Strategygram: Deer in the Headlights

Do you feel that the Titanic’s tragedy was inevitable because it spotted the iceberg too late?

Then consider this. The British Board of Trade’s enquiry a month after the catastrophe concluded: “Captain Smith had failed to take proper heed of ice warnings…and the collision was the direct result of steaming into a dangerous area at too high a speed (twenty-two knots).”

The ship was also woefully unprepared. The Titanic could carry 48 lifeboats, it had 20—enough for only half the passengers on board. The crew wasn’t well trained in emergency-evacuation procedures, so it didn’t know how many people could safely fit into a lifeboat. Panicked officers lowered many half-filled lifeboats.

You get the picture. It was a disaster—but avoidable.

In David Lean’s ‘Lawrence of Arabia’, you see Peter O’Toole and his guide at a desert well they have just discovered. While slaking their thirst, they spy a hazy black dot on the horizon. As the black shape nears, it gets clearer and bigger. The black-clad figure turns out to be a stranger—Omar Sharif—who, once he is within rifle range, promptly shoots the guide who is still getting his pistol out.

Some brands are like that: by the time they figure out the implications of the signs they’ve been seeing, they are dead.

Remember the iconic camera-film company that invented the digital camera? It was so blinded by its money-spinner film business that it couldn’t see the future of digital photography. It did, however, see bankruptcy.

Recall that multi-billion-dollar video-rental company that annoyed customers with its exorbitant late-return fees? It dismissed online movie streaming as a niche business and declined a merger with a smaller company which is now the world leader in online movie streaming. That video-rental company? Kaput.

Recollect how the c.e.o. of the world’s No. 1 maker of software for personal computer operating systems and office productivity, laughed at the introduction of the smartphone, wondering why people would pay hundreds of dollars for a phone whose battery charge didn’t last for even a day and, worse, didn’t have a physical keyboard? Trying to catch-up on the smartphone market later, the company lost US$ 8 billion on a failed acquisition of a mobile phone company. In an interview with a venture capital company in June 2019, the co-founder and first c.e.o. of that software maker said that the company forfeited US$ 400 billion in revenues by missing out on the smartphone market.

And there you have the follies of brands. Some can’t see the danger. Some can’t understand the danger. Some can’t act about the danger.

For all these brands, the warning signs—from contextual changes to unhappy customers to nascent technological innovation—were evident for a while. Lacking perceptual acuity, their instinctive response was to deny, dismiss, delay. There really was no need for them to end up like a deer staring at the headlights of an oncoming car.

This Strategygram titled ‘Deer in the Headlights’ is part of the series I’ve created. Each Strategygram condenses one strategic thought into one image.

The series is a visual guide to strategic thinking and provides handy image prompts for brand strategy workouts. ?

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