The best way to fight is….to run away!
Many a battle has been won fighting the enemy face to face. It works all the time in warfare. But it seldom does in the marketing world. More so when you are up against an enemy, who is more entrenched than you are, more experienced than you have been and with more arsenal than you could muster.
So, how do we fight such an enemy in the battlefield?
Simple; you just shift the battlefield. Move the ground to another plane; move in against the enemy’s weakness; pitch yourself in an arena which is least contested and, more importantly, launch an attack in that part of the marketplace that is least conceived; and least expected!
Emami realized taking on Fair & Lovely would leave them battered and bruised; not to talk of them ending up dark and diabolical too! And hence, they took the easier way out. They ran away from that battlefield; and shifted the battleground to men’s fairness. And launched Fair & Handsome.
Two things happened: It was a virgin territory that Emami literally created for itself. And two, HUL just couldn’t react. And even when they did, it was too late, too little and too stupid. Fair & Lovely Men’s Active, their reply, was feeble, frivolous and fantastically stupid that the brand’s advertising only heightened the guys’ need to use a male fairness cream – precisely the platform Fair & Handsome had taken earlier and owns now!
Too many brands get this wrong. They think the best way to take the bigger enemy is facing them ‘heads on’. No one wins by fighting harder. You win by fighting smarter. By running away from the competitor’s strength and moving him away from his area of strength.
The old clichéd question holds well all the time: How do you fight Vishwanathan Anand?
By playing a game other than chess!
The moral of the story: Next time you have to fight a big competitor, just run away…….and shift the battleground. And force your stronger competitor to lose his strength taking you on a new arena; a neutral territory. Where you are as strong.
Even Stevens!