Like all packaged consumer food products, Naked Juice Co. provides a list of ingredients for their juices. Aside from the standard ingredients list, they add the kind of information you really want to know — how much of each is in the package. And isn’t their tagline “Nothing to hide” a perfect fit with their product and company behaviors?

Pomegranate/Blueberry Juice:
8 pomegranates
32 blueberries
2 apples
white and red grapes for good measure

So simple — and it didn’t cost them anything to do it.

What interesting details can you provide that offer greater transparency to your product? Show me more »

Prosumers (professional consumers) written about by Don Tapscott in Wikinomics and Transumers (transient consumers) often referred to by Trendwatching.com are the new consumers. But they consume differently. Prosumers actively get involved by adapting, changing or adding to the product. Transumers prefer not to own but to experience. Are plain old consumers a thing of the past? Show me more »

The U.S. Postal Service gets creative on pricing. If they can, you can. Most of us take our pricing models for granted. We don’t think much about ripping apart the current model and instituting a new one. Too many systems are in place. Too many people would need to be retrained.

Like our tax system, complexity seeps its way in and compounds each year. How could you overhaul and simplify pricing? How could you make it intuitive for customers? How could you make your product or service more cost-effective so that customers want to buy more? Show me more »

When things are going well we feel secure in our product or business strategy, and pretty darn good about our execution. The model must be working. When things aren’t going well we tend think it’s a competitor, business cycles, the economy. This is because the product is great and the business model works, right? Show me more »

Anyone who has spent any time in product marketing has probably spent hours in meetings arguing, negotiating, begging and pleading with product development to get the right features in at the right time. The problem is that nobody really knows which features are the most important. And most discussions stay fairly insular (not allowing for crazy new ideas). Show me more »

Pricing your product can be a simple task. Many big companies spend a lot of resources and make the process quite complex. First ask yourself, what value is the customer paying for? What can the customer get from you that they can’t get from anyone else? Then go out and find what the customer is willing to pay. Show me more »

It’s not how smart Steve Jobs appears to be. It’s not that cool tech toys whip up the press. What Apple’s iPhone teaches us is that rethinking conventional wisdom can have a powerful impact on products, consumers and markets. Show me more »

What did PepsiCo, Starbucks and Apple all do to create such magnificent success? They created a unique value propostion and offered it to the market at the right time. These companies know well the goal is to delight the customer. The iPhone seems it will do just that. Today, each of these companies continue to research and create new ideas to propel their products and companies forward. Show me more »

If you work in consumer marketing, it is much more likely that you use or test your own product. Firsthand experience can give great context to additional input you will get from customers and prospects. If you’re marketing softdrinks, tennis shoes, or cellular phones, this is easy and expected. What if you work with high-end computers or diabetes drugs (and you don’t have diabetes), or bras (and you’re a man)? How do you immerse yourself in the product to achieve the intimacy needed to market it well? Show me more »