Today, I'd like to talk about one of my pet peeves rather than something directly related to promotional items. I have been doing a lot of networking lately, and I've noticed that there are a lot of people out there who are actually marketing their competition more than themselves!
Before I became a small business owner, I was a brand manager at AMD. They are the #2 microprocessor company behind Intel in case you don't know them. At the time, our market share was about 20% and their market share was about 80%. Everyone who knew anything about our industry knew this. Since this was the case, we rarely gave any 'lip service' to our competition. When I would give interviews for PC Magazine or similar publications, I would say something like, "Our processors outpace the competition by 10% on that benchmark". Or even "Our processors smoke the competition on that benchmark". We'd let the reporter infer who the competition was because he already knew. What do you think would have happened if I had said something like "Intel processors are slower than ours"? Or worse yet, "Intel sucks"? The reporter would print that quote and generate PR for Intel instead of AMD. Why on earth would anyone want to do that?
So back to my local networking. When I hear someone in a BNI meeting or a Chamber event say that he's better than AFLAC because he sells 'insurance that no one has heard of' brand, he's not helping himself. He's the better than AFLAC guy and will always be because that's the name everyone else is going to remember. Plus, he's disrespecting his competition. Savvy marketers and business owners need to be above that. Unless you are McDonald's vs. Burger King, or Coke vs. Pepsi, you really don't want want to give any unneeded press to your competition. And if you are that industry giant, you want to keep it dignified. There are many ways to allude to the competition without naming them specifically. Sell your brand, not theirs.
I will get off my soapbox now. Thanks for listening.
(repost from my blog at EmbroidMeAustinSW.blogspot.com 5/6/11)
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