I know, Config - Figma’s annual - conference was held in August 2023, almost nine months ago!

But the remarks of Brian Chesky, the CEO of Airbnb on Product Management kept lingering in the back of my mind. Watch the whole video where Brian is interviewed by Dylan Field, the CEO of Figma. Topic of the interview is; Leading through uncertainty: A design-led company.

The interview revolves mostly around the fact that very few people with a background in design, become founders or make it to the boardroom. And that designers should not limit themself to visual design, but should design workflows, business models, org designs and entire companies. Design is not about how something looks, but about how something works.

The two designers that I worked with most intimately and influenced my thinking and approach on product development, were both founders and more interested in the business and strategic part of a product then the actual visual design. So I can’t agree with this more, but this was not what stood out for me in this talk. This is the remark of Brian that made me perk up!

“We got rid of the classic product management function. We have product marketers. We combine product management with product marketing. You cannot develop product unless you know how to talk about the products and sell those products.”

Brian explains that in 2019, he woke up with a horrible dream. In his dream he came back to the company after 10 years and it was unrecognisable. This magical company with a product that people loved, they were starting to lose it and it was starting to wear out.

The creative process - often driven by design - requires nerve. And over the years, he was starting to lose his nerve. And he brought in a lot of people from a lot of different companies. Airbnb turned out very divisionalised, and it was run by product managers and A/B experiments. And the more people were added, the more projects were pursued, the less the app changed.

With the help of Hiroki Asai, the new agency of Jony Ive and the Corona epidemic as a catalyst, he changed the company back to a design led company.

Changing back to a Design Led Company

So what are all the changes they made to Airbnb?

• From a business unit organisation to a functional organisation
• 1 roadmap for the whole company
• Focus on a few really big projects
• 80% of the products are released twice a year
• Brian started reviewing all the work himself
• Designers are equal to Product managers
• Product managers widen their scope into Product marketeers

Changes in the Product Development Process

• They like to start a lot of product development with marketing. Marketing should have a vision on where they want to go and what story to tell.
• Product marketing will then work with design to determine what is the exact project, what are we trying to solve. And enter into a long fase of concept development.
• Because these functions are working alongside on these big projects, the approach is way more integrated. And you don't have to spend time convincing another department, why something is crucial for the concept.
• Then they spend time on how to tell the story. According to Brian a lot of products fail because they are not well marketed. And people give up on features to soon. You have to make sure people know about the feature.

I Like it Actually!

Especially in bigger organisations, you spend so much time convincing the marketing department to spend budget on your product or feature. In one of my former jobs, I actually handed out roses and stickers on Valentines day on the marketing department trying to make them “fall in love” with our product and give us attention.

I also made a habit of just walking around on the marketing floor and chatting up people - sorry ladies haha -. Just to make sure they had us top of mind, and I kind of knew what they were working on. It worked, but just a little bit.

But the opposite happens too! I have been in many meetings where the marketing department tried to convince us to build certain features or campaigns. I must admit, this often felt like an extra burden - another bs marketing idea - and we tried to push it far out on our roadmap ☺️.

At jobs at smaller companies, the connection to the marketing team was often a lot more close and intimate. We had a clear goal and our incentives were more aligned. But still, there were a lot of customer insights, data and commercial plans never clear for the product teams. I remember thinking, “I wish I knew what they knew, it would really help me”.

How Would this Work in Practice?

Incorporating also the marketing tasks, my first thought is, where do I get the time? Obviously you win some time by having a lot less alignment with the marketing team. You are the marketing team!

You would spend a lot more time in product discovery, concept development, marketing plans, media budget allocation (is that what it’s called haha). Where do you find the time to focus on product execution? Feature specification, product quality and product delivery is a elementary part of the product management job. I only see two practical approaches;

• Less projects, but bigger projects to focus on. If you would just add all marketing tasks to a normal product management scope. Things will be going seriously wrong.
• Earlier handover to engineering. Set up the product department in such a way, that full product execution is the responsibility of engineering. So a big chunk of your regular PM work is taken away and can be focused on the marketing aspects of the PM role.

Now What?

Marketing is not rocket science, but it's a real skill. And something that you have affinity with or not. For business and design driven PM’s I can imagine it’s really fun to add this to your scope. For for more development and execution driven PM’s, I can imagine it’s a fluffy bunch of marketing bingo added to your work and it might not be so welcome.

I can see quite some overlap between Marketing and Product Management. Especially in the domain of customer insights and products strategy there must be research, thinking and goals that are actually quite the same.

I don’t how how implement it yet in my daily work, but i’m certainly going to brush up my marketing skills, so I have a better understanding what they actually do haha, and how there is overlap that could create efficiency. Not only in unnecessary alignments but also in just doing the same job twice.

I’ll start by polishing up my marketing knowledge with the book Sterk Digitaal Merk - Strong Digital Brands - written by brand strategist - and good friend Ingmar de Lange. His book was elected as the marketing book of 2022!

I’ll let you al know how this goes. I’ll certainly start with changing my perspective and trying to see where marketing and product management could be tighter or even merge into 1 role.

👋