How are product and brand marketing similar? Different? Or are they really the same thing?!

Good product marketing helps build the brand. Good brand marketing helps drive usage of the products. To me, they're like cousins in marketing. Perhaps more so than any other marketing disciplines.

Take Apple, a master of marrying their brand marketing and product marketing.

Here's an old ad for the iPod. There's the logo, and an engaging illustration of someone dancing, sure. Some people's idea of brand advertising might stop there.

But Apple doesn't.

Then they add: 10,000 songs in your pocket. Mac or PC.

That's Product Marketing meets Brand Marketing.

10,000 songs (feature) in your pocket (benefit plus differentiation — other MP3 players were big and/or didn't hold many songs). Mac or PC (audience targeting). Makes you want to dance — and look fun to others (brand).

They are different.

Brand marketing aligns to the purpose of the company's existence and helps to create the narrative around the company that people associate with. Product Marketing helps to successfully shepard the company's products to market and to successfully commercialize them. Often times these two roles need to work together to truly reflect the brand and the product