iPod之父法德尔亲口讲述Nest诞生记：掘金1000万只恒温器大市场

    这使我想起了我们当时考察智能手机业务时的情形。手机市场当时确实有很多竞争产品，但它们的设计宗旨都是帮助运营商向用户销售手机，而没有考虑到用户想要什么。另外，我对自己说：“有没有推出服务业务的潜力？”首先，恒温器是否是一项好业务？其次，你能否为恒温器提供服务？我们就这样进入了能源服务领域。我当时想：“这让我想起了MP3播放器革命和智能手机革命，两者最初都是始于设备上革命性的硬件和软件。随后迅速扩展到服务和应用程序。”

    你在苹果的时候并不负责市场推广，但作为Nest公司的首席执行官，你知道自己必须具备市场推广的能力，对吧？

    我想明确一点。产品营销同市场营销与沟通是两码事。产品营销我全部参与了。但市场营销与沟通则不同，它在于将明确的原则、差异等等转化成营销和消息，同时将它们通过众多纸媒和数字媒体发布出去。

    我会同产品营销部门密切合作，但产品营销并不知道能开发出什么。因此，我尝试当消费者想要的产品和工程师能够开发的产品这两者之间的桥梁，一直在尝试把这两者结合起来，尝试了解在市场营销过程中把什么差异作为卖点，了解怎样的产品会让消费者觉得简单易用，或者说能给他们带来愉悦体的验，以及在一定的价位上，能大规模生产出什么样的产品。通常，产品营销部门提出方案，然后就扔给工程设计人员。工程设计人员说：“这不现实。”于是对方案进行修改或删减，然后返给产品营销部门。产品营销部门只好说：“我们只能做出这个来。”我试图在两者之间找到中间路线。我想让营销部门说：“不，我们营销这边可以多做一点。我们胆子可以再大一点。”而对工程设计人员，我想说：“我们胆子还可以放大一点。但别太过火，别给项目增加太多风险，结果根本搞不成。”（财富中文网）

    译者：项航

    It reminded me of when we were looking at the smartphone business. Sure, there was lots of competition, but they were being designed for the carriers to sell to the users, not what the users wanted. Then on top of that I said, “Is there a services business here?” So first, is the thermostat a good business? Then, can you supply services to the thermostat? And that’s when we get into the energy services. And I was like, “Okay. This totally reminds me of the MP3 player revolution and the smartphone revolution, where it first started with revolutionary hardware and software on the device. Then it quickly branched out to services and applications.”

    At Apple, you weren’t responsible for marketing, but as CEO of Nest you knew that needed to be in your toolkit, right?

    Let’s be clear. There’s product marketing, and then there’s marketing and communications. Product marketing, yeah, I was involved in all of that. Marketing and communications is a different thing, which is taking these clear tenets and the differentiation and all these other pieces and then turning them into marketing and messaging and pushing them out through the various print, digital outlets.

    I would work very closely with product marketing, but again, product marketing didn’t know what could be created. So what I would try to do is be the linchpin between what the consumer wanted and what engineering could build, and always trying to stitch that together, trying to understand what the marketing differentiation would be, understanding what the ease-of-use would be or the consumer delight would be, as well as what could actually get done and done at a certain price point. Typically product marketing specs something and throws it over the wall to engineering. Engineering says, “I can’t.” And they redact it or take things out of it, put it back to product marketing, and product marketing says, “That’s all we could get.” I tried to take the fine line between the two to push marketing, saying, “No, we can do a little bit more here on the marketing side. Let’s get bold.” And to engineering, I’d say, “Let’s get bold. But let’s not get too bold that we’ve added so much risk to the project that it may never ship.”