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must knock your opponent off balance with fast, unpredictable tactics
to surprise and confuse him. By the time your adversary observes
what you are doing and decides on a course of action it will be
too late, advises Gerald A Michaelson and Steven W Michaelson
“If you take a few men and make a sudden
surprise attack on a narrow road with loud sounding gongs and drums,
the biggest army may be thrown into confusion.
—Wu Chi on ‘The Art of War’
Fourth Century BC
Surprise is the best way to gain psychological
dominance and deny the initiative to your opponent. A military text
says, “Strike first and unexpectedly, attain surprise in strength,
point of attack, and through treachery.”
The marketing surprise
Surprise in marketing will have a different configuration.
Physically and psychologically, surprise denies your competitor
the initiative by allowing you to strike at a time or place where
he or she is unprepared. It is not essential that your competitor
be taken totally unaware, but only that the competitor becomes aware
too late to react effectively.
Surprise in marketing occurs most often when
companies do not take new competition seriously. In the business
arena, surprise is most often not an event but rather the result
of recognising that something undesirable has been happening.
Business strategist Bruce Henderson (founder
of the Boston Consulting Group) says that if you want to achieve
surprise, you do things your competitor will not see as a threat—such
as entering the market in a segment where you do not compete directly.
(It helps if you have chosen to enter a rapidly growing segment
of the market.) As you grow in size and expand into adjacent segments,
you eventually become a threat. When outside observers look back,
it looks as if the new entrant was smarter—actually surprise
was achieved by building from a non-threatening position.
What American auto manufacturer saw the Japanese
entry into the small-car segment of the auto industry as a threat?
What retailer viewed Wal-Mart as a threat during its early years?
It was years later that competitors were surprised.
Surprise can decisively shift the balance of
power and achieve success out of proportion to the efforts.
Secrecy is a partner of surprise
It’s not difficult to recall military battles
in which secrecy played a major role in achieving surprise. In the
Gulf War, the combined forces moved offensive units laterally along
the front line to a point where they could drive deeply into Iraq
unopposed. In the Battle of the Bulge, the Germans secretly moved
a large force many miles. In the Korean War, the United Nations
forces were unaware of the large armies the Chinese had moved into
North Korea.
The marketing application of the silent attack
can be found in small, privately held companies and large corporations
that grow their own management structure. In these organisations,
marketing secrecy is easier to maintain than in companies with a
more mobile management staff.
Marketers who use secrecy as a major ingredient
of surprise don’t talk about it. Secrecy surrounds Nordstrom’s
department stores, where executives are reluctant to talk about
the company’s accomplishments or mode of operations. Like
a military force planning an invasion, Southwest Airlines never
announces a new destination before it actually enters the market.
It doesn’t want to give competitors time to launch a counterattack.
To camouflage its intentions, it even lists “decoy airports”
in talks with analysts.
In Lima, Peru, officials of the Phillips company
successfully countered the planned competitive introduction of a
new high-tech product. When they found out on a Wednesday that a
competitor was planning to advertise a prototype the next Sunday,
they flew in their own prototype for a Saturday press conference.
As a result, their new product ended up as “news” in
the same Sunday paper as their competitor’s ad.
In launching a new product, there is always a
tendency to dribble the information into the market.
A small announcement now, a comment later, and
by the time the product gets to market, too many competitors have
figured out how to blunt the threat.
At the British disaster at Gallipoli, evidence
shows that the British would have been successful if they had used
at the outset even a fair proportion of the forces they ultimately
expended. By parceling out their forces, they lost the element of
surprise and then the opportunity to achieve superiority.
Plan surprise
These are the keys to victory for a strategist.
However, it is impossible to formulate them in detail beforehand.
—Sun Tzu
Launch the attack where he is unprepared; take
action when it is unexpected.
All warfare is based on deception. Therefore,
when able to attack, we must pretend to be unable; when employing
our forces, we must seem inactive; when we are near, we must make
the enemy believe we are far away; when far away, we must make him
believe we are near.
Offer a bait to allure the enemy, when he covets
small advantages; strike the enemy when he is in disorder. If he
is well prepared with substantial strength, take double precautions
against him. If he is powerful in action, evade him. If he is angry,
seek to discourage him. If he appears humble, make him arrogant.
If his forces have taken a good rest, wear them down. If his forces
are united, divide them.
A surprise move can shift the balance of power.
Once upon a time, Lever Brothers was the big winner in the laundry
and toothpaste wars. Then Procter & Gamble launched Tide as
the first synthetic laundry detergent and Crest as a cavity fighter.
As households moved away from wringer-type washers, they found a
box of Tide in their new automatic washer.
The American Dental Society’s endorsement
of Crest left Lever Brothers in the lurch. Both moves were typical
of marketing surprises—the competitor became aware of the
action too late to react effectively and was forced into a defensive
mode.
Once the initiative is lost, it is hard to regain.
Now Procter & Gamble’s prime products are under attack
from Colgate and Kimberly Clark. P&G knew that Colgate’s
Total was coming to market as the only toothpaste approved by the
FDA to fight gingivitis—but it wasn’t concerned. It
should have been, because Total leap-frogged Crest to eventually
became number one in every country in the world.
For years, P&G was in the business of creating
surprise with new products and acquisitions. Then it fell into the
business of managing surprises.
The transfer of marketing control from power
producers to power retailers is a problem facing all manufacturers.
Initiate the observation
In new product development, it takes more than
the accepted basics of high quality, low cost, and differentiation
to succeed in today’s world markets. The new rules add speed
and flexibility as key components in moving products to market.
In the war in Iraq, information on the whereabouts
of Saddam Hussein triggered the first attack. This rapid maneuver
is an approach fostered by Colonel Boyd, who defined it as a fighter
pilot. Boyd’s belief is that success involves the use of manoeuvre,
surprise, deception, and speed to find an opponent’s weakness.
Fighter pilots stress the importance of “getting
inside” in a dogfight by turning and manoeuvring more quickly
than the enemy so you can fix your guns on the opponent’s
plane before the opponent knows what you are doing.
You must knock your opponent off balance with
fast, unpredictable tactics that will surprise and confuse her or
him. By the time your adversary observes what you are doing, orients
to it, decides what to do, and takes action, it will be too late.
Boyd calls this cycle the observation-orientation-decision-action
(OODA) loop.
The key to victory, says Boyd, is to generate
the mismatch by operating at a faster tempo than your opponent.
The marketing application is to figure out how to move faster than
your competitor. This requires hard-hitting marketing attacks aimed
at your competitor.
Excerpt from ‘Sun Tzu: Strategies for
Marketing’ by Gerald A Michaelson and Steven W Michaelson.
Reproduced with permission © 2003, Tata McGraw-Hill Publishing
Company Limited
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