So We Need to Do Marketing?
These days, Professor Shin Dongjin’s lab had become an unusually cheerful place.
It wasn’t because everyone there was naturally bright and positive. It was because every single person’s research was going well.
And the one thing they all seemed to say, almost in unison, was this:
“Ah, Professor, you must be making a ridiculous amount of money.”
They didn’t mean it in a bad way. It was a comment they could make because they were doing their research with TA Medical’s products. Most of the people in the lab had chosen research topics that incorporated TA Medical’s technology, largely because this was an era when AI still played a limited role in the medical market and they wanted an easier path to getting their proposals approved.
As they worked, one thing became very clear to everyone: TA Medical had truly created something innovative.
“How does it catch diseases so accurately? What’s the logic behind it?”
“They say it’s a black box. Nobody knows.”
“Our AI could just detect things too, but the fact that it only avoids false positives when something isn’t actually a disease is what’s really amazing.”
“Isn’t its accuracy ninety-nine percent too?”
“No, that’s around eighty-nine percent. Still, the average for veterinarians is eighty-five, so it’s not bad.”
“If we train it on more data, it’ll get even better, right?”
There was no longer even a trace of doubt left in Professor Shin Dongjin’s lab about TA Medical.
“You all use this? Isn’t this just a scam cooked up by some tech nerds?”
When graduate students from other labs in Korea University’s veterinary department happened to complain about it, the people here would tearfully and meticulously defend it.
“Then does that mean all the papers we write are scams and nonsense too?”
“No, that’s not what I meant.”
“We’re literally doing research that proves it’s not a scam and not nonsense.”
“No, I just said it off the cuff. Ignore me, okay?”
That was what it meant to have genuine faith in, and affection for, a brand: brand loyalty. In that sense, Professor Shin Dongjin’s lab had reached a level of loyalty to TA Medical that was practically on the level of company employees.
“Hello~”
“Ohhh, it’s Section Chief Park.”
“Yes~ I came by to let you know that there’ll be a small product update at midnight today~”
Park Jaeyun also visited the lab often, bringing coffee or joining them for lunch.
By now, she understood the product well enough to explain its updates to the lab members herself.
“So CEO Kim Siwon isn’t coming anymore? Is he buried in the medical side now?”
“No, not at all~ He’s just busy helping another professor with his research right now. Should I tell him to stop by afterward?”
“That was a joke, a joke. It’s just that when CEO Kim Siwon shows up, we all have to sit up straight, and that gets tiring.”
TA Medical’s veterinary-specific AI was approaching commercial release.
So I was spending my days running around with networking, research support, interviews, and the like.
And right in the middle of all that, another mountain dropped in front of me.
How am I supposed to do marketing?
The basic marketing strategy had already been worked out by me and Lee Seonghun.
Of course, “worked out” was putting it generously. We didn’t exactly have a brilliant strategy.
The product itself hadn’t exactly come out of a carefully planned roadmap, either.
It had simply reached this point because, somehow, the product quality had turned out to be excellent.
“The problem isn’t even the marketing strategy. We need promotional materials first if we want to use any of this at all.”
But creating the materials and actually carrying out the strategy later were two very different things.
Technically, by role and responsibility, this was all something Lee Seonghun should have handled. But I couldn’t dump everything on him when he had no real practical experience yet.
Besides, marketing was such a broad field that I had no clear sense of what needed to be done, how, or to what extent.
So I asked Badugi for help, but as usual, Badugi refused to give me anything directly.
“You’re seriously so cheap. How can you not help me properly even once?”
“I’ve never helped you properly even once?”
“You’ve helped. But this is the kind of thing you should be helping with.”
“Your wish was ‘Make TA Medical surpass JH Medical.’ But that doesn’t only mean sales and operating profit, does it? A leader’s management ability is also an important factor when evaluating a company. So if I turn you into my puppet, that would be the wrong output. You should have entered the input correctly from the beginning.”
Reading that long, merciless refusal, I squeezed my eyes shut.
I couldn’t think of anything that would beat that logic, and I was too drained to waste energy trying.
Just one hint. What do you think I should do?
I typed that with a sulky expression, but Badugi only shrugged.
“What do I need to give you a hint for? Just ask your target audience directly.”
“Hello, Professor~”
“Hello~ Mr. Siwon, the one who came by yesterday~”
“Haha. This time, I brought the business person with me.”
“Good afternoon. I’m Lee Seonghun.”
Badugi had recommended that I and Seonghun-hyung conduct a user interview.
Marketing began with understanding your customers and your market, after all.
So we went straight to see Professor Shin Dongjin.
“Business development? Or maybe sales, like Section Chief Park?”
“For now, I’ll probably be handling marketing. I expect my role to expand after that.”
“Ah, so you’re the PM?”
“The PM is someone else, named Ha Juwon. You’ve probably seen her before.”
“Sorry. The names all blur together. Haha.”
Different companies might divide roles and responsibilities a little differently.
But in many cases, the overall planning and management of a product fell to the PM, while marketing handled the planning and execution of the marketing work.
Because so many tasks looked similar from the outside, they were hard to distinguish if you weren’t inside the company. But one thing was one thing, and another thing was another.
That was why I had brought Seonghun-hyung along.
“Anyway, there must be a reason you asked to meet again, right? What is it?”
When Professor Shin Dongjin asked the question so directly, I answered with confidence.
“We’re planning to start doing proper marketing, and we came hoping you might give us some advice.”
At my words, Professor Shin Dongjin let out a little snort of laughter.
“Right. You’re all engineers, aren’t you?”
“Yes. So far we’ve managed to get by on product quality, but now that we’re trying to enter the market, there’s a lot we need to learn.”
“That’s true. Hmm. But I don’t know much about marketing either. What exactly can I help with?”
Professor Shin Dongjin smiled thinly and stared at me, as if waiting for my answer.
I wasn’t planning to answer with something as vague as, “Please teach us marketing!” either.
“Could you show us some of our competitors’ marketing materials? And if you could tear them apart or praise them honestly, I’d really appreciate it.”
“Oh?”
Fortunately, that seemed to satisfy him.
The fact that he jumped up from his seat and started rummaging around for something was proof enough.
“You don’t need to explain things like marketing campaigns and all that?”
“The more detailed you can be, the more helpful it’ll be.”
“Hey now. Is it really okay to just feed you everything like this?”
“If you feed me just a little, I’ll learn quickly and grow well.”
“You do know how to talk, don’t you?”
Throughout this exchange, Seonghun-hyung could only roll his eyes helplessly.
It seemed awkward to him that we’d skipped proper introductions and gone straight into the main topic.
But with only an hour of the professor’s time, spending a long stretch on small talk and icebreakers was impossible.
We had to handle the urgent matter first; there was no helping that.
“Oh, right.”
But it seemed Professor Shin Dongjin had a different idea.
“So you’re going to be a marketer? Then I guess I should hear your self-introduction first.”
He returned to his seat with a pile of promotional materials gathered from all over the place, then smiled at Seonghun-hyung.
That left my hyung staring back at him in a dazed sort of confusion.
He clearly didn’t understand what a marketer’s self-introduction had to do with anything.
Mine probably wasn’t much different.
“A lot of marketers like being the center of attention. So I’m giving him some attention.”
Reading our expressions, Professor Shin Dongjin laughed and explained.
“I’m not trying to insult anyone, but people who’ve tried to get attention for themselves often seem pretty good at asking for attention for the products they care about, too.”
Having cleared up even the possibility of misunderstanding, Professor Shin Dongjin finally drew a broad smile from Seonghun-hyung.
“That makes sense. Thank you for paying attention.”
“Right? CEO Kim Siwon, you should remember this kind of thing too. Developers tend to hide away and still love being praised, but marketers usually like being praised out in the open.”
“Ah……. Yes, I’ll keep that in mind.”
“Not keep it in mind that much. Anyway, go ahead and tell me about yourself.”
Now visibly brighter, Seonghun-hyung began introducing himself calmly.
He talked about transferring schools, how he’d met me, what he’d done here, and what sort of aspirations he had for marketing.
There were even details I hadn’t known, so I listened with real focus.
“Then, after joining TA Medical, I started looking into veterinary papers and industry articles as well. The more I searched, the more I realized just how incredible you are, Professor.”
He’d been talking about himself for a while, and then he suddenly slipped in a compliment about Professor Shin Dongjin, which made the professor laugh awkwardly.
“Haha, well. I wouldn’t go that far.”
“Honestly, when I heard that someone like you would be giving us insights about marketing, I got a little excited this morning.”
“Excited? What do you mean, excited! What do I know about marketing, anyway! Hahaha!”
Seeing the professor laugh loudly, I realized the line about being excited must have been right up his alley.
Watching Seonghun-hyung wrap up his self-introduction so neatly by steering it into marketing talk, I couldn’t help thinking he really did have a good sense for this kind of thing in more ways than one.
“Hmm. Marketing, huh. First, take a look at this. This is a medical device for ultrasound imaging. It used to be number one in the world, but now it’s dropped to second place. As you can see from the materials, the overall promotional piece isn’t very good. They piled in everything they thought were strengths, so in the end nobody can tell what the main selling point even is. They just stuffed in everything they wanted to say, and it ended up just being noisy!”
Growing a little self-important, Professor Shin Dongjin started explaining the promotional materials in painstaking detail.
At a glance, it sounded like he was just rambling on and on, but every sentence carried a very clear point.
Why this material was good. Why that one was bad.
If we kept those points in mind, we’d probably be able to make something convincing ourselves.
“This is JH Medical’s X-ray. Their advantage was that they reduced noise more than their competitors, so they visually emphasized the importance of noise right on the front page, didn’t they? There’s less text, but even if you just glance at it, the message gets across. It’s an ugly company’s pamphlet, but it’s a well-made one, so remember it well.”
Seonghun-hyung took careful notes on every little detail, and Professor Shin Dongjin, encouraged by his serious attitude, became even more animated and explained things in greater depth.
He had collected quite a few promotional materials, so even a quick explanation ate through the hour in no time.
But maybe he was having fun teaching us, because after taking a call somewhere, he came back and said he still had thirty minutes to spare, then kept going with his explanations.
“This one was made to show to guardians. It gets them to buy expensive equipment and gives them a reason to pay more for it. It’s handy to use when explaining the product. Places that sell expensive promotional materials should make more stuff like this.”
Seonghun-hyung’s eyes shone brightly as he recorded even the professor’s offhand remarks one by one.
The way he made sure to look at Professor Shin Dongjin as much as possible while taking notes was more than enough to keep the professor energized, too.
“Well. That’s about it for now. Take everything back with you and make ours just as good.”
“Yes. I’ll make it well.”
I was curious to see what kind of plan would come out of the person who had just received a crash course lasting an hour and forty minutes.