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Working as a Software Engineer @BigBinary, also working Product Engineer and Marketing Head @neeto.
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From milk to meetings: Lessons in product positioning
Parmalat is an Italian dairy company that developed UHT(ultra-high-temperature) processed milk. Under UHT milk, the milk is heated to a very high temperature for 2 to 5 seconds. It kills all bacteria. Then the milk is rapidly cooled. UHT milk can have a long shelf life of 6 to 12 months. Until opened, the carton can be stored at room temperature.
Parmalat entered the US market in the 1990s with UHT milk. Since these milk cartons don't need to be refrigerated, Parmalat places them in the non-refrigerated section of the grocery store to indicate to users that they don't need to be refrigerated.
The result? A marketing flop. Despite expensive ads, PARMALAT was able to capture only 1% of the market share.
Why? People expect milk to be refrigerated, and that belief was hard to shake.
Positioning NeetoCal - a Calendly alternative
At Neeto, we are building a lot of products, and our most popular product is NeetoCal. When it came to building a website for NeetoCal, we had a choice to make. Should we emphasize that NeetoCal is a Calendly alternative, or should we state that NeetoCal is a scheduling software? What if the customer is unfamiliar with Calendly? What if people don't know what "scheduling software" is?
Before we answer that question, let's rewind and see how Calendly positioned itself.
When Calendly started in 2013, it had to decide how to introduce itself to the people. They decided to go with the word "scheduling".
From milk to meetings: Lessons in product positioning
Parmalat is an Italian dairy company that developed UHT(ultra-high-temperature) processed milk. Under UHT milk, the milk is heated to a very high temperature for 2 to 5 seconds. It kills all bacteria. Then the milk is rapidly cooled. UHT milk can have a long shelf life of 6 to 12 months. Until opened, the carton can be stored at room temperature.
Parmalat entered the US market in the 1990s with UHT milk. Since these milk cartons don't need to be refrigerated, Parmalat places them in the non-refrigerated section of the grocery store to indicate to users that they don't need to be refrigerated.
The result? A marketing flop. Despite expensive ads, PARMALAT was able to capture only 1% of the market share.
Why? People expect milk to be refrigerated, and that belief was hard to shake.