Writing (love) letters to competitors!

There has been a long history of brands writing letters to their competitors and releasing them as advertisements for everyone to see but this is certainly a less practiced art in marketing!

It looks so counter-intuitive that a brand would come and talk to a rival company in public and by the means of letters. Just like reading someone else's letters is interesting, it is interesting to see what rivals write to each other.

Lets look at some instances:

Apple's letter to IBM (1980)

In 1980, Apple was doing well in the personal computer business. This market was growing and attracted the attention of competitors including the Big Blue (for the less initiated - its IBM) which was then a leader in the mainframe business. In 1981, IBM announced that they will enter the PC market.

In today's terms, it is like you running a growing business and Coke decides to enter that category. Chances are, you would be scared to death! But chances are you are not Steve Jobs too! It is said that Steve Jobs wasnt as worried because he believed that the product that IBM was launching wasnt good enough!

So, how did Apple react? Yes, you got a clue from the title of this article, they wrote a letter!

This letter (read: ad) appeared in the Wall Street Journal. It positioned Apple as a true rebel which the brand continues to be. In fact, the 1984 ad "Think Different" was just another case in point. This ad also subtly mentions that Apple is the original inventor of the PC. You (too) might have missed the line - "When we invented the first personal computer system"! Read again to find it!

Guess's letter to Apple (2014)

In 2014, the President and CEO of Guess Watches wrote to Tim Cook (of Apple) welcoming the company into the watch industry.

The letter again looked like Guess is all appreciative of Apple's entry into their industry (and not feeling any fear or threat!). Here also the 'letter' tries to (reinforce the) positioning of Guess as - "one of the largest fashion watch brands which has been around for more than 30 years" - and - that Guess is looking forward to this challenge for staying relevant.

Slack's letter to Microsoft (2016)

Today as all of us are rushing to learn and use Skype, Zoom, Canvas and Teams for running whatever we can during the times of lock-down, many of us do not know that Slack was the original work-place communication company and was a platform of choice when it came to having a chat room for the whole company. It allows you to communicate through channels and private messages etc. Slack officially started in 2014 and rose very quickly. By 2015, it boasted of around 500,000 daily active users.

At one point of time Microsoft was about to bid for Slack's ownership but later decided to develop an inhouse application. The result was Microsoft Teams.

On November 2, 2016, when Microsoft was preparing for the event to announce / launch Teams, there came a (love) letter in the New York Times.

There were certain things which were different here! First, Slack agreed that "its a scary feeling". Second, they even offered some friendly advice to Microsoft about product features and open platforms etc. Finally, Slack went as far as telling Microsoft that "playing nice with others is not exactly your MO"(seriously)!!!! [for the uninitiated: MO = Modus Operandi]

What was same was positioning own brand as the "original creator" as Slack told Microsoft - "as you set out to build something like that (Slack)".

Guess the results!

As these brands played creative to show themselves in good light, use this creative tactic to reinforce their brands strengths and underplay the competitors, what actually happened to these brands was interesting - All the 3 writers of these letters, LOST in the battle:

• Apple lost the PC market to IBM (although thats for limited period)
• Guess lost to Apple in the watch market
• Slack lost to Microsoft in the workplace communication application market

Disclaimer - The result of the battle was ofcourse not an outcome of these letters! There are a thousand things that would have decided who won and who lost. However, its an interesting co-incidence that all those who wrote letters, lost :)