La capsula Informativa: frankly… Episode 78: Marketing Can’t Be an Afterthought
The transcript below is AI-generated and may contain minor inaccuracies. Tune in to the episode audio to hear the full conversation!
Transcript
Dan
Hello, welcome to Frankly.
Rachel
Hello, welcome.
Dan
So today we are talking with Rohan Rapale, who is Senior Manager for Product Management on the audio side for HARMAN International. And we get into a few things that are a little off the beaten path for us with this.
Rachel
Sure
Dan
It’s some more product planning and market research a bit, kind of where the worlds of, market forecasting, engineering, and then marketing all come together in kind of this product development world.
Rachel
Yeah, that’s a great way of putting it. I mean, and then we talk about where, like at what point in this three-year long process does marketing come in, right? And how do you make sure that you’re not just handing them things at the end and saying, all right, now go ahead and market this. And they are just learning about a product you’ve had in the works for that long. So yeah, Rohan goes into a lot of like the trends that they’re seeing, what the world might look like down the line and how our products might work together. So kind of like a fun featuring discussion along with marketing having a seat at the table, along with just automotive, which Dan and I both enjoyed.
Dan
Always love that.
Rachel
Yeah, with that, welcome Rohan.
Dan
Hi Rohan, welcome. Thanks for coming on today.
Rohan
Thank you for having me.
Dan
So tell us a little bit about how you got started. What was the career path that led you to your current role with Harmon? And talk a little bit about what you do there today.
Rohan
So it’s, I think I’m probably in the Michigan area or the Detroit area for about a decade and a half. Okay. I’m an engineer by education. And pretty much early part of my career, I’ve started off in engineering more towards software development. And pretty much all my career has been automotive, so embedded development. And then I always see all my work through a technical lens, just attributing to the early stages of my career. Very gradual progression as I progressed and as the demands of my role required me to put on a more business outlook, understand business needs. That’s where I transitioned, and it was a very organic transition, as it was demanded by my role. I moved to a more leadership role, more earlier it was more on the product management, program management, right? And it’s always been a little esoteric. Product management and program management are often mixed.
Dan
Yeah.
Rachel
Yeah.
Rohan
Eventually, when I figured out where I want to be at, and that’s where I steered it more towards product management, which is where most of my career has been in HARMAN. And I’m liking what I’m doing.
Rachel
It’s important.
Dan
Yes.
Rohan
That’s fundamental.
Dan
The most important.
Rohan
I sort of found a home where I see my ideologies, my mindset, and the product roadmap and alignment of the company values. as well as my job. So that’s where I’m sort of didn’t go in details, but this is sort of the high level where I come from.
Dan
What sparked your interest in automotive initially? Have you always been interested in the automotive field or was it more of a..
Rachel
Happenstance?
Rohan
A bit of both. Of course, I’ve been interested in cars. I’ve been a techie, like I said, but it’s Being in the Midwest, particularly around this region, you cannot not be influenced by it here.
Rachel
Totally.
Rohan
Somehow, either in the OEM or tier one, two, three, somewhere in there. So it sort of steered in their direction. Surprisingly, I actually started off with manufacturing in the very beginning. It was automotive manufacturing. So I was at Magna and they used to make the pillars of the car, the A pillar, the B pillar. And my job was to oversee the manufacturing process. And there was a lot of troubleshooting and early analytical work in my career. I wasn’t a fan of that job, which I intentionally, very consciously steered it in towards automotive, which is where I’ve started coming close to the Detroit area and the Michigan. I set up Michigan as my base. And I think right after that, I started a job at Panasonic. It’s a very foremost audio company.
Dan
Very different aspect of the vehicle between pillars, so speakers or audio.
Rohan
Yeah, I had to take a bit of a dip, I’ll be honest about it, because the skills are transferable, but not to that extent.
Dan
Yeah.
Rohan
Right, so it’s a Japanese company. The mindset is very different, but really good, very stable, very core foundational values. And my products, this is sort of the early stage where the formation of where I am today, the products that I’ll be working on started setting in, particularly around the digital cockpit. There’s a cluster of products in there. And Panasonic is really good at what they do. They have at least the automotive portion of it where they are the B2B sales the B2B segment. They’re really good at it and they’ve got sort of in the top three tier.
Dan
Yeah.
Rohan
Spent some time in Panasonic and this is where the skill set that I got pulled into HARMAN for was sort of incubated and honed. And this was around the head of displays. And this is where my segue to into HARMAN kind of crafted. Because head of display is sort of like a new thing. I mean, we call it new. It’s been there for a couple of decades now.
Dan
But it’s evolved.
Rohan
It’s evolving. It’s just not mainstream. And that’s a very fundamental struggle around it. But anyways, that’s how I got into Harmon. And then I’m sucked into now into the larger umbrella of Harmon, which is getting it all branded up into the audio side. So it’s all very fun.
Dan
Awesome.
Rachel
Talk a little bit about the… So in engineering, everything that you’re working on is very specific, right? It’s all the little tiny pieces, everything working together. And then when you kind of get into this… program management overseeing the product development, it starts to become very big picture, right? And I think that makes a really good project manager because you’ve seen all the details and now you’re able to take that and kind of blow it up bigger. But talk a little bit about that and how in your role, you’re kind of looking at the big picture of displays. You’re looking at what’s out there. What does that part of your job look like?
Rohan
Certainly. So There is, the way I see the entire product development cycle, or rather product vision from innovation and vision, it is, there is the product definition, identifying the need for a product.
Rachel
Right.
Rohan
And then, of course, there is the monetary aspect around it. We call it the business case, which is, does it even make sense? Do we have enough volume? Do we have enough market? And then, of course, the execution part comes in, which is the part that I mentioned past in my previous life, doing that.
Rachel
And that process is years. Like, I think when you say it like that, you’re like, oh, that doesn’t sound so bad, but like, that’s a, what, two to three-year process to even get to that point when you’re finally done developing.
Rohan
Yeah, of course. From the point of, let’s say, you’ve awarded, you get awarded from the OEM until the point of SOP, it’s two to three years. So that’s very accurate, actually. But the fact that you get to the point where a product is mature, and we’re talking about any product, let’s we call it a blue ocean product, that product doesn’t exist today, right? Out that space doesn’t exist today. To identify that is a lot of… market trends, some identifiers that you got a map. And that can be large market trends like you’ve got AI moving and that’s sweeping across domains. You’ve got the EV revolution, et cetera, et cetera. And then you piece them together and then you start thinking, as a user, do I still want to compartmentalize their experience the way it is? Or do we want to make it a more holistic experience with everything blending in? And that creates an initial idea of a product. When we take that further and put some meat on it, like what does the monetization model looks like? How is your revenue? How long will it take to recoup? And what is the value? How is your sales channels? Is it a B2B2C? Is it a B2C? HARMAN operates in more a B2B2 way, but, sorry, B2B way, but you still have to create that picture for the OEM to sell it further.
Dan
Right, that actually brings up something that I wanted to ask you about. When we talked before, you had mentioned, or you had explained to me your role as kind of… the bridge between the market, engineering, and marketing. And I think we’ve talked about the market and the engineering side a bit, but that feels more like the marketing side, where you’re having to kind of help the OEM understand what’s in it for their drivers, right? What’s in it for their customers?
Rohan
Absolutely, absolutely. And that’s precisely the cycle. Start with the market, make sure that engineering’s tight, but then get that marketing aligned. So essentially, it’s firstly, identifying the position. Where on your OEM roadmap or OEM vehicle positions do you see? It usually starts with the luxury segment and as the economies of scales are achieved, you start to the mid-range.
Rachel
It’s a great point, actually. Everything’s expensive to create for the first time, so you have to target the high market.
Rohan
Yeah, it’s all about volumes. The more volumes you get. And then, of course, Anytime you start off to venture things, take any technologies, let’s say TVs. TVs are a commodity now. It’s so inexpensive. And the reason is there is an economies of scale that is achieved. There are display suppliers that make mother glass really cheap. And in China, that to the point that doesn’t make sense. I mean, we are Samsung and we still do not get into too much nitty gritty of it.
Rachel
Yeah.
Rohan
So that’s the thing with any product, as it has to start with the luxury because they have the, let’s say, the bandwidth to eat up that.
Dan
Yeah, you have budget available, or you have room within the price tag to make up for some of that?
Rohan
Essentially. Yeah. But to your point, your earlier question, it’s very critical that any product, you cannot do it sequentially. Any product that is conceptualized needs to have a clear marketing path.
Dan
Yeah.
Rohan
Or if you cannot sell it, there’s no point making it. Even if it looks amazing on paper. So the marketing path, of course, every company has a set path identified. You’ve got a business development line, you’ve got the sales channels, and they’ve got contacts within OEMs, et cetera, et cetera. But you still have to position it, set the messaging, how you’re going to pitch that, and sometimes take that step further, and how is your OEM gonna pitch it to?
Rachel
Right.
Dan
Yeah, go ahead.
Rachel
I was just gonna say that makes a good case for bringing in marketing early in the process, right? When you’re making that business case or thinking of a product, bringing them and kind of giving them a seat at the table to say, does this make sense? Is this something that you think is filling a hole that you could take and market, right? Like, what is here? Because that might even help you shift that product a little bit, right? Like, I think it’s just a good example of why it’s important to bring marketing to the fold sooner than later versus if you create the product and you’re like, all right, here you go. Now you got to market it. And they’re like, wait, I would have done this differently. You know, like, this isn’t a selling point like you think it is and whatever. So Do you guys tend to bring them in early in these conversations?
Rohan
As a matter of fact, the marketing splits out into several wings. There is the experiential study. Then there is the design. Of course, design cannot be constituted as marketing, but they have a very heavy influence because user experience and of course the UI plays a very big role in how they can sell it further. So marketing plays that initial role and you’re right, they get the seat on the table right from the beginning, especially for products that do not have an established base or an established volume. So that’s what we, at least in some of the under the wrap products that I’m working on, that’s what we’ve been doing is heavily involving marketing team. The experiential team is basically the user studies team. So anytime you are setting out to going out with a set of data that you’ve figured out that the market’s going this way, a set of hypotheses, you want to validate those. And before you have a product out there, the validation happens through user studies.
Rachel
Market research, essentially.
Rohan
Market research. It can be just going to userstudies.com and get something, or it can be talking with people or bring them over, show them some slides, or even if you have a demo.
Dan
Show some technology.
Rohan
Yeah.
Dan
So what are some of the things, and without getting too deep into, things that you’re working on behind the scenes, but what do you see in, as far as trends go in user experience? What are people looking for? Is it kind of more technology, more everything, or maybe simplification? You know, the inside of a car has gotten more and more complex over the years. Do you see that kind of keeping going down that path or maybe backtracking a little bit?
Rohan
Wow, that’s a loaded question.
Rachel
Making him think, Dan.
Rohan
There’s a one clear trend that we know in EVs, in EV customers, that is called as the the card continues to give you more, as you, as the longer you use it.
Dan
Okay.
Rohan
So call it over the air software updates, like filling in the hardware ahead of time to have your roadmap loaded up later in the- kind.
Dan
Of preparing for future features.
Rohan
Exactly. Even if you don’t have it, get the hardware in there and then make sure your software updates. That’s something really big selling point with the EV customers like the Teslas, the Rivians and the Lucids. And that’s sort of the entire trend on the West. In here, at least in, those are the two big segments, by the way, right?
Rachel
Can I ask a question on that really quick?
Rohan
Sure.
Rachel
Do you find that one thing EV customers also want or are struggling with is the more tech that goes into their vehicle, the more drain there is on a battery too. So you kind of have a trade-off of range versus tech. And you want the tech, but you also, in an EV, one of your biggest things is range that you want to keep. Are you seeing any of that discussion happening? Like if we add too much, we’re draining it, or where does that stand?
Rohan
Right. So resources are, of course, a constraint, not just for EVs, for everybody. And the take drain on, but that’s a good question, by the way. The drain on the battery is just one aspect. There is overall cost in the more your supply chain is, the more number of supply, the more number of vendors and tier ones you coordinate with.
Rachel
Yeah
Rohan
The cost is multi-fold. And that’s something that the EV OEMs have cracked correctly.
Rachel
Okay.
Rohan
So if you notice, there is consolidation of computing power into a central compute system and features are just what used to be a hardware feature is now translated into a singular software that they have in-housed and in their absolute control. And that makes it dynamic to be updated. And going back to your previous question, that also limits the drain on your battery.
Dan
Okay. So you can be more efficient with that power, with that technology.
Rohan
Absolutely. But yeah, that’s a really good question. And to that point, there are factors that EV customers have to take into account that otherwise do not have to worry about is ambient cabin noise.
Dan
They’re so quiet.
Rohan
Road noise is nobody thought about, but as like for HARMAN, we’ve started investigating, we’ve not started, we’ve kind of gone to higher phases of noise cancellation, but that’s something that’s picking up.
Rachel
Yeah.
Rohan
It’s something called as AVAS. It’s external sound for pedestrian awareness.
Rachel
Yeah, that my husband just turned in an EV and it was It was kind of like an EV sports car. And it was one of the first EVs that I was like, it actually like, it does make a noise. You can hear it versus like some EVs drive down my street and I’m like, oh my God, it’s silent. But if you’re going to market an EV to people that like sports cars, they have to make some kind of noise. It seems so silly, but it really does.
Dan
There’s an experience thing there, but the safety thing for pedestrians, there’s a lot that goes in there.
Rachel
But you’re right, I only heard it outside. Inside the car, I would say like, is it on? Like I would be like, wait, did we start it? I just, you couldn’t hear it was very interesting.
Rohan
It depends which some cars offer that as well.
Rachel
Yeah, It’s just an interesting point. Okay, back to Dan’s trend question. I know I took us off a little bit further. So that’s EVs.
Dan
So yeah, the other side of the coin then, how are things progressing there? What’s kind of what’s exciting consumers on the other side?
Rohan
The overall trend is towards safety. Okay, people want safer cars, people definitely want… to a certain inspiration from the West is minimalism. That’s something that’s been seen that we’re not getting the clutter that used to be. So I sort of went in that direction to a certain extent where we started adding screen after screen after screen. Yeah.
Rachel
There was no more buttons. I hated that. I was like, I just want to like turn the air up a little bit and now I got to navigate somewhere.
Dan
Yeah, you do miss them.
Rachel
Yeah.
Rohan
So we sort of in the influx of in between right now, it may go in a certain direction, but. What Tesla’s done, or I drive a Tesla, and that’s I think that’s a little annoying, having to shift gears through the screen, yeah, and the engineer in me who knows that thinks… Sometimes, for the most part, a lot of times do not work. I’ll not want to place something like a park shift to gear shift in there. But I mean, yeah, that’s radical. But the east on the other side is slow. It’s a more conscious and rooted, grounded effort towards the original value proposition.
Dan
Okay, yeah, makes sense. So, What is, I guess, what is something that excites you about the future of audio, or what are some of the maybe future trends that you’re looking out to in your roadmap that really excite you at kind of that higher level?
Rohan
Of course, so audio, if we see the journey of audio, right, it’s always has been… I have audio system versus I have, do not have, and then we move to, I have branded audio system, the grill, saying Bose or HARMAN, whatever. And now we’re entering sort of state where what more can the system do? How can the system read and be adaptive and more comfortive and more immersive?
Dan
Okay.
Rohan
So at HARMAN, we start thinking of rather than features, experiences.
Dan
Okay.
Rohan
How is this, how can I make them more immersive? How can we make it more entertaining? And how can we bring people more together? And the interplay with the features and different technologies in the car can really make fun features. And then of course, you’ve got the AI under the hood. So things can turn magic happen. It’s really fun what the roadmap has.
Dan
So with that kind of higher connectivity, do you see that going beyond the car, like into other connected? Is there more connectivity between car and the rest of the world? How does that?
Rohan
Yeah, it’s all gonna fuse, right?
Dan
Yeah.
Rohan
It’s really interesting. HARMAN, at least for the automotive and the consumer wing, which is we sell headphones, and that’s the consumer style, which is lifestyle, and then you’ve got… From an automotive and then Samsung with the larger portfolio of devices, that synergy is thought about, right? And then that’s not just HARMAN, right? Everybody in the market itself, you’ve got the phone that got similar processing power, if not the similar processor. You’ve got the car with the pretty loaded processor, by the way, and they’re getting stronger and stronger. And then, of course, your house, which is getting sort of techy, if I want to call centralized, right? So we’re all moving to a common future. If you think about it, it’s processing power, communication, and them talking to each other. I think they had a term IoT that sort of dulled in between, but eventually we are… doing the whole IoT of everything going together. I’d say the only challenge is the, it’s not unified right now. It’s everybody is taking a step to unify it. There is, of course, there is V2X. That’s pretty, I think it’s getting pretty standardized and we’ll get to a point where we V2X will become mainstream across the board. But that is more around vehicular safety, reducing congestion, predicting traffic patterns, and making highways a little more agile.
Rachel
Versus like convenience?
Dan
Right, or entertainment.
Rohan
Yeah.
Rachel
Because I think about when you say that, the other challenge there I think is that it’s going to force all of the companies that are doing these things. So like I think about my house that’s set up through Amazon Alexa. All of our lights are Alexa lights. My garage opener is an app. My car has an app. So when you say that, I’m like, there’s an interesting thing here of saying like, here’s my work schedule this week. Every morning, you’re going to turn off my lights at this time, start my car and do whatever, right? It’s like a sequence of I’m leaving the house. So we’re going to do all of these things together. But that forces all of those brands to also work together. And that itself will be, I think, like the delay and the struggle. Because it just causes, I mean, think about, you said V2X, like getting the infrastructure in place to do this has been such a challenge, and it’s still a challenge, and so I just feel like getting everybody to play nice for these things to happen. We’re looking like 15 years down the road just for that.
Rohan
By the way, good idea.
Rachel
Thank you.
Rohan
That’s actually a fundamental problem. I have it as well. But the question really is about different protocols. The fact that Bluetooth itself and the Bluetooth consortium is open source. We’re all adapted and we’re all on the same platform. Not everything is open source. So eventually, Wi-Fi, we got Wi-Fi, everybody sort of, the different evolutions of Wi-Fi we’re picking up and everybody’s on the same. But at the end, as we start blending this together, there’s somebody who has to sit, like a product manager or somebody who has As you said, is it really worth it? Is there enough value to do that? And because you introduce a lot of these intermediate protocols to talk with each other.
Rachel
Well, then it’s a security issue too.
Rohan
And then there’s security.
Rachel
It’s like maybe it is a good idea, but then can we make it secure enough that consumers will get on board?
Dan
I’ll go maybe. Taking it out of the technical for a second and get back to our world of marketing too, though, you have a great opportunity for brand loyalty with all of this coming together. If you can create a great experience, you talked about HARMAN focusing on creating experiences now, you can create such a good experience in the car entertainment area, in the home entertainment area, in one of these different spaces, you have that opportunity as a marketer to kind of really leverage that. and bring in maybe customers where you wouldn’t have been able to before, where they wouldn’t have expected to choose you.
Rohan
Absolutely.
Rachel
That’s a great point.
Dan
So we always like to close on one question, just kind of a fun one, but I want to ask you, looking back over your career, if you could give yourself, your younger self, you know, at 21 years old, coming out of university or whatever it might be, one piece of advice for your future career, what would you say to yourself?
Rohan
I’m going to say, and this applies to anyone who’s graduating as fresh, venturing out into the corporate world, is to exercise their opinion, exercise their voice, and influence without authority. This is a very underrated virtue that a lot of people do not realize as they start entering and start waiting for that title to kick in before they start exercising their opinion or their thoughts. It’s very intimidating when you’re sitting in a room full of folks who’ve got decades of experience. And it’s very easy to believe that what they say is literally the Bible. And it’s not often true. As a matter of fact, You, from your perspective, when you’re being grounded to the facts, can actually steer conversations far better, right? And that’s, I’ve realized that much later in life, not that I would change my journey, I am what I am because of all the mistakes I’ve done, but this is definitely something I’d want to give out to anybody who’s listening or to myself.
Dan
Yeah, I love that advice. Just don’t be afraid to speak your mind if you have something that you feel like can contribute or improve the situation.
Rachel
I also think if done right and done, like you said, in have influence without authority and you don’t feel like overbearing or my idea is the best. That’s, I would argue, where you get the titles. It’ll actually get you there maybe quicker because people see your value that maybe you were only showing a few people that were your same level because you were afraid to say something or have that influence.
Rohan
Exactly. It’s like exercising that muscle.
Rachel
Yeah.
Rohan
You start exercising it, you start being more… speaking with conviction, and then that’s what leadership is about.
Rachel
Right!
Dan
Yeah, and don’t get, I mean, the other piece of that is just not to get discouraged if you hear no sometimes.
Rohan
That’s the main thing, really.
Dan
Keep at it.
Rachel
It’s just a redirection.
Dan
Well, thank you so much, Rohan, for coming on.
Rachel
Appreciate it.
Rohan
It was fun, guys.
Dan
Talk to you soon.
Rachel
Right. I hope everybody learned something new about the product development process, the sales process.
Dan
I did.
Rachel
Yeah. And kind of how that whole system works. Because I feel like that’s not, we see products and just assume that the product has always been there or existed. You don’t really think about the details of how it actually comes to be in that whole process. So a little peek behind the curtain.
Dan
Yeah. So hope you enjoyed that. And we’ll make sure we include some information on this in the description, but we’ll tag Rohan so you can check out his work and follow along, and we will see you next time.
Rachel
See ya!
