With the ghost of a smile on his face

Today I am looking to add a brief post: a meditation of sorts really. For the past few days I have been plagued by a single question. To what extent should the basis of a sound marketing strategy be design? When is it most appropriate to market a product post production, when should marketing research influence product development, and when can the supportive infrastructure around an industry allow a well designed product to market itself?

In regards to the second question mentioned above, need is often claimed to be the mother of necessity, however I have often taken exception to this statement. More often than not, in recent product development invention appears to give birth to need, not the other way around.

Nevertheless the majority of my thought has been regarding the third question in the series above. In the hotel industry, fashion, architecture, design, marketing – when awards, blogs, magazines, TV shows exist for the sole purpose of promoting an industry – should one aim to portray a message directly, or to facilitate its diffusion via third-party, supposedly unbiased, sources?

And for such a strategy, what limitation on marketable products exists?

If Renova can design black toilet paper, and have a story carried by the New York Times, what can such an approach do for us all?