Where is your competition?

This is my first post on Rodinhood!!!!

Being a marketing professional by qualification, lecturer & student of marketing, I thought what is marketing about?? What drives the brands spend crores a year to stay alive… Yes I say alive coz brands die too….

Thats a diff topic… Here I am penning down my thoughts on competition and what can it do for your brand…

An interesting thought while I was thinking about Ambush Marketing… How good is this competition for your brand?

Sitting quietly for a while I was wondering if I would not be so brand conscious had these brands  positioned themselves to fit in my mind??

The answer was around me when I once went to shop for my pair of Jeans & I saw a senior citizen telling his daughter-in-law why was she so adamant over white shirt of a particular brand which he was not able to recollect. A white shirt for him was a white shirt. Branded or un-branded.

He was never targeted by the brands as a fitment for a white shirt.

Hence; you see the difference. A witness to ambush marketing makes him try some or the other product. In the absence of competitive brands, a consumer will buy only when there is a need.

On the other hand, in an environment where there are brands attacking each other aggressively (best example is of cola wars) thumbsup positioned  itself as a drink which separates Men from Boys (Pepsi). Here a consumer exposed to the campaign would definitely fall to prove himself among the men… But the point is that a person who never drank colas would also fall for it. Just to prove his point…

SO IS COMPETITION GOOD?

Competition is good for your brand. It creates the mind space needed for your brand as well. May be not top of the mind (that totally depends on how well have you marketed yourselves). Premium pens market was not that lucrative few years back. The Cross and the Sheaffer existed; its just that people started being exposed to more people using these premium brands made more people think of buying these pens making the category grow. Competition is good for your category and eventually your brand else it would be just like govt entities (MTNL/BSNL), they just exist coz for them competition is non existent (or can say they dont have any target audience)

Competition attracts the mind of the consumer for a particular category. It creates the curiosity to research, discuss and finally buy a particular category product by a customer. 

 In a  2 brand market, you will obviously advertise lesser than when being in a 5 brand highly competitive market. The need to be in the minds of the consumer is initiated due to consumer inquisitiveness. More involvement in the category will make more customers come in the market, research, search and hence more scope for your brand to score positively.

NEXT LEVEL OF COMPETITION

What could be the next level of competition? Assume, your brand is already no. 1? What will make you survive and sustain the market share?

When I am talking of market share, I am talking of revenue & sales both..

There are various factors that re-shuffle the spots in all ranks. Brands need to be innovative in designing their marketing plans and product mix.

Smarter brand managers dont let their brands die their death. Hence they plan to have brand extensions and have product width and depth so that the competition doesn’t find any space to react.

Gillette is a classic example. From double edge to Mach 3 to now Fusion. The brand has always upgraded their selves so no competition can come close to them. And they succeeded in a big way.

They always have something their up-sleeve to surprise their competition.

They kill their own product, as they see competition in their own product, not in the literal sense but as a threat from competition eating their market. Just as they start to feel the threat from competition for their existing brand A, they cannibalize brand A with brand B, that would mean they are actually making their own product look obsolete and make competition look obsolete.

Hence I would not hesitate saying that the ideal condition for your brand in competitive scenario is to be competition to your own brand and make your competition look redundant.

Please feel free to comment and share your feedback.

-Kapil Bhatia.