Reliability Engineering and Marketing Similarities

Abstract

Chris and Fred discuss the similarities between reliability engineering and good marketing is. Why? … we have to try and convince lots of skeptics.

Key Points

Join Chris and Fred as they discuss how reliability engineers need to be very similar to marketing people who try and convince a key message. Why is that? Because we need to convince people that reliability engineering stuff is important. And … will help them in ways they don’t already know.

Topics include:

Don’t say what you want to say … say what people need to hear. And these are very different. We have all been to conferences and presentations where the presenter gets up and says who they are, what university they went to, what class of air travel they took to get here, how many organizations they have personally saved and so on. Who cares? If what you are about to say is valuable and amazing … that is how people will judge how awesome you are. So what do people need to hear … and why do they need to hear it?
Give your target audience a name(s). This can really help. For example, let’s say you need to come up with a marketing video to promote a free employment support agency that can help people with basic skills (like literacy, computer skills and so on) and then network them with prospective employers. So who is our target audience? Let’s call our person ‘Barbara.’ Based on what we are trying to offer, Barbara is currently unemployed, missing key employable skills, probably struggling for money, perhaps even suffering from mental illness which we know is associated with extended periods of unemployment and so on. Now we have some key understanding of how we need to target our marketing campaign. And you should do the same for your audience (i.e. decision makers).
What do they ‘need?’ This happens to be the things they value the most. Do they need to eliminate the historical delays to design and production that have plagued their program? Do they need to try and tackle warranty issues that continue to embarrass their organization? Do they need to be able to demonstrate their new medical device is reliable to gain a foothold in a new market? None of this has anything to do with your favourite analysis technique, or your track record, or how many papers you have published, or what colour you are thinking of now.
Don’t waste your effort. And the quickest way to do this is to not sell the wonderful things you have come up with.

Enjoy an episode of Speaking of Reliability. Where you can join friends as they discuss reliability topics. Join us as we discuss topics ranging from design for reliability techniques to field data analysis approaches.