Know thy enemy – like Steve Jobs and Flymo
Know your enemy
One of the most useful tools in your marketing armoury is – your enemy. And I don’t just mean your competitors, that almost anonymous bunch of companies who might nick some of your customers every now and again. I mean your real enemy. Liken it to a Derby match and you’ll see how it can galvanise the troops and raise a passionate head of steam. People become more creative and work with greater zeal, the whole company develops a common sense of purpose.
This might seem a bit extreme, but just as I decided to write this blog I coincidentally read that Steve Jobs seems to have the same opinion.
I experienced this very effectively when I was Head of marketing at Flymo in the 80’s… we were at war with Qualcast. “War” was the term that the press used as the whole spat become very high profile, in fact probably the origination of TV “knocking ads”. The cause was simple. They had the bulk of the lawnmower market, we came along with the hover mower and they reacted by nearly putting us out of business. We reacted by determining to exact terrible revenge on them, which resulted in our effectively putting them out of business by the end of the 80’s.
I’m not saying that we let them distract us from our focus on the customer and their needs. But the passion to win created a spirit of innovation which I’ve never experienced before or since.
We avoided the temptation of making our own cylinder mowers (very tough to ignore 90% of a market, but worth it to defend a really unique proposition that hover mowers were quicker and easier, as our “Why slowmo when you can Flymo” campaigns demonstrated); we structured the company to provide rapid innovation in products, process and marketing, as if we were on a war footing (we were); and, you know what, we even analysed our opposition personalities until we believed that we could outguess their reaction to our own actions.
The outcome was that we ended the 80’s with around 50% of the lawnmower market and Qualcast went up for sale at a snip.
I read last week that Steve Jobs of Apple has also always followed the same mantra and never gives a presentation without referring the “enemy” (guess who), to provide a focus and reference for why Apple products are better (if you believe that).
So make sure that your company has a common enemy – be it a product, or a company, or (less easy to manage) even your circumstances such as the recession. Make sure they all know that they are fighting a common cause for their own benefit.