Tom Fishburne: Marketoonist

poking the bear

“Poking the Bear” belongs on a marketing lingo bingo card alongside “Low Hanging Fruit” and “Share of Voice”. It’s one of my favorite marketing buzz phrases because it’s so vivid. “Poking the Bear” means going up against a competitive giant knowing the potential response will be massive. 

Schwans innovation guy Marc Coudeyre, who I knew at General Mills years ago, suggested “Poking the Bear” could make a good cartoon. He said that companies often cautiously “Yell at the Bear” through soft launches, etc. before they actually work up the courage to poke it. 

The most common action that I’ve seen is that organizations are afraid to confront the bear at all, particularly if the bear is a powerful market leader. The phrase “Poking the Bear” is often used as a watchword on what to avoid. If you’re the little guy, the Bear can be pretty intimidating when it throws its weight around. 

Many of these companies take the “roll over and play dead” approach, the equivalent of staying under the radar. But this strategy is actually more dangerous. The big competitors hunt indiscriminately and playing it safe actually makes you an easier target. 

As the challenger brand, the only way to win is to catch the incumbent off-guard, using your natural advantages of speed and creativity to keep the Bear on its toes. 

And the best way to poke the bear is by aiming at the funny bone. Recently Clorox swatted tiny rival method with a cease-and-desist letter for using a daisy image method had been using since 2003 and Clorox started using in 2008. The threat of litigation can be frightening for small companies, and many opt to “roll over and play dead”. Method decided instead to poke the bear back. 

They used humor to turn the cease-and-desist letter into a very public campaign called Vote Daisy. 

As howies founder David Hieatt said after getting sued by Levis, “you can’t slay a giant but you can help him get his sense of humor back.”

this little piggy

As Jerry Garcia once said, "You do not merely want to be considered the best of the best. You want to be the only ones who do what you do." That quote was part of Rule #24 in Alan Webber's inspiring Rules of Thumb book, and partly inspired this cartoon (except I played with toes, not thumbs). 

The vast majority of innovations launched each year are "me too's". It's very tempting to drive by the rear view mirror, with your eyes on the competition rather than on the consumer. I blogged a few months ago that companies can be classified either as Rule Makers, Rule Followers, or Rule Breakers. Most companies duke it out amongst themselves as Followers, trying to gain share against the market leader by playing the rules of the market leader. 

When I worked at Nestle ice cream, we acted as Rule Maker in launching a new "Slow Churned" technology that dramatically improved the taste of low fat ice cream. Unilever followed quickly with "Double Churned", based on the same technology. Because Unilever didn't have the same R&D investment, the Unilever launch was more efficient, even though they weren't first. Both strategies have their pros and cons. 

However, the worst position is to be a timid number three or four. Yet many companies jump on the bandwagon of a new idea only when the presense of competition has endorsed the idea. The thinking is that is must be a good idea because everyone else is doing it. 

A few companies like Unilever excel at fast following (they call it "stealing with pride"), but most companies that consider themselves fast followers are actually slow and timid followers. 

The real opportunity is to be the Rule Breaker and change the game entirely. Skinny Cow took the challenger brand approach, launching tasty lowfat ice cream sandwiches that attracted a cult following. Skinny Cow fanatics identified themselves, not with the lowfat ice cream category, but with Skinny Cow. Skinny Cow generated so much value that Nestle ultimately paid a premium to acquire them. Rule makers recognize the value that rule breakers create. The slow followers rarely create value at all. 

Instead of obsessing about market share, think market creation. Become "the only ones who do what you do".

breaking the rules of traditional retail

Traditional retail can be brutal for a new brand.  I gave a 30 min talk a few months ago about launching the method brand in the UK and how Ocado as an entrepreneurial web retailer helps support challenger brands by questioning the status quo.  

Breaking the Rules of Traditional Retail from Tom Fishburne on Vimeo.

goliath envy

I gave a talk last week on challenger brand thinking, so I've had David and Goliath on my mind. I talked about the importance of changing the game when you're the little guy so that you're not playing by the rules of Goliath. Changing the game can level the playing field.

Last month, I read a fascinating article from Malcolm Gladwell on "How David Beats Goliath". Malcolm researched classic David versus Goliath match-ups in history and confirmed statistically that David triumphs over Goliath much more frequently when they change the game.

"In the Biblical story of David and Goliath, David initially put on a coat of mail and a brass helmet and girded himself with a sword: he prepared to wage a conventional battle of swords against Goliath. But then he stopped. “I cannot walk in these, for I am unused to it,” he said, and picked up those five smooth stones. When underdogs choose not to play by Goliath’s rules, they win, 'even when everything we think we know about power says they shouldn’t.'"

It reminded me of something that Eric always says at method: "you can't out-Clorox Clorox." This is essential in remaining a challenger brand. Method can't start to follow the same playbook as big brands or it loses exactly what put method on the map in the first place.

In "Eating the Big Fish", Adam Morgan calls this challenger brand archetype the "Scrappy David". But, as Scrappy David starts to grow up, there is pressure to start playing more conventional rules. Scrappy behavior can be inefficient and messy after all. It is certainly important to become more professional. But it is also important not to confuse growing up with imitating Goliath. It is important not to give up the slingshot and pick up the sword, even as you become more professional in your attack. From Malcolm's article:

"When an underdog fought like David, he usually won. But most of the time underdogs didn’t fight like David. Of the two hundred and two lopsided conflicts in Arreguín-Toft’s database, the underdog chose to go toe to toe with Goliath the conventional way a hundred and fifty-two times—and lost a hundred and nineteen times ... when the world has to play on Goliath’s terms, Goliath wins."

I think this "Goliath Envy" creates a real tension for small challenger brands that are maturing. Adam Morgan argues that challenger brands frequently evolve from the Scrappy David to eleven other challenger brand archetypes: The People's Champion (Virgin Atlantic), the Real and Human Challenger (Ben & Jerry's), the Missionary (JetBlue), etc. Adam actually puts method in The Visionary camp (not the Scrappy David), because it "sets out higher vision that transcends category nature."

These challenger brand archetypes offer guideposts on how to evolve your brand over time. But the key, I think, is not to evolve into Goliath itself (even if you are Goliath). I actually think that any brand (large or small) has the capability to think of itself as a challenger brand and find ways to break the conventional rules of doing things (finding your inner David). There is opportunity for any brand to change the rules.

But, when you're an underdog, it's absolutely essential.

brand drought

   

December is often a time of year when things quiet down for marketers (except for the spike in agency parties).  But this year it feels dominated by a whole lot of scenario brainstorming and re-planning.  The common theme is how to do "more with less". 

I started kicking around cartoon ideas around "more with less" and the metaphor of a drought came to mind.  While some brands with deep pockets will use this time to maintain spending and grow faster than less-funded competitors, most brands are facing budget cuts like they've never seen before.

In a drought, it's a good time to re-evaluate entirely what you're doing.  The answer isn't to just use less water on the same old thing, it's to try things that don't take a lot of water.

David Taylor and David Nichols published some handy tips on recession-proof branding recently.  Also, Adam Morgan just re-released his classic book, Eating the Big Fish, which shows there's a lot you can learn from challenger brands in a recession.

the process pendulum

I once worked in an Internet startup that grew from 25 employees to 2,500 in 3 years.  Much of that was through acquisition -- basically 30 startups rolled up into one.  The resulting patchwork company then went public (and filed for Chapter 11 about a year after that).  Kind of a crazy rollercoaster.

Anyway, the midst of it all, I first started thinking about "the process pendulum".  Our process swung erratically from non-existant to command-and-control.  We were scrappy and entrepreneurial in year one, and then we added layer after layer of bureaucracy to restrain the chaos of so much growth. 

We wanted to upgrade our project management, so we hired this guy to run our project management group who had only project-managed large-scale, 5-year construction projects for the military.  It was such a bad cultural fit, it was kind of funny.  We literally had to print off emails we wanted to send him, walk them to his desk, and stamp them with a timestamp he kept there before he would read them.  At an internet company no less.  I swear I'm not making this up.

Since then, every company I've been involved in has been somewhere on this swinging pendulum.   It's really tricky, because in the search for the right balance of process that's not too restrictive, I've found that the pendulum invariably swings too far, and then has to be brought back.

I've always liked that Steve Jobs' quote, "it's more fun to be a pirate than to join the navy".  But what do you do when the pirate ship grows to the size and complexity of a navy ship?  How do you keep small even as you grow big?