Marketing Book Excerpt From Marketing Street Fighter
From The Book: Marketing Street Fighter
Pick Your Turf
"This is our stoop, our block, our neighborhood. We don't give a damn what happens north of 46th St."
- Julio Sanchez, 44th and 9th
This is is one of the biggest decisions a firm can make, and it shouldn't be taken lightly. Turf needs to be attacked and defended. Very few gangs and crews and companies can have all the turf.
The famous Mafia that you see in the movies had, at its peak, 5000 members. That's it! There was no way they could rule the country with 5000 people! At that time, there were 20,000 police in NYC. The crime families would never win an all out war.
This made the Mafia choose certain industries, certain towns, certain districts and occupations. They followed the French expression: “Cherchez Le Creneau” - find the hole. You didn't see Mafia running around in Arkansas and you rarely met them in Oklahoma. You didn't run across Mafioso in airlines, automotive, and healthcare. They chose their points of focus very carefully.
What's interesting, of course, is that because the Mafia was our most famous (and glamorized) gang, there are a lot of impersonators out there. All you need to pass yourself off is a suit, a hat and an accent. As a refugee from New York living in Denver, people ask me repeatedly if I am in the Mafia or connected to them. It's hard to explain that 35 million people come from New York and no, we aren't all gangsters.
Just as the Mob can't run the whole country, if you have a crew on 44th street they aren't going to be able to defend all of Manhattan. This is an analogy for the ultimate problem companies face.
Let's look at the mighty Facebook. At the time of this writing, Facebook has 1.86 Billion users worldwide and they still don't do job search media. Facebook picked the biggest turf there is, the consumer market. But they didn't pick the consumer market for everything. They let Amazon be the storefront for products. They defer music streaming to Amazon, Itunes, Spotify and others. LinkedIn owns professional networking. Waze is used for avoiding street traffic, weather.com is for weather, and so on.
Could Facebook enter and own these other markets? Sure, they could enter them but owning those markets is another story. In business school they taught us to answer the question: "What business are we in?" Facebook knows their business. They are in user- generated social news and no competitor is close to them. The Facebook mission makes life less confusing for users and investors alike.
Go back to Colt 45 Malt Liquor. They were able to enter and disrupt a market. At the time of their launch, Black people accounted for 12% of the US population (about 24 million people). Do you know anyone who might want that market? Colt 45 found the hole and grabbed the turf that no one wanted. In 3D Printing (which was in its infancy) we found the hole and owned the turf.
In business, firms are so afraid to lose a sale that they specialize in everything. One ridiculous consulting firm I ran across does inventory control, assists in sales, provides marketing services, offers professional buying and money raising! What? The medical start up I'm in touch with is already working on their second product when they haven't sold any of the first one yet. They'll die fast trying to get too much turf when they don't even have their own stoop!
The PR expression is "you have to own your home town." Take it a step back from that.
Julio Sanchez and his gang can defend 44th street, plus or minus one block. They are a nasty group of guys and have a reputation for being the toughest guys around. Fights last 30 seconds or less. Their legend is powerful around 44th street. No one on 38th street has heard of them. Nor will they. That's why Julio is still alive and that's why the Sanchez boys still control 44th street.
Pick your turf. Just make sure you can defend it.