What Marketing warfare strategy is right for your brand?

When I wrote my article for last week titled – “Marketing & Politics – Lessons we can learn from the US presidential Elections”, little did I know that I will be writing a sequel to the topic. This has become necessary due to the unexpected turn out of events with all projections going wrong; little wonder why the entire world is still in a state of shock and disbelief.

I will like to channel this discourse to the strategy adopted by the Republican candidate and lessons we can pick up from a marketing perspective. Marketing is a warfare and those that recognise it as such can channel their strategy appropriately. “Marketing warfare is a mental exercise with the battleground being the human mind; and the artillery is nothing but words, pictures, sounds”. (Marketing Warfare – Al Ries & Jack Trout)

To win the battle of the mind, you need to take away the position of the leader and substitute with your own. In a case where you have a clear leader, or in this case a favourite, the only position that is wise to adopt is the challenger mindset which necessitates an offensive warfare strategy.

•   Attacking the weakness in the strength of the leader: As a number two, you are not trying to compete against the leader in areas where the leader is strong. In the case of the Democratic party candidate, a clear strength is the 30 years of experience in public service and being a part of the established system. The weakness of these strengths was the core focus of the attack of the Republican candidate. According to Al Ries & Jack Trout, ‘good offensive ideas are difficult to sell because they are negative in nature. They go against the ´positive thinking´ grain of most people´. I’m sure you will agree that we saw quite a lot of this. You therefore need to be bold to be able to adopt an offensive approach to competition.

•   Increase your market share vs deplete the share of competition: A standard objective of any brand is to grow market share. Brands execute many initiatives to grow their share. In most cases, it is more difficult for a market leader to grow share vs a challenger brand adopting an offensive warfare approach. For such a challenger, the objective will be reversed – the focus will be to eat into the share of the leader. A major tactic that could be deployed is to attack the support base of the leader; remember marketing warfare focusses on the mind as the battleground. It involves attacking the brand amongst its core base and get them to switch allegiance – is it not surprising that women who were thought to be the support base of the democratic candidate voted massively against her?

•   The place of research vs gut feeling:  – Market research is one tool that determines how companies market their brands. New product and pack launches, advertising campaigns etc. rely on consumer data and major initiatives will not be approved by senior management if they are not backed up by data. So how come data and polls failed in this instance? This occurrence does not in any way invalidate the place of research or data in marketing, however in my view the singular lesson to be learnt is that there is a place for gut feel. Gut feel is that innermost thought or intuition about an idea or concept that you may not be able to validate by data; one which a lot of people are careful to adopt just for fear of things not working to plan. Going by the campaign crowd of the republican could we have guessed this outcome was a possibility?

The core message here is that brands need to understand their positioning and adopt strategies that appropriately fits their market positioning. There may not be a good or bad strategy, what is important is to know what strategy is right for your brand. Are you a leader or challenger? Should you defend or attack?

Bolajoko Bayo-Ajayi