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PMI India National Conference - 2013
Launching Innovative
Products : The Power of
Marketing
communications
Track : Managing Innovations
Author : Yamuna Padmanaban

Launching Innovative Products: The Power of Marketing Communications
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Abstract
When innovative products fail – Is Marketing to be blamed?
In today’s fast paced, social-media centric world, enterprises need more than a good product plan
to make their innovations matter to customers. The role of marketing in this ever changing, “flat
world” market place calls for innovative, distributed, agile and responsiveness oriented strategies.
The objective of this paper is to present the importance of marketing in successfully launching an
innovative product and to bring out the innovative spirit of a company leveraging the company’s
existing brand value. For example, companies who want to be rated higher in their “innovativeness”
quotient, need to be backed by strong, high frequency, disruptive marketing messages compared to
traditional marketing strategies.
The paper then presents a few scenarios on how marketing can magnify or diminish the market for
an innovative product in an organization using real world case studies.
Since marketing is only as effective as the marketers, we will then discuss the required ‘Thought
level of marketers’ to build an effective marketing plan for internal and external audiences. Today’s
marketers need to have a repertoire of skills like being a product specialist, possess Social Media
Engineering skills and have a good foundation in Business Analytics to be able to decipher the
multitude of signals emanating from customers.
The author leveraging her experience working as a Marketing Program manager for Enterprise
product launches will finally share some of the common pitfalls that companies should avoid while
developing their marketing plan for an innovative product.

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Table of Contents
Introduction .................................................................................................................................................................... 3
Innovation in Enterprises.......................................................................................................................................... 3
The role and need for Marketing Communications in Enterprise Innovation .................................. 4
- Marketing communications Vs. the Customer adoption curve ........................................ 5
- Case Studies............................................................................................................................................. 6
Marketing Communications for Innovative Products
Top 5 Winning Attributes ......................................................................................................................................... 7
The most important Pitfalls to avoid ................................................................................................................... 10
Research Findings ....................................................................................................................................................... 11
Conclusion ..................................................................................................................................................................... 13
Bibiliography.................................................................................................................................................................... 13
Appendix 1 .........................................................................................................................................................................14

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Introduction
The need for Innovation has never been as intense as it is today. Far from being a business
buzz word, it has become a survival need for long term businesses to stay afloat in the
competitive landscape. Innovation has become one of the top priorities for most
organizations who have a long term strategy. Innovative products help organizations stand
out from competition, compete on price, reduce costs and improve productivity.
While discoveries can happen by chance, innovations in enterprises best work with a
formal process in place right from defining their innovation strategy, developing the new
product and then actually taking it to the market. Different teams in an organization come
together to work on this process for defining the business strategy, idea generation,
product development, manufacturing, marketing and business development.
In this paper, we will focus on the role of marketing communications in launching an
innovative product and how marketing can either catalyze the success of the innovative
product by adopting powerful strategies or lead to poor performance of the product owing
to multiple reasons like an unclear messaging, delayed entry into the market or misplaced
product positioning. From the author’s own experience working on enterprise global
launches and a research survey conducted amongst global marketing managers working on
product launches, the author has listed the top five elements a marketer should put utmost
focus on while working on launching an innovative product and the most important pitfalls
which are to be avoided.
Innovation in Enterprises
Before embarking on understanding how marketing plays a pivotal role in showcasing the
innovativeness of a product or technology, let’s look at how innovations evolve and grow
within organizations.
Innovation in most enterprises starts as a microcosm representing a specific problem or a
breakthrough among a handful of people. A successful adoption of this localized
problem/insight to address a wider segment as an innovative product requires a wider

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team effort across the organization including management teams, product development,
marketing and sales teams. The success of an innovative product in enterprises depends on
the understanding of customer need, Product offering, Design, Support and the Go to
Market Strategy.
The role and need for Marketing Communications in Enterprise
Innovation
According to the renowned management consultant, educator, and author, Peter Drucker
“….the purpose of business is to create a customer, the business enterprise has two--and only
two--basic functions: marketing and innovation. Marketing and innovation produce results;
all the rest are costs. Marketing is the distinguishing, unique function of business."
Marketing Communication encompasses the message to be communicated to the market
and all the media used for the communication. Even great innovations can fail drastically if
not communicated well. An innovative product itself is a new idea or a new entry into the
market and has a pressing need to be communicated clearly about. The messaging and
communication has to be clear for customers to understand the new idea and concept
which otherwise leads to failure and early exit of the product. Even a simple product
innovation needs effective marketing to be adopted. Successful innovative products most
often have a strong messaging and on the other hand we observe that even good innovative
products have more often failed with a weak messaging
“Reports1 say that 66% of new products fail within two years, and a startling 96% of all
innovations fail to return their cost of capital2.”
While this is due to a number of factors, including economic conditions, an explosion of
consumer touch points, shifts in decision-making behavior, and that the deluge of
information marketers have to sift through to ensure they are up to speed with the latest
trends, some of these challenges like a poor marketing communication campaign or poor
messaging can be overcome to a greater extent by focusing on the most important
marketing elements and avoiding some common mistakes while communicating with the
market.
1
Booz & Company reports
2
Doblin Group reports

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a) Marketing communications Vs. the Customer adoption curve
The development of an innovative product goes through different phases within an
organization before even the customer seeing it. Similar to that the adoption of the product
by customers too has its tail-curve. This customer’s journey through an innovation cycle
should be well understood by enterprises as they embark on their innovation journey.
According to Rogers, “this process named diffusion is the process by which an innovation is
communicated through certain channels over time among the members of a social system.
The innovation must be widely adopted in order to self-sustain. Within the rate of
adoption, there is a point at which an innovation reaches critical mass.”
The categories of adopters are classified as innovators, early adopters, early majority, late
majority, and laggards. This diffusion is characterized by the image below which lays down
the categories of adopters and where they fit into the diffusion life-cycle.
Image : Innovation – Diffusion Life Cycle
The diffusion curve also depicts the “Chasm”, the divide between the Early Adoptors and
the “Early Majority” that generally epitomizes a product transitioning from a “Technology
front-end” to a “Solution front-end” and is manifested by a rapid adoption and popularity.
The Chasm has claimed many a bodies as we will see later in the paper and hence is a
critical milestone that any marketing strategy needs to address very early in the adoption
cycle.

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Case Study – Understanding the impact of Marketing communications on
the success or failure of innovative products
To further understand the real-world implications of marketing on innovative products, let
us look at a few scenarios where marketing has had a greater impact on the success or
failure of innovative products.
This case study was derived from the author’s experience as a global Marketing Program
Manager and handling innovative technology product launches. An innovative enterprise
product with built-in intelligence was to be launched across the globe to bring together the
best of product, software and support experience for its customers. The primary objective
was (a) to increase customer satisfaction levels with a ‘simple to use’ interface across the
product’s lifecycle (b) increase thought leadership and competitive advantage in the
market.
The challenges involved in this project were multifold. Since the innovative product
encompassed both new product, software and support features, there were different
business units and multiple teams were involved in the project including Engineering
teams, Product teams, Services team, Marketing teams, Program Management, Delivery and
Sales. As with an innovative new product, there was a risk of potential failure to
understand the receptivity of the customer segment to adapt to an innovative product.
Since there were different business units coming together (hardware, software and
support) there was a critical need to ensure collaboration and consensus building amongst
the teams to achieve project milestones on time and for quicker decision making when
required. A well-defined project plan had to be created and tracked to ensure adherence to
critical milestones and avoid any delay in the ‘Time to Market’
With adequate planning and implementation of key processes, the launch was rolled out on
time and generated good customer response with a wide coverage in terms of articles,
blogs, analyst brief, tweets and YouTube visits. The customer feedback collected showed
positive user experience and the adoption rate has been positively increasing.
Here are some of the important factors related to the marketing launch planning which
helped this innovative product succeed in the market:
To ensure collaboration across the different teams a central core launch team was formed
by the Marketing Launch Manager. For consensus building across the teams an effective
process was put in place with defined roles and responsibilities and an escalation matrix
was in place for situations where quick decision making was mandatory. This avoided time
delays which are most common due to lengthy decision making processes in larger teams.
Multi – faceted research was conducted to understand the customer, market and the

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receptivity before drafting the communications plan and the messaging. In addition to
understanding the customer challenges, focus group meetings were conducted across the
globe to understand the receptiveness of customers to adapt to the innovative technology.
The focus groups also helped in narrowing down the messaging. Additionally, feedback
was sought from industry analysts which helped in crafting a powerful messaging for the
market. The launch plan included critical milestones to ensure timely completion of
planned tasks. Internal and external communications were well planned and executed on
time to ensure there was no ambiguity of the market messaging within internal and
external teams.
As stated earlier, for every successful product launch, 3 more products fail to meet
the market expectation. While there could be multitude of reasons for products to fail, one
of the key factors that influence the success/failure of innovative products is their ability to
transition from an "All for One" to a "One for All" status. There are many technologies that
have fallen into the chasm, despite the fact that they work well, because of the high degree
of discontinuity –i.e.: they require the early majority to make significant changes to their
current infrastructure. This is a significant point where marketing communications can
play a stronger role to move customers from the ‘Early Adopter’ stage to the next level of
‘Early Majority’. High volume sales have been denied for many good products, despite the
high uptake in the early adopter stage. Some of the classic well known examples here are
Microsoft’s Zune and The Segway. Microsoft's Zune (an audio device for listening to music,
similar to the Apple i-pod) where the product had to be retired prematurely and one of the
reasons was that it lacked required marketing support to succeed. The Segway (a two
wheeled self-balancing personal transport) is another example where poor market knowledge
was one of the primary reasons for failure of the product.

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Marketing Communications for Innovative Products: Top 5 Winning
Attributes and Most Common Pitfalls
Leveraging the author’s experience working on various launches for innovative products
and the inferences derived from a focused short survey amongst global marketing
managers, the top five important winning attributes and the most common pitfalls to be
avoided are listed here.
Top 5 winning attributes
Let’s look at some of the top 5 key winning attributes a marketer should have for
successfully launching an innovative product.
1. Need for repertoire of skills – Be ready to learn more than just marketing:
Honing just one’s marketing skills aren’t enough to talk about an innovative product to the
customers in today’s flat social world. To create a ‘bang-on’ messaging which will bring out
the innovativeness in the product, differentiation and the enterprise’s innovative spirit, a
marketer has to understand the product, the market and the organization objectives. The
marketer needs to understand the technology behind the product from the engineer’s view
and then successfully package it for the customer’s need. It is also important to understand
the management strategy to align the marketing messaging to bring out the innovative
spirit of the organization. Competition analysis and market analysis are some of the other
vital inputs required today to time and position the innovative product successfully.
2. Understand the customer segment – Market Maturity and Technology
Adoption Curve:
Within the Adoption Curve, the customer goes through a five step decision making process
in each of the above stages:
Knowledge >>Persuasion >> Decision ( Accept / Reject) >> Implementation >>
Confirmation
Hence, this Technology adoption lifecycle can be called the core around which the
marketing communications have to be built to ensure effective reach and adoption of an
innovative product by the customer.
Table : Different categories of adopters and their communication needs
Adopter
Category
Definition Factor to be considered for Marketing
Messaging (Examples)
Innovators
:
First set of individuals who are
willing to take risks, youngest in age,
have financial liquidity and risk
This segment can be contacted via
social channels and has frequent
access to press releases, scientific

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tolerance sources and other innovators.
Early
adapters
Second category of people who
adopt, are typically young, have high
degree of opinion leadership, high
social status, advanced education. A
very important segment as they are
followed by the mass market
adopters
Messaging needs to have the ‘wow’
factor that will excite them, e.g
innovative cutting edge features.
Needs short messages as they have
short attention span
Early
Majority
Third category and slower in the
adoption process, have above
average social status, contact with
early adopters,
seldom hold positions of opinion
leadership
Role of marketing is very important
and high.
Customers here rely on Values and
recommendations than innovation.
Wider coverage required to reach this
mass market.
Late
Majority
This category approaches
innovation with a high degree of
skepticism after the majority of
society has adopted innovation,
have below average social status,
very little financial lucidity, in
contact with others in late majority
and early majority, very
little opinion leadership
Skeptical customers who may need
case studies and customer proof points
to get convinced
Laggards Last category and the last to adopt
an innovation, little to no opinion
leadership, have an aversion to
change-agents and tend to be
advanced in age
Dislike change and may adopt only
when traditional products are not
available. May need longer waves of
communication and persuasion
Studying the adoption curve and the diffusion stages of a new product within and among
customers, we clearly realize that the marketing messaging and communications should be
specifically targeted at different groups and a “one-size fits all” approach would spell death-
knell for the product.
Companies that strive to bring out innovative products often need to cross the chasm as
fast as they can and marketers need to change their sales pitch when crossing the chasm
between the visionaries and the pragmatists. This requires a very carefully coordinated
marketing strategy that leverages the technical and innovative prowess of the product to
build up sufficient credibility and messaging that allows the mainstream market to feel
sufficiently confident to adopt it.

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3. Create Powerful, Clear and Credible Messaging :
In the 1960s, Theodore Levitt said, “people don’t want a quarter-inch drill, they
want a quarter-inch hole.” His point was profound: people buy products and
services to accomplish a task or achieve a goal.
The message should be clear, simple and should bring out the uniqueness of the product
aligning with the customer need. To be adopted by mass markets, even the simplest
innovation needs clear messaging. The core messaging should focus on the customer need
that the new innovative product will satisfy than the product itself . Ask yourself “ Why
does the customer need it ? and “Why should he buy your product? . Also the messaging
should be appropriately differentiated for the different segments of audience. E.g
Customers, Channel Partners etc. taking about their significant benefits.
Building personas can help develop an effective marketing strategy and messaging
for an new product. Personas are of great value in helping you understand your customer
characteristics and their purchasing decisions.
Customer quotes can be powerful references for building credibility. Experiences
shared by customers who would have been a part of the ‘innovators’ segment and would
have been amongst the first lot to adapt the product can be really helpful to gain foot hold
in the market place.
4. Keep your launch wheel moving :
The Marketing launch plan should encompass flexibility to adapt to changes in the market
well after the launch. This is primarily to continue the communications and reaching out to
customers as they progress in their decision making process. Having on going
communications adapting to changes in the market help enterprises gain market share
progressively while on the other hand if marketing is discontinued after the product launch
it will either stagnate the product or cause decline of market share. It is essential to build a
pipeline of marketing materials and adopt the core message for various delivery channels.
5. ‘Time to market’ is everything:
Time to market is the time taken by a product from the time of conception to the time when
it is available in the market. This is a crucial factor for innovative products as the very spirit
of the new product is that it is ‘innovative’ and ‘new’. A delay in getting to the market has
critical challenges in terms of competition entry and reduction in the total addressable
market. The predictions made at the time of conception and planning may not hold good
and could negatively impact the expected response and revenue from the market.

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It is imperative that the project plan has well-defined milestones to ensure that the project
adheres to the planned timelines and any risks in terms of time delays should be detailed at
the beginning of the project
Marketing Communications for Innovative Products: The list of the most
important Pitfalls to be avoided
The most common and important pitfalls which may lead to launch failure and are to be
avoided by a marketer while working on launching an innovative product are :
1. Failure to understand the market: The importance of understanding the market
and customer needs cannot be over emphasized than for an innovative product. The
messaging and the vehicles of communication will heavily depend on the maturity of
the market . For example, a mature market is more receptive to technology and
innovations.
2. Do not sell the technology, sell the solution: Be cautious not to put your focus on
the product features rather than the customer need it is fulfilling. Very often the
technology and features of the product overshadow the actual messaging. The
message should portray how the product can actually benefit the customer and
which problem of the customer is it solving.
3. Incremental and not Incredible messaging: Innovative products by nature are
breakthrough technologies and need a “touch and feel” messaging to be able to
connect to the market. Also, excessively relying on traditional messaging is bound to
diminish and undermine the innovativeness of the product. Overload of information
when the market is still not ready to handle it may spell failure.
4. Delayed project timelines: Time To Market is critical for an innovative product to
gain market leadership and gain market share. Have a well-defined project plan and
it should be tracked continuously to avoid delays and potential risks
5. Lack of Collaboration: Very often many of the challenges related to a launch can be
overcome with effective collaboration between the different teams involved in the
project. Lack of collaboration between the product teams, marketing and sales
teams is specifically important which otherwise may lead to conflicts, time delays
and poor messaging
6. Make sure that one voice is heard (multiple voices): To hear different messages
from within the organization and from the market would dilute the intensity of the

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overall message. So adequate planning and processes should be in place to ensure
that one voice is heard from the organization e.g. internal trainings and
announcements are made right on time and are clear to for all teams to be in synch
with the core marketing messaging.
Research Findings:
A survey questionnaire (Refer Appendix 1) was shared online to 30 global marketing
managers who work on similar product launches to understand the importance of the
above attributes. Most of the survey respondents corroborated the author’s listing of the
winning attributes and pitfalls to reinforce that these cannot be avoided. The survey was
also helpful in ranking the priority of these suggested attributes.
Graph 1: Marketing Communications for an Innovative Product Launch - Ranking of the
Top 5 Winning attributes
Inference: Almost all the top 5 elements were ranked very important. Understanding the
customer ranked on the top followed by the need for clear messaging and the ability to
learn new skills
Graph 2: Marketing Communications for an Innovative Product Launch - Ranking of the
most important pitfalls to avoid
Respondents

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Inference : According to the respondents, delaying the ‘Time to Market ‘ and the failure to
understand the market were s the most common pitfalls which had to be carefully avoided follwed
by lack of collaboration amongst different teams.
Conclusion:
The suggested winning attributes and pitfalls have been derived from personal
experiences, the survey, interviews with leaders in marketing and real time case studies.
Since enterprises invest considerable amount of effort, time and resources in developing
innovative products, and innovative products by themselves have risks of potential failure,
the suggestions in this paper can be used as a guidance by marketers to draft their launch
plan. It will be possible to overcome some of the most common challenges in launching an
innovative product with the use of the discussed key elements.
Bibliography:
Drucker, Peter F., "The Practice of Management", 1954.
Booz, Allen & Hamilton., “New product management for the 1980s”, 1982
Rogers, Everett ., “Diffusion of Innovations”, 2003.
From Innovation to Marketing: Understanding Technology Cycles: Ben Bajarin Feb19, 2013
HBR article on why most product launches fail : Joan Schneider and Julie Hall , April 2011
Respondents

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Appendix 1
Impact of marketing communications for an innovative product Launch – Survey Questionnaire:
1). What is your current role? *
(Choose the option which fits best)
Marketing
Sales
Business Development
Others
2). As a marketer what do you think are the top five elements imperative for successfully
launching an innovative product? Please rank the below in the order of priority. *
1 being 'Least important' and 5 being 'Most important'. Kindly assign different and unique rank (1
to 5) to each element below.
- Preparing yourself with the necessary skills (includes learning new technology, any
skills outside marketing which may help create effective messaging for the new
product)
- Understanding the customer segment, Market Maturity and innovation adoption curve
- Creating Powerful, Clear and Credible Marketing Messaging
- Keeping your launch communications plan running & flexible (to help customers move
through the adoption curve & adapt to changes in the market)
- Ensuring that the product achieves its planned ‘Time to market’ (to avoid entry of
competition and reach the TAM as planned)
Please specify any other element/s not covered above.
3). Leveraging your experience working on innovative product launches, what are the most
important pitfalls to be avoided? Please rank the below in order of priority? *
1 being 'Least important' and 6 being 'Most important'. Kindly assign different and unique rank (1
to 6) to each element below.
- Failure to understand the market
- More focus on the technology than the customer solution which the product addresses
- Messaging has to be Incremental and not just Incredible (information overload)
- Failure to accomplish project timelines – delayed Time to market
- Lack of collaboration between product teams, marketing and sales
- Multiple messaging (different teams, PR and Partners have different versions of the
messaging causing ambiguity )
Please list any other pitfall/s that you consider important and not covered above
4). Additional comments

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