Where do we want our competitors to win?

This may sound like a crazy question.

Surely no one wants their competitors to win.

But I’m beginning to think this might be a big problem with any business in defining their strategy.

They want to win at everything.

The idea of losing isn’t something they want to consider.

Therefore we spend all of our time thinking about how we can win.

And often this bears little relevance of where can win.

When we do war gaming we think of how to stop or counter each and every potential action.

The great military generals (and spy masters) were often willing to lose battles (and sacrifice people) to win the war.

How many brand owners think about losing and sacrificing for the greater long term good?

So let’s flip the discussion for 30 mins and ask ourselves;

Where do we want our competitors to win?

Here’s an example.

If you were Tim Cook at Apple would you feel comfortable saying you want your competitors to win in being the most affordable smart phone on the market.? You would also want them to win on having the most open software system on the market, allowing for any and every integration.

Or if you were Galcèau Smart water you might want your competitor to win in being the most naturally sourced mineral water on the planet.

Or if you were Fiat would you want your competitor to win at being the most sleek high-tech car brand.

In the cases above there is a clear counter point of where the brands then want to win.

Apple doesn’t want to be the most affordable or most accessible, it wants to be the best and that means high quality, high priced, and a closed system.

Smart Water doesn’t want to be the most natural, it wants to be the most advanced bottled water.

And Fiat doesn’t want to be the most sleek and high-tech car brand, it wants to be the most colourful one that’s full of personality and actually fun to drive.

The problem is when we want to win at everything we lose sight of our points of differentiation.

In the UK if you ask most consumers about Waitrose they will say it is a ‘posh’ supermarket.? This means great quality food, unusual and interesting dishes for sophisticated palettes, good service, and probably ‘quite expensive’.

In this new world of wanting their competition to win at something they will want Aldi and Lidl to win at being the cheapest.

In fact they should also want Tesco, Sainsbury’s, Morrisons, and Asda to try and win at being the cheapest as well.? Because that will drive their respective strategies of cutting corners on quality and service. Of reducing innovation and experimentation.? It will become a battle of who does the basics best and cheapest.

But Waitrose shouldn’t be about that. Why? Because it can’t compete there. It isn’t in their DNA.? They need to understand ‘where they can play’ and ‘where they can win’.

The easiest way to do this is to start out by saying where we can’t win. If we flip this to celebrate what others do, rather than denigrate it - like being the most accessible, the cheapest, the most high-tech, it becomes a strategic review of evaluating possibilities than flagellating ourselves over our weaknesses.

That way we can celebrate our strengths and our own elements of relevant differentiation because they are recognisably different to our competitors by our consumers.

This isn’t new.? The great Michael Porter originally said “The essence of Strategy is deciding what not to do”. I’m just trying to look at it from a different perspective.

So, next time you are doing a strategy planning session, maybe ask yourself a question about the competition first… where do we want them to win. It may give you some freedom and focus.

#marketing #strategy