marketing and the warfare metaphor

Marketing Strategic

options and tactics

Dr Andrew Hirst Room 9339 1

Session Guide

• Basic marketing strategy

• Introduction to War analogies

• Brief outline of Marketing Warfare

– Attack vs Defence

Focus on Guerrilla (not Gorilla)

Marketing Strategy

• Underlying principle

– STP

• Segmentation

• Targeting

• Positioning

– 4P's / 7P's

» Product

» Place

» Promotion

» Price

» People

» Physical Attributes

» Process

War Analogies

• Popularised in the '80s

– Popular coffee table reading

• The Art of War by Sun Tzu

• The Book of Five Rings by Miyamoto Musashi

• The Prince by Niccolò Machiavelli

• On War by Carl Von Clausewitz

Versions applied to business

– Rise and Trout's (1986) - Marketing Warfare

– Levinson's Guerrilla Marketing

– Other analogies include the Cola wars, price wars etc

– e.g Sainsbury vs Tesco 2013

Growth strategies often lead to

confrontation

At t a c ke r

Defender

Frontal Attack

Bypass Attack

Flanking Attack

Guerrilla Attack

Encirclement Attack

Attacking Strategies• Frontal Attack (All out attack on opponents territory)

– Costly, requires superior resources and firepower

– Success - El Alamein 1942 - Monty defeat the Desert Fox Rommel.

Out numbered them with tanks and guns

– Failure - Balaclava 1854 and Trench Warfare 1916, French at

Agincourt

Business cases:

2013 BT vs SKY

Change in TV viewing technology

Historic classic cases

1970/80's IBM vs Apple Personal computing

1970's Freddy Laker vs British Airways Atlantic Charter flights

Attacking Strategies

• Flanking (attack weak points)

– Focus on the weaknesses of the competitor

• regional or underserved segment

– Capture market share to gain a foothold

– Use creativity

– eg. Japanese motor industry vs US 1980's Honda Cub

• Encirclement (attack on all fronts)

– Middle ages castle sieges

– Cut off supply

• e.g Supply of customers Tesco v Sainsbury 1990's

• e.g. Samsung vs Sony 2013

Attacking strategies (cont)

• Bypass

– Military Strategy Maginot line

– Technology leapfrog

– e.g iphone vs Blackberry or Nokia

• Guerrilla

– French Resistance

– Unconventional Tactics often disruptive behaviour to develop a

buzz

– Eg. Flashmobs, Popup shops, PR stunts, viral campaigns

Guerrilla marketing

The enemy advances, we retreat

The enemy camps we harass

The enemy tires we attach

The enemy retreats, we pursueMao Tse-Tang

Principles of Guerrilla marketing

• Find a market small enough to defend

– e.g. 1980's Apple graphics design industry

• Never act like a brand leader

– e.g. 2000's Google "never be evil like Microsoft"

• Be prepared to run away

– being nimble and adaptable to change

Conventional goals with

unconventional tactics

• Low cost

• Time

• Energy - Richard Branson

• Information - e.g. Google

• Artic Monkey's - MySpace

Examples

• Imagination

• Yob Golf

• Pop-up shops

• Pop-up bars

Modern Guerrilla tactics?

• With your neighbours consider potential

electronic tactics.

– Twitter

– Blogs

– Facebook

– Email

– Websites

Defending an Attack

Attacker DefenderCounter/ Pre-emptive

Mobile

Flanking

Contraction

Defensive strategies

• Fortification

– Leningrad in WW2

– Customer Loyalty

– Brand awareness and differentiation

• e.g. microsoft 1990's virtually unopposed for 15 years until

web techs

Flanking Defence

Strengthen offer

Predicting competitor actions e.g Own Label contracts

Defensive strategies

• Sun Tzu "The supreme art of war is to subdue the

enemy without fighting"

• Pre-emptive defence

– Deter competitors from attacking

– Create entry barriers

• Discounting to make the market segment cheaper

Counter offensive

– overstretched competitors

e.g Marlboro on the US - slashed prices to offset growth in

cheaper brands

Defensive Strategies

• Mobile

– Incremental product development

– Rapid prototyping

• Beta versions e.g. Google and Mozilla

• Contraction

– Withdraw from untenable ground

– E.g M&S in the US, Sainsbury US, Tesco Japan and

US

Summary

• Warfare analogies help us understand tactics

available to marketeers

– The choice of option depends on resources and

capability

– large firms can use a range of tactics

– Start-ups and young organisation need to think clearly

about the choice, often guerrilla tactics are effective

– Guerrilla tactics require time, energy and creativity

Reading

• Rise and Trout's (1986) - Marketing Warfare

• Levinson's (2008) - A start up guide to Guerrilla

Marketing for 1st time marketers

• Website - Levinson's Guerrilla Marketing

• Hunt S and A Menon (1995) Metaphors and Competitive

Advantage: Evaluating the Use of Metaphors in Theories

of Competitive Strategy. Journal of Business Research

33, 81-90

• Rindfleish A.(1996) Marketing as warfare: reassessing a

dominant metaphor. Business Horizons Sept- October 3-

10.

• Kotler and Singh (1981). Marketing Warfare in the

1980's. Journal of Business strategy. Winter 30-41

Agincourt

Charge of the light brigade

...All in the valley of Death

Rode the six hundred.

'Forward the Light Brigade!

Charge for the guns!' he said:

Into the valley of Death

Rode the six hundred...