A Product Marketer's "Grand Slam"

The ultimate job that a product marketing team can perform (or your reasonable expectation of marketing consultants you bring in) is twofold:

• to identify and alleviate the pain for your customer, and
• to communicate this in a way which compels the sale.

In the automotive industry, some of the greatest advances over the last century were good models for solving customer pain:

Automatic transmission came from the great frustration, inconvenience, and occasional embarrassment of many drivers coordinating the clutch and accelerator controls of manual transmission.

Power windows were more than "not cranking the handle". They allowed any window to be operated (or not) by the driver -- adding control (parents making sure little ones weren't throwing things out the windows) and improving flexibility (driver rolling down passenger window to ask pedestrian for the nearest gas station).

The greatest advance we've seen in this century, recently unveiled by Lexus, looks to be a hit:

Self parking is a feature many people have thought to be science fiction. But Lexus realized they had put enough cameras on board to give the driver the kind of assistance parking requires. Watch their own demo:

http://www.lexus.com/models/LS/features/exterior/advanced_parking_guidance_system.html?demo=ls_parking&s_ocid=30019

No competitors. No price limits. Joe Average drool factor. Probable patent protection. Can you say "Grand Slam"?