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Shape Your Opponent's Strategy |
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Move swiftly to disrupt your opponent and place him at the disadvantage. |
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Seventy-five percent of men between ages 18 and 45 own at least one pair of Dockers. Campbell's owns 75 percent of the condensed soup business. A company called Play-by-Play dominates the $190 million carnival-prize market with a 50 percent share.
2 These giants determine the marketing situation in their industries. They own the market, and their opponents must shape their attack around the strategies of these giants because the gorilla sleeps anywhere he wants. |
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Whether or not you can shape your opponent's strategy in business situations is a function of your relative strength. Although this relative strength is most often seen in old gorillas, new entrants who move rapidly can become powerful gorillas. Witness the rapid rise of Amazon.com in Web marketing, TCBY in yogurt, and Staples in office products. |
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Pepsi was big enough to be a threat to Coke when Pepsi launched its blind taste test campaign to prove that more people preferred the flavor of Pepsi. Coke responded by launching a new formula and renaming the original product Coke Classic. However, the market responded negatively to the new Coke, and Pepsi's attempt to reshape Coke's strategy had only a temporary effect. |
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You can force your opponent to react when you rapidly accumulate a critical mass of power. Napoleon said, ''Force must be concentrated at one point and as soon as the breach is made, the equilibrium is broken." |
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That was the strategy of ConAgra's Healthy Choice attack against Weight Watchers, Lean Cuisine, and other low calorie foods. Healthy Choice reshaped the market by offering tasty foods that were low fat, low cholesterol, and low sodiuma combination that was difficult to match as Healthy Choice soared toward a $2 billion annual volume. |
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In every competitive endeavor, a concentration of energy must be achieved to attain the breakthrough. The winning manager must give priority to those items that are the most critical to success. The ultimate judge of whether you win is the customer. His or her decision to buy is the critical vote. If he or she doesn't vote with a favorable decision, nothing else matters. |
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