Competition Concept
I watched some football today and enjoyed it. Football is great because almost everything that happens on the field is in response to how the other team is playing the game. Those that know and outplay their competitor will win.
When I first try to convince others of a certain marketing strategy, I begin with the “competition concept.” Now, if you have ever taken a marketing class before, or if you browse the internet reading posts related to marketing, you’ll find that 99% of everything said has to do with what’s called the “marketing concept,” or in other words, all marketing activity centers on the consumer. I have plans to post sometime my feelings on the consumer, but here I’ll diverge a little from that path.
I don’t blame anyone from really believing that the consumer is most important. It’s the consumer that finances all business activity. Every luxury is provided thanks to the consumer’s willingness to buy something somewhere. In reality, the consumer really is most important. But the competition concept still rules and takes precedence over marketing to your consumer alone.
Here’s where football and the competition concept meet. I first read this analogy in the book “Marketing Warfare” by Al Ries and Jack Trout. In a football game, both teams are strategically trying to move the ball past the goal line. Simple idea, right? If we were playing football like we play the marketing concept, or the consumer concept, then all we’d do at practice is improve more and more our ability to simply move the ball past the goal line. We’d practice throwing the ball better, blocking better, pure fundamentals until we were satisfied that we could effectively move the ball into the endzone.
But nobody in college or NFL games ever focuses totally on that. No, there really is another team that stands in between you and effectively getting the ball where you want it to be. And most of what you do on the football field is reacting strategically to what that other team is throwing at you.
In a marketing situation, sometimes, there are more like 10 or 20 teams on that same field trying to stop you. Why would we focus entirely on just the consumer? Marketing students every semester hear their professors “define” marketing as all activites designed to “satisfy customer needs and wants.” That’s baloney. It’s all about the competition. The competition concept is supreme.
Now that I’ve put out there my angst for everyone’s obsession with the consumer, I’ll wrap this up with my part 2 of the competition concept.
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