Devoted to branding and building and protecting brands

The story of Jesse Ortiz, his rocket ship ride to prominence with ill-fated Orlimar golf clubs in the 1990s and his re-emergence today with what appears to be a vastly superior approach to making and marketing his newest creations, is a “how-to” case study in product marketing and good business sense.  Read about it in today’s SF Chronicle.  The take-away for marketeers: designing golf clubs starts with golfers (duh!): what they want, how they play their game, what an effective club should look like, feel like and how it should perform.  Ortiz’ comments about brilliant engineers who know all about materials science and the physics of striking a golf ball – but little or nothing about hitting an approach shot or lobbing one up softly on an elevated green – goes to the heart of how crucial it is to see your product through the eyes of the people at whom you’re aiming, and the futility of looking at those people only through the prism of your product.