My evergreen interview question for Product Managers

When I graduated from business school, my heart was set on making a switch from technology to CPG brand marketing.  Kellogg is a phenomenal marketing school so the marketing part made a lot of sense to me.

In my last year, I happened to take one of my favorite classes at Kellogg, Marketing Strategy with Professor Tim Calkins.  Even though we never directly talked about CPG, the coursework was most applicable to the CPG industry. This class was my first introduction to the strategic role a marketing department should be playing in companies.

After graduation, I found myself at an interview at Wrigley.  I will never forget one of the interviewers asking me to talk about a bad brand strategy.  I floundered.  I mixed brand / marketing strategy with advertising and ended up with a long winded answer around a brand's ad campaign that I thought was just not that good.  I knew I didn't answer that question right and in many ways, it also helped me think through why I was not prepared for that job at that time.

Which brings me to this post.  The beauty of the question I was asked was that it can be applied to anything.  If you are in technology, ask this from a technology lens.  If you are in finance, ask it from the finance lens.  For Product, I usually ask two questions:

1. Tell me about a Product / Customer Experience you really like - I am looking for answers that talk through how the product addresses a customer pain point or is superbly designed or is built in a way that allows it to scale very easily.  I am not looking for a cookie cutter iPhone or Amazon example.  Original thought gets bonus points.

2. Tell me about a Product / Customer Experience you think needs improvement - same vein as the previous answer but I think as you get better at Product Management, you start seeing things  in your every day life differently.  You get really good at spotting good vs. bad site registration flows, good vs. bad subject lines, good vs. bad CTAs, good vs. bad cart and checkout etc. etc.  Here, I am looking to see if you have started living your Product Management role yet and how good your critical thinking skills are.

To close this, how would I have answered the Wrigley question eight years ago?  Probably American Cars.  Their marketing didn't make any sense.  The pricing was higher than Japanese cars but the perception of quality was not quite the same.  The product design was also not fresh and therefore did not feel aligned with their price.  I didn't have a clear sense of what their differentiation was when compared with other brands.  At a high-level, I didn't know what they stood for at all.  I think these brands have made great strides in all areas and it has been fun seeing how the Ps are starting to align more.

Now, I will always be left wondering if I could have ended in CPG had I given this question a lot more thought prior to the interview :)