Drawing on his own wide practitioner and academic experience, Tim Calkins reflects on why defence of brands seems to get less coverage in the literature than attacks on brands. He shows us that most large and successful businesses do in fact allocate a lot of time and resources to defending their products, brands and markets. In Defending Your Brand, Tim Calkins talks us through this. The gloves come off pretty soon, and it gets dirty. Dirty to the extent that a final chapter is included warning of the danger of using some of Calkins’s ideas. Any book that suggests that all managers should not admit to having read it (“Just don’t let anybody see you reading it”, p. 265) will clearly include material that sails very close to the borders between what is ethical, or not, and what is legal, or not!
Chapter 2 sets the scene that features incumbents and new entrants in a variety of markets. The key point here is that would-be new entrants appear to have a lot to gain by entering new markets or introducing new products to existing markets. If they are small, they may be ignored by organisations that currently hold the ground they plan to take. But once they gain a foothold, they are often taking on a larger, well-established competitor. When the fight really starts it is likely that the person being attacked has a lot to lose and more resources for, and more interest in, beating off an intruder.
The financial challenge is discussed in Chapter 3. Stakes are high, the economics simple: an attack by a new brand usually requires a significant investment, and that assumes a high probability of returns to more than compensate for the costs. In most cases, gains made will be competitive gains, and it is important for a defending organisation to know how far a newcomer may go before poor results discourage them and they decide to call off the attack! Anything that can blunt the effect of an attacker’s activity may help a defender to beat off the newcomer.
It makes sense, first off, to know as much as you can about the attacker. Thoughts on this are contained in Chapter 4. A small business person should read this, as well as people in large corporates, even though the author appears to be talking to larger players, based on frequent mentions of billion-dollar sales, multi-million dollar advertising budgets, in-house research departments and legal teams. A reader might think that “the big players” already know some of the tricks that Calkins suggests. Maybe they do not! The key point of Chapter 4 is that defenders should get to know as much as they can about competitors: what drives them as well as what their strengths and weaknesses are. A defender should know when an attacker will run out of gas.
Chapter 5 discusses how competitive intelligence can be obtained. Read company reports; talk to suppliers (but how do you know whether your suppliers are talking to other people too?) and distributors, staff at trade shows; and converse with industry analysts and with current and former employees. It can get to be very sneaky and even illegal in some situations. Calkins suggests that you check with your legal advisors and, above all, use common sense. “If you’re uncomfortable with a particular approach, you probably shouldn’t pursue it even if it is technically legal” (p. 77).
Should you always defend? This is the key question covered in Chapter 6, where the cases for defending or not defending are discussed. In particular, there is discussion about the motivation of managers in any conflict. A rigorous defence may dent this year’s profits, but preserve them for the future. But what happens if the CEO has a substantial bonus hanging on current year results?
Chapters 7, 8 and 9 deal with measures that might be taken to plan a defence, limiting damage to the existing business and using a wide variety of resources, mainly human, to pre-empt any attack. A new entrant could be discouraged from even entering if they are made aware that they will have a serious fight on their hands. Block channels with your own existing or new products. “If an established player can dominate a channel, there is little chance that a new player will succeed. Simply put, no distribution means no sales and no company” (p. 172).
A new entrant needs to gain awareness amongst its target audience and be able to develop trial by those people. Chapter 10 suggests ways of limiting awareness. Outspending the newcomer in terms of media coverage may do this as might pre-empting particular media. Legal blocking methods might make the new entrant’s entry more difficult. A number of other sneaky, but legal, suggestions are put forward. If you can kill trial, the news gets back to the attacker’s head office very quickly. Sales miss targets, inventory rises, advertising-to-sales ratios rocket, production economies are lost and the attack looks like an expensive failure in the making.
Chapter 12 is, in fact, a contingency plan of action in case a new entrant gets a foothold in the market. Stopping, or holding up, a competitor’s product rollout through legal action may be a good tactic, but it can be expensive for both sides. After spending >$1 million on legal fees, one new entrant to a snack-food market is quoted as having said “This fight is about a big company that wants to dominate the snack food category by crushing a little company like ours rather than by competing with us” (p. 217).
The need to be forever defending, as well as attacking, is highlighted in Chapters 13 and 14. In many cases, an established player may see a new product from a competitor as likely to fail, and the existing strategy for the organisation needs to be changed very little. Lessons about defence need to be taken to heart by organisations. Whatever might be tempting to try will also be available to competitors. How secure is information within your business? Is it as watertight as Apple’s is? (p. 243). If your people see a danger on the horizon, how quickly can you respond to it?
Finally, this book then appears to change sides and offers advice to an attacker, such as if you are going to attack a giant corporation, take on only a small part of it. Find a niche which may have been missed by the big player. Market focus is the key; “The basic concept is fairly simple: Customers have needs, and competitors fight to best meet those needs” (p. 248). Calkins does add, however, that “Customers usually have no idea what they actually would like in terms of products or services”, so there will always be opportunities for new products or new approaches to old ones.
This is a book that is worth reading. Experienced senior managers should already know about what the book is telling us but: how can we explain the many failures in marketing defence that the book highlights? Some deeper understanding of what makes for defensive failure or success is essential to all managers and not just those in large businesses.
