These days defence is becoming part of every brand’s
strategy. Each year it seems more and
more people are coming out of MBA schools drilled (brainwashed?) into a mantra
of looking for industries ‘ripe for disruption’ and trying to shake things
up. Established brands are also looking
more closely at what their competitors are doing, and whether they can move
into that too.
In this context Tim Calkins’ new book Defending Your Brand, How
Smart Companies use Defensive Strategy to Deal with Competitive Attacks, is
very useful. Set out over 15 chapters it
provides a comprehensive guide to how to defend brand, from recognising a
threat and compiling competitive intelligence to the legal aspects. Calkins is very well placed to write about
this as a professor at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management;
he clearly knows the subject inside out.
Given the title of this blog, I really enjoyed the number of
real world examples that featured. In
the chapter on Blocking Distribution we’re told that Coca Cola and other big
manufacturers are able to stop other entrants very effectively because they
control something like 80% of the bottling capacity.
In the chapter on Preventing The Launch, we get the example
of Nike defending against Under Armour by launching their own Nike Pro
Baselayer, damaging their competitor’s chances of launching in Europe; in the
chapter on Limiting Awareness we get the story of Russian retailer Eldorado
limiting a competitor’s launch by buying up all the outdoor space near to the
new stores.
I really enjoyed this book, and while it isn’t a day-to-day
concern for me it taught me a lot. It’s
a must for every serious business & marketing library. My only complaint would be the lack of an
index, but since I had an uncorrected proof this may now have been rectified.
