Success As A #2 Brand
March 19, 2009 – 9:55 pm| I attended a PSAMA meeting last year where H&R Block “Tax Cut” software division VP talked about their success as a “Challenger Brand” and I really enjoyed the presentation which offered valuable insight. I had made these notes but never published a blog posting so here is is now:
The main take away for me was the idea of risk and innovation and how it relates to the category leader versus challenger brands.When you are the leader you have to worry about risk. Will you lose sales? Will you harm your relationship with customers? Will you risk being sued? For the leader it is all about ‘protecting’ what you have. But when you are the challenger brand you can take more risks, be more innovative, try new things, throw caution to the wind and this is what you absolutely must use to your advantage.Challenger brands, the #2 or #3 or “new kid on the block” brands need to be quicker and more nimble with respect to listening to customer feedback and coming up with bigger, faster, smarter or better ways of doing something that satisfies customers’ needs. And that is exactly how new ideas are born, new products are created and new companies are formed. Leading companies are handicapped from the start when it comes to launching new things but with it is possible, if you have the right people leading the effort and you don’t spend too much time trying to get legal approval. A great book to read on this topic: Eating the Big Fish: How Challenger Brands Can Compete Against Brand Leaders (Adweek Book S.) by Adam Morgan (Hardcover - Jan 13, 1999) available on Amazon.com Thanks for listening! |
