A friend recently asked me what books I had found useful in learning about product management.

I mentioned this article by Regis McKenna, which first appeared in Harvard Business Review in 1991. It opened my eyes to the idea that  “marketing” is more than just lead generation, advertising, PR, or trade shows. As McKenna says,

Marketing is not a new ad campaign or this month's promotion...It's job is neither to fool the customer nor to falsify the company's image. It is to integrate the customer into the design of the product and to design a systematic process for interaction that will create substance in the relationship.