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Marketing as a soft martial art.

redbelt 0 Marketing as a soft martial art.

I finally watched Red Belt yesterday on Netflix and thoroughly enjoyed it, Mamet is a genius. If you haven’t seen it, the film is really a Greek Tragedy set in the modern world where the hero is a Jujitsu instructor. I won’t spoil it for those who haven’t watched it, but the instructor – Terry – says, “There’s always an escape. There is no situation you can’t escape from.” His point is, no matter how dire, you can always find a way to reverse the strong position of your enemy and gain the upper hand.

I couldn’t help thinking that this is also one of the tenets of new marketing. Where classic marketing is a discipline of force and strength, new marketing is a discipline of strategy and position. In new marketing, you don’t attack head on, you look to use the opponents strength(s) against them, you look to find a position where your opponent is off balance and you can gain the upper hand.

I think this is one of the reasons that Positioning (as defined by Ries and Trout) is no longer as effective as it was. In defining a positioning, you are essentially locking yourself into a fixed point. This is always going to make you vulnerable to competitors who are flexible enough to change their position and throw you off balance.

There is always an excape, there is no position you can’t escape from, unless you have defined your brand so precisely around a fixed position that movement becomes impossible.

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This entry was posted on Sunday, April 5th, 2009 at 11:28 am and is filed under marketing, strategy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

  • Mission, Positioning and Vision are constantly used interchangeably. I think this helps clarify the issue: Stop thinking about Positioning and start thinking about Mission because your position can/will change (you'll want it to) in order to be true to your mission.

    I'm definitely putting Red Belt on the cue after this post + the first user comment on imdb - "The movie would have been perfect if El Guapo was in it."
  • Hi Helge,

    Thanks for the compliment, means a lot coming from you. I strive for slideshows as good as yours!

    I actually think we're talking about the same thing. In the classic mode of brand positioning, you are advised to take a static position and to simultaneously claim that position, by broadcasting it through every channel at your disposal, and defend that position by attacking anyone who tries to grab it. What you and John (and many others) are talking about is the need for brands to have energy, to remain in motion. I absolutely see this as new marketing thinking.

    To continue the metaphor, if your brand is always in motion, it becomes much harder for a competitor to pin it into a corner. It is much easier for a brand in motion to escape any positioning traps set for it by competition than it is for a brand that is fixed to a point.

    I also think that the terminology of positioning confuses the issue. When I think of positioning I think of classic brand benefit or promise. e.g. the best...

    New positioning is built around a mission - typically an internal one ( http://www.zeusjones.com/blog/2009/culture-the-... ) But I wouldn't call this a positioning I'd cal it a brand mission, purpose or something like that. These aren't things you change, or escape, but temporary positionings or claims are.
  • Hi Adrian
    Valuable thoughts, I'd like to try to see if I could fit these ideas into to what we are talking about at the moment, and would love to hear your thoughts on that.

    New Marketing is different, and some of your previous slideshows have been the greatest resources when it comes to understanding this. But in my mind New Marketing isn't about finding a position that is easily escapeable. It's about DIRECTION. Showing the participants that we are moving or going somewhere they want to go as well.

    John Gerzema enforces the importance of this in his discussions on "The Brand Bubble": http://vimeo.com/2700586

    When you're writing about a position where the opponent is off balance, we talk about connecting with participants INSIDE the experiences where the products are used (through utilities or services - creating deliberate value) or brand is meaningful. As the experience is the most important context to be in control of.

    As an example:
    For Nike adding deliberate value to the running experience through Nike Plus is a lot more important and significant than owning a billboard on Times Square.

    And if Nike were saying that this is not what we are, it's the direction we are going: Continuing to create the best running experiences - whatever they might be. It would be the perfect classroom example of what New Marketing should try to represent.

    Would that align our worlds, or are we looking at the same thing from two different directions?

    I’d love to hear your thoughts. :o)

    Best Regards
    Helge
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