Crosswind Landings and Other Things That Look Wrong Until They Work
In a crosswind landing, you point the nose away from the runway to stay on centerline. In product marketing, the best moves often look just as counterintuitive.
The Crab
Here’s something that looks deeply wrong to a non-pilot: you’re on final approach, lined up with the runway, and the airplane is pointed 20 degrees to the left of where you’re going.
This is called a crab. When the wind is blowing across the runway, you angle the nose into the wind to maintain your ground track. You’re flying sideways. It looks like a mistake. It’s the correct technique.
Just before touchdown, you kick the rudder to straighten the nose and drop the upwind wing. For about two seconds, the airplane is doing three things that individually seem wrong but together produce a perfectly aligned landing.
The Marketing Parallel
Some of the best marketing moves I’ve made looked wrong at first glance.
Launching with less. At Amazon, we had a feature that could do twelve things. We launched it talking about one. The product team was frustrated — “you’re underselling us.” But the one thing we talked about was the one thing that solved a real problem. The other eleven could wait until people cared enough to discover them.
Saying what you’re not. At Kajabi, we repositioned by explicitly saying who the product wasn’t for. “If you want a website builder, we’re not it.” Revenue went up. The people who stayed were the right people.
Going slower to go faster. I once delayed a launch by three weeks to rewrite positioning from scratch. The CEO was not thrilled. But the original positioning was technically accurate and emotionally dead. The rewrite connected. The launch outperformed projections by 40%.
Why Counterintuitive Works
In flying, the crab works because physics doesn’t care about what looks right. Wind pushes the airplane sideways, so you angle into it. Simple force vectors.
In marketing, counterintuitive works because markets don’t care about what feels safe. Customers are overwhelmed. They don’t want more information. They want clarity. And clarity sometimes means saying less, excluding people, or doing the thing that makes your stakeholders uncomfortable.
The Landing
The hardest part of a crosswind landing isn’t the technique. It’s trusting the technique. Every instinct says “point the nose at the runway.” You have to override that instinct with training.
Product marketing is the same. Every instinct says “talk about all the features.” “Include every audience.” “Launch on the date the exec picked.” You have to override those instincts with experience.
The airplane touches down. Centerline. Smooth. The wind is still blowing, but you’re on the ground.
It looked wrong the whole way in. It worked perfectly.