ThinkTank Manual

Product type: alcoholic beverage

Primary market: young adults

Taste: sweet and fruity

Position: high Status and sophisticated

But random thoughts do not make a product plan; they must be arranged into a coherent, persuasive document. So you might organize your thoughts into an outline as shown in Figure 1—1. With an outline it is easy to find information. For example, if you want to examine your ideas on product positioning, you can go straight to the section on marketing instead of searching through an unorganized list. You can see at a glance how your ideas fit together, which sections are solid and which need further thought. In addition, since the outline is organized just like the product plan will be, it makes the document much easier to write.

But it is difficult to work with an outline on paper. Some sections always seem to end up cluttered and hard to read, others sparse and empty. If you want to move an idea from one section of the outline to another, or eliminate it al- together. you have to do a lot of erasing, crossing out, or cutting and pasting. If you want to share the outline with a

Figure 1—1: Product Plan Outline

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