Marketing has four Ps. Most organizations have forgotten what the first one means.
Angelia McFarland is joined by Alley Lyles-Jenkins — product design leader, architect by training, and veteran of projects ranging from the Amazon Echo Dot launch to Super Bowl 52 to the City of New York — for a conversation about what product design actually is, how it relates to marketing, and why the two disciplines keep having the same argument without resolving it.
Alley’s philosophy is this: the job is not to design products. It is to help the organization win by creating a competitive advantage through design as a principle. That philosophy has taken her across industries, from architecture to digital strategy to product.
Angelia and Gina disagree about where the marketing function ends and where product begins. Alley navigates the tension with precision: design is responsive to the market, marketing can influence design, and the organizations that win are the ones where those two truths are talking to each other.
The first P is product. Everything else is built on top of it. This episode is about whether your organization actually knows that.
This auntie has more to say.
Find Angelia and her full body of work at eopmedia.com. If you’re ready to turn individual clarity into collective infrastructure, The Agency Collective is the next step. For Season 3 and beyond, check out The Tech Aunties on Spotify.
