Narrative-driven Product Development

Building something is hard.

Building something people want to try is even harder.

So it’s easy to understand why product leaders and their teams are frustrated when they take 3 to 12 months to build a new innovation, only for the adoption to fall short of expectations.

Lately, I’ve been spending more time with marketing leaders and agencies to get their take on the situation.

From their perspective, most product teams don’t think about their unique differentiator or GTM until after the product is built.

Does this process sound familiar?

1. Company builds a product.

2. Product team hands-off new innovation to marketing to figure out how to distribute it.

3. Marketing finds a compelling insight, but the product is “done.” There’s an urgency to get to market immediately, so marketing can only do so much.

4. Adoption falls short. Product is usually disappointed with marketing. Marketing feels the product didn’t deliver. Everyone loses.

What if we flipped this process on its head?

Instead of leading with product, and then figuring out how to market it, what if we helped product leaders figure out how to market their innovation before building it?

I call it Narrative-driven Product Development: Differentiate your product before building it.

Here’s how it works:

The antidote for product executives who can’t sleep at night

After going through this rigorous process you’ll no longer wonder if the team is building something people want because you will have:

• Articulated the ‘why’ behind your company’s ‘what’ and ‘how’
• Identified the opportunity ahead after auditing your competitors
• Generated unique insights and opportunities along the customer journey
• Positioned your company to win the category
• Outlined your brand’s narrative through guidelines, principles, & hierarchy
• Defined a go-to-market strategy that aligns with your understanding of the category and customer
• Designed a visual identity that speaks to your product’s unique POV
• Validated a landing page and onboarding experience that delivers on your brand’s promise
• Identified a set of metrics that matter to keep your team honest as you iterate

More importantly, armed with a clear and compelling narrative, your team will be well positioned to make effective decisions as you march closer to achieve your ultimate vision.

Narrative-driven Case Study

One of my favorite examples of narrative-driven product development came from a project I worked on a few years ago with popular budget travel brand Skiplagged.

They initially approached Midnight (the consultancy I run) to help clarify their value proposition in order to spark growth. When new users came to their site, the product’s value wasn’t apparent, so potential customers were bouncing. Here’s how we used narrative-driven product development to re-imagine their brand and product experience over six weeks.

Phase I: Identify the 10x differentiator

Skipplagged’s differentiator was their ridiculous prices. We audited the competitors, and their prices didn’t come close. From day one, we knew “price” and “exclusivity” would be our secret weapons, but done in a way that didn’t feel cheap.

Our challenge was to identify who Skiplagged was best suited for and simplify the story around how their flights were priced so it didn’t feel like a scam.

To help us craft the narrative, we put together a quick research sprint to better understand how budget travelers book their trips. Research involved 1:1 interviews, usability tests, and problem statement ranking exercises to identify their biggest pain points.

Along the way, we stumbled across our key insight:

“The flight is only 1% of the journey.”

These travelers prefer to save their hard-earned money for their final destination rather checking baggage, getting a window seat or flying on a specific airline.

Phase II: Position the product to win the category

Armed with this insight, positioning the company was easy. Instead of talking about how cheap it would be to fly with Skiplagged, we re-focused our marketing message on what someone can do with those savings.

Our new rallying cry, “Upgrade your arrival” united the company around a their new purpose.

By saving money on the flight, Skiplagged would help customers experience more on the ground.

We re-imagined their brand identity around the benefits of re-appropriating their travel budget from the flight to the ground.

Here’s how the narrative came to life:

Phase III: Use the narrative as a North Star to design the product

With a compelling 10x differentiator and clear narrative, the brief for design was next level. I paired with Courtney Zalewski, to bring the strategy to life across the user experience, resulting in crazy growth for the brand.

Below is a glimpse into our process to see how we connected-the-dots between each of our principles and the final design, to ensure each aspect of our product was intentional and connected back to our guiding strategy.

If you’re a product leader who’s worried about adoption, let’s partner to build something people love and talk about.