A Cease-Fire for the New Year
by Eileen Tuuri, analogZONE webmaster
Don't tell my husband Paul (who edits analogZONE) that I told you this. He'd lose sleep over the potential backlash, the unfortunate feedback from colleagues -- the constant stigma of perhaps being perceived to have "sold out" to the enemy.
You see, he did the unthinkable. He married someone from…yes, sad but true…from the Marketing side of the house.
In all seriousness, though, there's probably no more dramatic or tension-ridden division in any high tech firm than that between Engineering and Marketing. Nor, if you get right down to it, is there a collaboration more critical to the success of any product line.
The view from either side of the fence is admittedly kind of one-sided. From over here in Marketing, we're genuinely desperate to translate your innovations into terms the marketplace can understand. Really. We honestly don't want to overstate, or hype, or outright lie…but we do want you to tell us enough about what's in your heads - and on the page in your circuit diagrams and schematics - that we can in turn explain to the customer what he or she needs to know in order to buy into your brainchild. Without us having to guess at what you really mean. And, please, in enough lead time that we can print it or at least web-publish it for the next trade show.
Over in Engineering-land, as I've heard from my spies there, you're concerned that we will turn your solid facts and labor-of-love into marketing hyperbole - make your well-crafted balloons into flashy zeppelins that bear no resemblance to what you've actually created to serve a practical purpose. We disappear into a dog-and-pony show with a journalist or a high-profile customer, and you worry that what will emerge hours later is neither canine nor equine, but a Pushmi-Pullyu of false expectations and product failure.
But when we work together, really work together …well, if you've ever breathed that rarefied air before, you'll understand what I mean when I say it can be a magical collaboration. I remember an engineer I worked with telling me that, when he saw the article I'd helped ghostwrite from his notes finally appear in print in the trades, he realized that I'd "turned his sow's ear into a silk purse" that would do wonders for the product: we both beamed for days on end, and the product soared. And, in another life and another company, I sat in a meeting where I'd put our VP of Engineering together with the Technical Editor of a major trade publication, and as I watched that VP's diagrams unfold on the whiteboard of the downstairs conference room I finally realized that he'd brought me to an understanding of perceptual audio coding that transcended the buzzwords, made it crystal-clear for me for the first time. And, yes, the journalist "got it," too. So did his readers, a few months down the line. So did the customers who finally came to our door, checkbooks in hand.
So how do we get to that magical balance point, where Engineering and Marketing meet in perfect harmony?
There's admittedly more that Marketing can do to make life easy on the Engineer. We shouldn't come running to you two weeks before a manuscript is due to a publication or for a conference, for instance: we should start sooner, and keep nudging you gently to bring the cream of your engineering knowhow to the surface. We should understand that engineering inspiration dosen't always come on a timetable. But please cut my Marketing comrades some slack in that respect, too. You have perhaps a couple of products with a couple of deadlines…the luxury, if you will (though I'm sure it doesn't feel very luxurious), of a relatively singleminded focus. We in Marketing probably have three or four other product lines with their own exhibitions and conferences and publications and priorities, all invisible to you. And we're juggling like maniacs.
At the same time, when we do come to you, you can make our lives easier by not making us feel foolish for not immediately understanding the algorithm you proffer under our noses or grasping the significance of what looks like just another box in the block diagram. It's part of our job, I've always felt, to be translators, to ask the questions before our customers do so we can have the answers assembled and ready to go. So please take the time to explain your breakthrough to us, in the most utterly basic terms you can. If we do our jobs right - with your help - we can deflect the more basic buyer uncertaintities so that you can tackle the really challenging ones, the ones that get at the meat of what you were trying to accomplish in the first place.
Far too often, we forget that we're on the same side. So let's call a cease-fire for the year ahead. Travel across that demilitarized zone (maybe though Accounting? Or…maybe not. We both have our own issues with that department, and they're anything but peaceful!) and make a connection with your colleagues on the other side of the Engineering/Marketing fence. Resolve to act as a coalition rather than as "friendly fire" in the new year. And, when you really begin to work together…let your competitors stand back in wonder. Because there will be no stopping you.
Eileen Tuuri has the rather enviable challenge of being both spouse and analogZONE webmaster for Paul McGoldrick. In her time she's acted as Marcom Director for firms which include Moseley Associates, Magni Systems, and Dolby Laboratories. Though she's since found career challenges outside the high technology field as well, she finds it hard not to remind Paul that Marketing is Important.