I was presented with this pop quiz which forced me to answer Yes/No to the following questions:

a) Do you currently have a child-support obligation?
1. Are you in arrears in payment of your child-support obligation?
2. Does the arrearage match or exceed the total amount payable for the past six months?
b) Have you failed to provide any court-ordered health insurance coverage during the past six months?
c) Have you failed to respond to a subpoena relating to either paternity or child-support proceeding?
d) Are you the subject of a child-support related warrant?

Seems that the fishing license is only one of many things a deadbeat dad (I'm assuming "deadbeat parent" is the politically correct term?) is prevented from obtaining... which puts this in pespective... but on its own, it seemed odd... then funny... then sad (gimme a break - I meant sad for the kids! not for the poor dad who can't go fishing now ;)
That said, I'm going fly-fishing tomorrow morning (really).

Beer Pitchers 2.0

Maybe they were thinking "they're too busy bowling to notice"... or maybe bowling alleys aren't the only ones using this new beer interface... I haven't gone bowling in a long time, and, come to think of it, I haven't ordered a pitcher of beer in a long time either, so maybe the whole 'beer pitcher space' changed around me while i wasn't looking...
I'm referring, of course, to the "Beer Pitcher Implant", which, no doubt, is filled with high quality, organic, spring-water ice ("it's to keep the beer cold!"), but also serves the unfortunate purpose of cheating the buyer out of about 24 ounces of the purchased fluid... I don't think they reduced the price of the pitcher since implementing this new chrome...
Any way, I forgot to mention the beer was actually pretty cold, but we drank the small quantity so fast that trying to keep it cold with this new feature is a total farce.
Kudos to the product manager responding to the users who complained their beer wasn't cold, but who forgot to test this thing with real bowlers (er, beer drinkers)... you think he escaped (or got fired) before the user feedback poured in - or you think he got promoted for reducing the cost of every pitcher? (I'm so negative)