Transforming Product Marketing Through the Lens of Relativity

Tim Cali, Director, Solution Marketing at Guild

It was winter 2021, and my family and I were driving through central NY to Chicago for our annual Thanksgiving with family and friends. 

I was listening to an interview by Neil DeGrasse Tyson, and his explanation of the theory of relativity forever changed my perspective of how products can interact with our lives. At that moment, my nerdy interest in Physics collided with my 15+ years in higher education and product marketing in the Edtech space.

If you’re still here, I suspect I have you.

DeGrasse-Tyson said, “Matter and energy are the same thing. Any concentration of matter and energy distorts the fabric of space and time…The denser the object and stronger the gravity, the deeper the distortion of space and time.”

"The denser the object and stronger the gravity, the deeper the distortion of space and time" echoed in my mind. It hit me—If a product's problem-solving ability equals density, creating more gravity, and stronger gravity creates time slowdown (engagement), then your audience will bend towards it—creating a physical relationship linked by relevance, place, and the deceleration of time, or in our case, essentially reducing noise and distractions around “users” and their environment.

Pause for a moment—picture this as a mind-bending roadmap to visualize the dance between product or “experience” innovation, creation, evolution, and the outcomes they unleash - now seemingly unencumbered by the propagation of AI - a capability with unmatched pattern recognition, learning, and prediction, all based on the orbits we build for ourselves and the systems we belong to. It’s a level of accountability to and for each other, which we have not previously designed around.

Do our products do that? Have we ever considered it that way? Well, yes, but we currently only think about this in ways that isolate us or falsely present us as a community or place to express ourselves to others when, in reality, it’s a void. We’ve seen where that can lead us.  

Can we build like that in the physical + digital space? We seem to have gotten it with Smart Home systems and are starting to break into “adaptive retail environments.” Our phones predict where we might want to go when we open maps, and everyone can check in everywhere. Notice a trend? All ways to consume rather than build.

“Creating gravitational pull acknowledges the arc of movement and relevance in the user's journey”

What about actual investment in a platform that recognizes the density of community interests, creating a gravitational pull through relevant and engaging local activities or adapting community events and initiatives based on the preferences and needs of local residents, small businesses, and economies?

Consider education: We design our course technology with hyper-personalization and adaptability, while our collegiate community supporting it remains sufficiently analog and siloed, and we largely design them today as two opposing definitions of gravity. Is there a digital mutual enabler operating in the background? How should we conceptualize the influence of both programs and community, extending beyond individuals into their systems, with technology as the connector to spaces where connections, shared learning, and application occur? This will be a key pillar as we grow increasingly hybrid in our learning.

In both of these examples, we have only dipped our toes. 

We’ve created apps to passively connect, propagate ideas, sell, push, pull, and accelerate, but never one that increases the potential to influence and “decelerate the surrounding environment” (that’s not doom scrolling), potentially resulting in a heightened gravitational pull evolving into something more robust and surpassing.

Creating gravitational pull acknowledges the arc of movement and relevance in the user's journey through "Relative Engagement." It fosters a sense of nuanced indispensability, ease, and, most importantly, relevance. 

Relevance, often discussed as what a product can do for a user, is rarely linked to identifiable factors or mechanisms in our brain or the world. No, not geocaching, geofencing, or dopamine abuse, but real triggers users can innately recognize, categorize, and react to—a product that then recognizes nuances in the relationship between the systems we believe we're a part of and itself.

Whether someone’s in education, city planning, building a church, designing an office, or starting a small business, the more relevant your “product” and “experience” are, the more likely your audience will feel relative to them. Through accrued utility and inertia, continuously asking, "Do we know who we're talking to, what we're talking about, or where we’re plugging in?" the pull gets stronger, and the gravity is real. That's where we start solving problems with meaning and impact rather than chasing clicks and distractions.

BIO

Tim Cali currently serves as Director of Solution Marketing at Guild, a Public Benefit Corporation that provides employees of America’s largest companies access to education, skilling, and career mobility without paying for tuition or career services. Before joining Guild, Tim gained extensive experience in Edtech consulting, guiding higher education institutions in the digital redevelopment of their STEM programs. Subsequently, he led the Product Marketing function for a portfolio of digital computing, physics, and chemistry products in the B2B2C space. Before his decade in Edtech, Tim spent many years serving students through administrative, programmatic, and student-facing leadership roles at two- and four-year institutions and then moving into roles that provided avenues for a broader impact in an increasingly digital age.

 

EdTech

Marketing

Retail