> He also believed very strongly in good marketing, and he jumped on privacy marketing very quickly after the Facebook - Google privacy spat that coincided with the failure of iTunes Ping.
I have two thoughts about this.
One, if you tell yourself a story strongly enough, it becomes real. Especially when you can structure the company to force it to become real.
Two, "marketing" is usually used disparagingly to mean something like "advertising that brainwashes customers into wanting something", but it's more like "knowing what people are going to want by the time it's ready to ship". It doesn't necessarily even include advertising. So in this case people do want privacy.
Same function at Apple. There isn't a separate "product" division and there aren't "PMs" with power (though there are some job site postings for them… in the marketing division.) That doesn't make sense at a functionally organized company where the execs and designers decide everything - Jobs and Ive were the "product" people.
IIRC the advertising people are called Marcom or "marketing communications".
I have two thoughts about this.
One, if you tell yourself a story strongly enough, it becomes real. Especially when you can structure the company to force it to become real.
Two, "marketing" is usually used disparagingly to mean something like "advertising that brainwashes customers into wanting something", but it's more like "knowing what people are going to want by the time it's ready to ship". It doesn't necessarily even include advertising. So in this case people do want privacy.