Mad Men Made Mad by Marketing New Normal

On my last trip to San Francisco I happen to catch 10 minutes of Carlie Rose.  Jeff Bezos was being interviewed and there was something he said that I though was particularly significant:

Before if you were making a product, the right business strategy was to put 70% of your attention, energy, and dollars into shouting about a product, and 30% into making a great product. So you could win with a mediocre product, if you were a good enough marketer. That is getting harder to do. The balance of power is shifting toward consumers and away from companies…the individual is empowered… The right way to respond to this if you are a company is to put the vast majority of your energy, attention and dollars into building a great product or service and put a smaller amount into shouting about it, marketing it. If I build a great product or service, my customers will tell each other.

This resonated with inarticulated thoughts then, and it continues to do so.  The implications are huge: costs of getting to market are lower for products that your customers care about; companies should reduce friction in their products, and then reduce it more; social networks are not just valid but the “new normal” in marketing.