I was meeting with the relatively new CEO of a client recently to analyze the company’s marketing strategy. Discussing an area where our client has used one strategy and its primary competitor has taken completely the opposite strategy, the CEO said he’s skeptical of any business value his company thinks it’s getting from the effort.
The reason?
Because the competitor ISN’T being forced to follow his brand.
He expressed his desire to control a competitor’s marketing strategy and budget by beating them to great innovative opportunities it feels compelled to follow.
That’s not necessarily a common angle on marketing strategy, but it’s an intriguing strategic perspective nonetheless. While flying in the face of owning and differentiating your brand based on what you do that competitors don’t, it does align with one advantage of being a first mover.
It’s also made me rethink a situation where my former company got into NASCAR when no one else in our industry had. Once we demonstrated the success of the strategy (and won an industry award for the NASCAR program’s ROI), every major competitor jumped into racing within 2 years. While it angered me then, looking back in this new light, it was great to force our major competitors to make significant business investments because of the effects they felt from our strategy.
Which leads to the question – what have you forced your competitors to do lately?
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Mike Brown is an award-winning innovator in strategy, communications, and experience marketing. He authors the BrainzoomingTM blog, and serves as the company’s chief Catalyst. He wrote the ebook “Taking the NO Out of InNOvation” and is a frequent keynote presenter.
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