A friend of mine sent me a video of my favorite author, Seth Godin, giving a presentation at a tech conference in 2008. In his speech entitled: “Why marketing is too important to leave to the marketing department” Godin explains the importance of integrating marketable features into the products. However, the news about the great feature needs to be spread: that’s where marketing comes in.
One of the examples he used in his speech was about Otto Rohwedder (pictured above): the man who invented sliced bread. Otto held the patents for the automatic breadslicer and had the factories all ready to receive the orders. However from 1913 until his patent ran out in 1930, sliced bread was a complete failure. No one cared.
It wasn’t until 1931, when Wonder Bread came along and packaged and marketed that it built strong bodies 12 ways, that sliced bread became The Greatest Thing.
I wonder what product is out there now just needs to be marketed for it to take off?
Any ideas? Let’s hear ’em.
kerryoreilly 