Learnings from the 'Art of War':
Strategy in business, primarily marketing is derived from military lexicon. Hence there is no better book to learn strategy from than “The Art of War” by Sun Tzu written 2500 years back. Yet its contents still hold true in military. Since marketing is a war of the mind, the strategies hold true in marketing as well. Thus this book should be made mandatory reading for all the marketing people. Following are the things that can be learned from the Art of war and applied in marketing strategies:
- Strategy and Planning: Strategy is derived from the Objectives of a company. Planning is required to implement the strategy. All three of these need to be done effectively. A gap in any of the three will be problematic. A study of the external environment which includes political, social, economical, technological and legal environment. Know yourself, know your competitor and know your customer, and you have won the battle of the market.
- Surprise: This is the most important element of the attack. Blitz Krieg (German) meaning ‘attack with lightening speed’. Catch the competitor napping. This will result in them taking knee-jerk reactions. It will compound their problems which are to your advantage. E.g. Sudden price changes (could be increase or decrease in price), technological break through or radical cost cutting through a BPR effort
- Innovation: The Best form of surprise is Innovation. Product innovation doesn’t give the competition time to react. It also gives you a first-mover advantage too.
- Sustainability: Attack with a preparation for a sustained assault. The competitor is expected to fight back. Thus be prepared for a long drawn battle. Test the patience of the competition. Eventually they will give up protecting their other strong areas. I.e. stronger and core areas of the product. Or even stop the fight to save money for R&D
- Flexibility: Keep a tab on your sales numbers, competitors’ sales numbers, and consumer behaviour. Accordingly change your tactics
- Confusion: Keep the competitor guessing on the parameter you are competing. Is it the product, or price or the distribution channel?
- Competitor behaviour: Predicting the type of reactions the competitor will do to your moves, as it happens in chess. This will keep you one step ahead of competition.
- Back-off: When you go for an all out assault, make sure that you back is safe. The enemy should not have a chance to encircle you from behind. This is also necessary in the eventuality that the competitor has gauged you properly and your assault is going to be thwarted. So rather than continuing, it’s better to back-off and live to fight another day. E.g. Take the product back from the market or reverse the decision with regards to price
One of the primary aspects that one should also remember is that moral law and ethics is not a hindrance but a tool that can be used to help win wars, by being on the right side of the law you ensure unstinting loyalty form your troops which is a necessity also it is necessary for one to understand that once moral law is lost infighting increases, by being on the wrong side you expose those exact cracks that the opposite side looks for to exploit and defeat you, Moral laws are moral laws to your organization and cause and also to society as a whole if either of the 2 are violated then it is likely that you may loose the war.
ReplyDeleteAlso one needs to study the doctrine of intelligence and counter intelligence with grate care so as to ensure that one is on the winning side of the war I.E you have to secure a proper source of information so as to ensure that you know exactly what the other side is doing, you also have to discover the counter spy's within your own organization so that you can use them to spread disinformation so that the other side will lose the war (This is the Primary reason why the allies won and Germany lost WW2)
In the Case of innovation one needs to be careful as to what is the innovation constant innovation in the war machine/ product will drive the country/ company bankrupt and towards collapse (Best eg USSR) rather what is suggested is to find new ways of doing things with the same products or making use of alliances and products of peace as products that will help war. the best Eg of this is how terrorists concistantly use devices of peace to commit acts of war against which even the most sophisticated army's of the world concistantly fall short. so it is not just development of a new product but rather the development of new markets for sales of the old product Eg. selling Royal enfild as a cult motorcycle,or development of new methods of marketing Eg project Shakti of Hul that will also help to ensure that the strategy of innovation works.