Traditional thinking goes that designers create the products, for marketers to sell. Then along came Apple, whose beautifully designed products virtually sold themselves. This prompted commentators like Seth Godin to decry the end of marketing and recommend company shift their budgets into product design.

While a somewhat naive narrative, it's been prompted by decades of mediocre products needing increasing budgets to highlight non-existent differences . Like the connected phone, TV and Internet plans the promise simplicity, while requiring three different support lines when something goes wrong. Often the marketing message fails to live up to the user experience.

The rise of the Internet has complicated matters further, with multiple new channels, many of which are poorly integrated and several of which are no longer under your control. As such, product and marketing teams need to work much closer together, and I believe that the relatively new field of UX Design is the glue.