NationStates Jolt Archive

I just read The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell. It's a little old I know, but it has an interesting premise, that you can translate a bit of well-aimed effort into substantial payoffs.

After reading it I was a little disappointed; it wasn't as helpful as I thought. Here is my detailed critique (http://freshbrainz.blogspot.com/2006/09/book-review-tipping-point.html) of the book.

I think an interesting related issue is that of messenger vs message.

In other words - is it more important to spend more effort on marketing, or on service/product development?

Everyone knows the story of the Pet Rock (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pet_rock) which was pure marketing genius. Or more recently the story of the Million Dollar Homepage (http://www.milliondollarhomepage.com/).

However, their phenomenal success cannot be repeated. In the case of Pet Rock, not even by its own inventor. This is not a strategy you can adopt for a long term business model.

I know the importance of both marketing and product improvement. That is not in dispute. What I'd really like to find out is, given limited resources, how much would you allocate to either function?

You can't polish a turd, as the crude but true saying goes.

Mostly into the product, but a little into marketing too, I suppose.

I'd spend more on product/service development than marketing myself. I might not sell an incredulously large amount of items, but I would be selling a high standard product which I'm sure people would appreciate and would continue to buy under an average advertising strategy.

I don't feel that duping people into buying loads of low quality products (i.e. Rocks) is good business.