Dan Mazei on Navigating Consumer Needs, Brand Storytelling, and Real-world Engagement Strategies
Product State Q&A
Dan Mazei is Principal at All Tangled Roots. He was formerly VP of Communications and Digital at Entain; VP of Communications at Tinder; Head of Global Communications at Activision Blizzard, and Sr. Director Global PR, Social and Content at Reebok.
Website / LinkedIn
EC: How can product leaders navigate the balance between meeting consumer needs and driving innovation in a rapidly evolving tech landscape?
DM: Consumer needs are harder to identify (and trust) than ever before, and that’s a direct result of the overabundance of information that’s become available to us. What defines a ‘need’ after all?
Is it feedback from customer service?
Is it from social media?
Is it from market analysis?
More likely than not, it’s a blend of these and many other inputs, which can create a jumbled depiction of what’s really desired.
While there’s no panacea to that, the best solution will always be going back to the brand and brand values.
What is it that makes you who you are to the consumer?
Why did they choose you in the first place?
What are the things you do, believe and deliver that others cannot?
That is the center of gravity that should be fact-check to any question.
From there, it’s really a question of whether or not product timelines and standards of quality can match the expected lifespan of the need. Some needs are very real, but they are fleeting: driven by environmental shifts or trends. With social platforms being the main source of news today, trends move quicker than ever before. There are plenty of product-driven brands that can meet a speedy need uncovered in that way, because their systems and product operations allow it. You obviously can’t re-tool factories to build a car around something that’s ultimately ephemeral, but you probably can introduce a new chicken sandwich.
In the simplest way, it’s a decision tree.
Is this need on-brand for us? Yes or no? — (Yes, move forward; No, move on)
Is this need going to exist by the time we make a quality product that is likely to stand apart from the rest? Yes or no? — (Yes, move forward; No, move on)
Is this product likely to yield meaningful results beyond our core or existing product offerings? Yes or no? — (Yes, move forward; No, move on)
Introduce the product and market away!
EC: How can product storytelling play a role in shaping perception and loyalty?
DM: Product is all too often a downstream consideration in brand storytelling — meaning the narrative is already well established and formed by the time products are included. Think of it like a news article: The brand is in the headline and the first 5 paragraphs. You don’t meet the product until you already feel like you know the story in paragraph 6.
A much better way is to think of the brand narrative as shaped, but malleable. You will always talk to the consumer with the same themes and intentions, but built around that should be the stories of why the brand’s products were built, the inspiration behind their creation, the unexpected ‘a-ha!’ moments along the way. These insights create tangible emotion: feelings that you can understand, because you can almost imagine yourself sitting with the product manager or engineer as it happened. And when you deepen the emotional connection with your consumers — when you can get them to feel like they’re in the room with you, you are improving perception. And that’s a key step in retention and loyalty.
This, of course, is a bit easier said than done. Operationally, the stories from the product team can live siloed from the offices of the comms and marketing teams. The only way to solve that, frankly, is to bulldoze those walls — because they shouldn’t have been built in the first place.
The people responsible for shaping the brand story want that story to be as strong and impactful as possible, which means they need to be able to sit face-to-face with product to listen, learn and ask the questions — so that the story can evolve. The more that happens, the more natural it will sound coming out the other end.
EC: How should product leaders think about leveraging IRL industry events and conferences?
DM: This is such a fascinating question. Because I’ve spent so much of my career around gaming, I think about the (now defunct) E3 — once a pop culture phenomenon and a can’t-miss industry event that brought publishers, studios and consumers together in one place. It grew to become that because you could create real anticipation and drama around product announcements and reveals: Here’s the first trailer for the highly anticipated game. Here’s the new character art for the villain who’s making his first appearance. Here’s your first chance to play the game.
Once social media became the prevailing form of peer-to-peer conversation, the need to drip information grew, to the point that there was almost nothing that could be held back to ‘wow’ the audience in a live event.
But this doesn’t mean that IRL is dead. It just means that the expectations have changed. Events and conferences are now opportunities to build otherwise challenging one-to-one relationships with customers. Getting someone live who can hear your description of the product, watch you demo it, give you guidance as you use it is invaluable. It’s both consumer insights and full-funnel marketing in one shot.
I don’t think it’s possible to build what some might call a ‘super fan’ without getting that person live, in-person, to have their loyalty paid off by physical touch and access. When they’re standing face-to-face with the brand, they know they are playing a role in affecting the decisions of the company, which is really hard to feel in digital forums where there’s just so much other noise.
I’d encourage every product-driven brand to think of IRL events from a few vantage points, which form a bit of a cycle or loop:
Intel: This is your chance to see data come to life. What do people have to say when they’re off the keyboard? How do they really feel when they touch, feel, analyze your product? How do they react to your story? What do they ask? All of this should be an insightful, and energizing, layer to the reports you’ve read.
Relationships: Again, these are not numbers in a database now. These are real people with real perspectives. Talking to them makes them feel like they’re part of the company and the process, rather than a KPI. Depending on how you show up and the level of your production at the event, you can also create experiences that make them feel like true insiders, which they’ll absolutely remember the next time they see your brand and your product, which is well worth its weight.
Planning: While your feet may be tired after a day on a show floor, you’ve learned a lot and that should be the foundation of the next plan. You can incorporate the learnings — good, bad, and otherwise — into your cycle planning and feel stronger for it.
“When you deepen the emotional connection with your consumers — when you can get them to feel like they’re in the room with you, you are improving perception. And that’s a key step in retention and loyalty.”
- Dan Mazei