PRODUCTHEAD: Product positioning in the age of AI
PRODUCTHEAD is a regular newsletter of product management goodness,
curated by Jock Busuttil.
coke products #
every PRODUCTHEAD edition is online for you to refer back to
tl;dr
When markets are evolving so quickly, your product positioning may need to evolve with them
The fundamental assumptions underpinning your strategy must be verified or the whole thing is vulnerable
hello
If you think positioning is solely a job for marketing or product marketing, think again. Positioning for a product is like the opening scenes of a film – it answers the big questions on context so that you can go into the detail with an idea of who the product is for, and how it delivers value for those people. April Dunford is the undisputed queen of positioning and was chatting recently with Lily Smith on The Product Experience. She looks at competing visions of what the future will actually be like and in particular tackles the challenge of positioning when AI has thrown everything up in the air.
Online car seller Cazoo’s original incarnation failed. While the brand still exists in a new form, the story of why it went into administration in 2024 shows how a bad assumption that underpins your entire coherent strategy makes the whole thing vulnerable. Martin Eriksson uses his experience at Cazoo to illustrate how significant a problem it can become.
Speak to you soon,
Jock
what to think about this week
How to position your product for a future nobody can predict
April Dunford is the positioning expert behind Obviously Awesome and a former repeat vice-president of marketing across seven venture-backed startups, most of which were acquired.In this episode she joins host Lily Smith to explain why so many companies are repositioning at once, how a strong point of view on the future underpins good positioning, and why the story a company tells about itself is a decision for product and sales, not just marketing.
What’s your view of the future and how it applies today?
[Lily Smith & April Dunford / The Product Experience]
Coherent and wrong
Every layer of your Decision Stack rests on assumptions nobody wrote down. Here’s how to find yours before it fails and takes your business down.
Shaky foundations lead to collapse
[Martin Eriksson / The Decision Stack]
recent posts
Chess is easier when you can see the board
A Wardley Map is to corporate strategy what a chessboard is to players: you can absolutely play the game in your head without seeing the board, but if you can it’s a lot easier to play, and you have a massive advantage over the people who can’t.
Know what moves you can make, and why to choose this move now
[I Manage Products]
How to form a go-to-market strategy
A go-to-market strategy isn’t something you tack on as an afterthought to an upcoming product launch. Instead it’s about understanding where value exchanges occur, and figuring out how to make them more frequent, consistent and predictable.
Go-to-market emerges from your discovery
[I Manage Products]
We’re all addicted to AI, but it’s going to be okay
We seem to stuck in a contradiction in which we worry about AI’s effect on our critical thinking, while finding it equally hard to resist using. Why is that?
[I Manage Products]
can we help you?
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Helping people build better products, more successfully, since 2012.
PRODUCTHEAD is a newsletter for product people of all varieties, and is lovingly crafted from business secrets of the pharaohs.
Read more from Jock
The Practitioner's Guide To Product Management
by Jock Busuttil
“I wish this book was published when I started out in product management. It gives a really wonderful overview of what product management is and involves on a day to day basis.”
— Keji Adedeji, product leader & coach
Jock Busuttil is a product management and leadership coach, product leader and author. He has spent over two decades working with technology companies to improve their product management practices, from startups to multinationals. In 2012 Jock founded Product People Limited, which provides product management consultancy, coaching and training. Its clients include BBC, University of Cambridge, Ometria, Prolific and the UK’s Ministry of Justice and Government Digital Service (GDS). Jock holds a master’s degree in Classics from the University of Cambridge. He is the author of the popular book The Practitioner’s Guide To Product Management, which was published in January 2015 by Grand Central Publishing in the US and Piatkus in the UK. He writes the blog I Manage Products and weekly product management newsletter PRODUCTHEAD. You can find him on Mastodon, X (formerly Twitter) and LinkedIn.