Digital product development equals branding.
If this view is not more popular, it's because digital marketing industry is dealing mostly with pre-Internet brands, trying to retrofit them for the internet. In this situation, they end up doing marketing instead of product development.
A few words about product development: it's based on solving problems, it's aligned with what people are already doing/talking about/behaving, and it's creating something that let's people do/talk/behave in a different, better way. It's awfully similar to the way web operates.
Why is this sort of thinking so hard to apply to brands?
Sure, old brands are big, slow, complicated, and all of that. But what makes them truly different from digital brands is the fact that their product development and marketing are separate, and come in a "create a product"-"market the product" sequence.
To make Coke relevant, P&G relevant, Walmart, or Nike relevant in digital is something that keeps many a CMO awake at night. In fact, it is R&D management that should be awake. Once digital becomes part of the product development process, then marketing those products is a breeze.
The problem here is that the burden of digital can't fall at the end of the value chain: to marketing, advertising, and promotion. When it does, then ... well, we have already seen what agencies can come up with. If they are stuck in "why aren't we more creative" limbo, it's because they are entrusted with an unfair task.
To really be relevant in digital requires taking a step back and realize that value chain is more of a Venn's diagram, where business plan intersects with user behavior, strategy, technology, user experience, and visual design. It's about keeping all those different views in play while making things.
This is something that all start-ups and digital brands already know. They invest in their products, in making it relevant and continuously evolving: not because they want people to talk about those products, but because they want people to use them. Which means that they spend most of their time doing R&D.
Digital is really not a marketing challenge.
