For about as long as I can remember, I’ve been aware of the idea of strategy. Back when I played middle school football, we learned about two big strategic principles: pile up resources at the greatest area of need, and (contrariwise) deploy resources away from the point of contact, to A)trick the opponent into deploying their resources poorly (play action pass), or B)dilute your opponent’s resources in hopes of a mismatch (stretching the field with a fast, deep-threat wide receiver, in order to create opportunities over the middle).

In marketing, examples of these two tactics might be:
Concentration of resources:
• A retailer spending a majority of advertising budget between Thanksgiving and Christmas, to coincide with consumer behavior
• A manufacturer assigning a full-time rep to a single customer company, in order to cultivate deep relationships, secure the customer’s loyalty, and expand the footprint within that customer company
• Coordinating national, regional, and local advertising around specific “promotional” periods, and focusing messages on the specific offers of the promotion.

Generally, these are strength-against-strength tactics. They are very logical. And they will work, over time, given a solid product, a competitive price, and continuous, predictable demand.

Contrarian deployment:
• A retailer, recognizing the trend toward post-holiday sale shopping, saves the majority of its advertising budget for a post-holiday sale blitz
• A manufacturer who is well know in one industry, but less known in other industries, assigns a full-time rep to getting first purchases (trial) from customers in adjacent industries, while “milking” the industry in which they are established…risking that their products will become commodities in the established industry, as the threat the industry as a cash cow
• A manufacturer launches a directly competitive product with a media blitz in the hometown (or a strong market) of an established brand, forcing the established brand to “defend its turf”—the hope is that the established brand will over-react (overspend) or get distracted from their core business…creating opportunities elsewhere
• A brand with a cash advantage spends excessively in a market “owned” by a less liquid competitor, forcing the competitor to defend what it might otherwise have taken for granted…milking the competitors limited resources.

Of course, these strategies are all risky, and none of them can really be considered long-term strategies. Their purpose is to change the status quo, so it would be silly for someone to employ them who benefits from the status quo.

One problem with some upstart start-ups is that they become very good at contrarian tactics, to the point that these tactics become part of the culture. But, when they become the man, they are still culturally inclined to fight the man. They don’t know how to act like category leaders.

The job of the category leader is to promote the category. So, category leaders should use strait-forward, logical (boring) strategies, in order to signal to consumers, competitors, and vendors what the category is doing. This may seem charitable, but it really isn’t. A lot of people (probably most) want to do business with the confident leader. So, by successfully taking the leader posture, a company is effectively blocking competitors from potential customers. Think of Tide, Cheer, Crest, Gleam, Head ’n’ Shoulders, Clorox, and Shout. By being the voice vendors listen to for direction regarding how to sell to the category, a company puts itself first in line to negotiate the best deal with potential vendors. And by signaling to competitors, a leader gives itself a home field advantage.

Everybody else’s job is to take shots at the category leader, by slicing off niche markets, cherry picking high-value customers, and/or offering a mass-market alternative (me-too) choice to consumers. When number two becomes number one, the whole category can feel shock waves for a while.

We were having lunch today with Kristen, over at Lemongrass. And she mentioned that she was starting to become interested in the herbs and spices Anne and I (and her sister and mother) use to stay healthy. I think this is pretty cool, because Kristen is young enough and generally healthy enough that it might do her some real good (as opposed to what it does for me, which is to keep me from completely falling apart.

Then later, I was looking at some companies around here (some of which we have done some work for). I noticed that the company formerly known as Perception Kayak is working with an outfit called Verde PR (or something like that). It’s a PR firm out of Colorado that claims to be all about green companies and companies that are into outdoorsy stuff (not sure I see the connection, but I guess it’s a different generation). Anyhow, this gave me an idea.

We eat almost no red meat. And we take hundreds of dollars a month worth of supplements (I mean fists full every single morning). So why shouldn’t companies that are committed to that sort of thing be interested in what we can do. Especially since we have some capabilities and a track record with things like HTML, specialized web tactics, text messaging, loyalty campaigns, insider communications, and stuff like that.

So, with renewed enthusiasm, I am going to start tracking down Earth Fare, Garners, and Greenlife. Or maybe, if they’re as sophisticated as they oughta be, their spiders will find this blog post and come looking for me. In any case, wouldn’t it be cool for folks like us to get to help folks like them? Well, let’s see what happens.

First of all, American Grocery was awesome last Thursday, as always. The place is a little bit of a secret, but it ought to be a destination. It would be worth coming to Greenville from Asheville, Charlotte, Columbia, or Atlanta to eat at American Grocery. I had the duck. I always enjoy whatever I have, but I can’t get past the duck. Duck’s so good it’s almost daffy.

Good time with the smart little brother. Look forward to seeing him again in a month or so.

Next order of business. A shout-out to my friend Willie, who gave me a really funny mug, about my really funny mug (check out those Bugs Bunny teeth). Willie seems to see right through me, no matter how hard I try to appear to be a normal person.

This week has been full of meetings and proposals. It’s one of the most stressful things I do. We did one for a school, one for a law firm, one for another school, one for an awesome town in Virginia, with a cool railroad station, a presidential birthplace, an awesome women’s college, and a 100-year-old brass band (more on that later). Had a great conversation with my pals in North Carolina about a small performance venue. We talked about some of the things they do and some of the artists that perform there. But they had me at Merle Haggard (“you don’t have to call me Waylon Jennings, and you don’t have to call me Charlie Pride, and you don’t have to call me Merle Haggard, long as you are on my fightin’ side, and I’ll hang around as long as you will let me, I never minded standin’ in the rain, you don’t have to call me “darlin,” darlin, you never even call me by my name.”) Could turn out to be a good week.

This is principle #18 of the 21 principles. And we really try to follow it. After all, no one of us can possibly be as smart as all of us. But to illustrate this principle, Anne discovered still another benefit of teaching a Sunday school class of teenage girls. Of course, the coolest part is watching these little girls struggle through this awkward time and come out the other side beautiful, unique, spiritually curious young women. But there are other things too.

Jules, it seems, is ga-ga over a singer songwriter named Jason Mraz. Now, we had never heard of Jason Mraz. So, in order to keep an eye on things that influence Julia’s young mind, and in order to be conversant on things that matter to her, Anne googled Jason. We learned that he lives in the middle of an avocado farm outside of San Diego…that he has a cute little Paul McCartney sort of voice…and that he has a style that is perfect for a certain brand located on the world’s most isolated populated land mass.

Thanks for the help, Jules. You rock.

Let’s see who has spiders…

UMPQUA, Bank of America, Proctor and Gamble, Microsoft, Barack Obama, Chiat/Day, Carolina First Bank, PUBLIX, BMW, New York Times, Washington Post, Dick Cheney.

It’s 11:09 by my count. Let’s see what happens.

They never showed up this time. Guess they’re onto me. Cried “Umpqua” one time too many.

One thing seems to secure a bond like nothing else—sharing a secret.

We asked a vendor for some help the other day. She said she would help us, but that we couldn’t tell anyone, or she would have to make the same deal for her other clients. Then she asked us for some insight into a specific issue, on which we have some special information.

We gave her the insight. But, of course, we did so on the condition that she not share the secret information with any of our competitors or their clients. She agreed.

Now we have a stronger relationship than ever with that vendor. She knows something about us that she can’t tell. We know something about her that we can’t tell. We’re kinda stuck with each other.

Wish I could say more. But, of course, it’s very hush hush.

I was just looking at some web statistics and noticed an interesting trend. I noticed there are big jumps in hits to this blog on certain days. So I went back to the blog to investigate what days those hits occurred, and guess what I found. On days when I write a blog post, people come visit.

Sometimes its obvious. I wonder how many other marketing situations this applies to. You run an ad, people come to your store. You put a sign in your window, people buy stuff. I guess Claude Hopkins had it right.

As cool as Umpqua is, it must really grate on them that they don’t have umpqua.com. To get the great and powerful umpqua, you have to enter four extra letters: umpquabank.com.

By the way, isn’t fly fishing a beautiful sport. I mean just a little less boring than watching paint dry. But beautiful nevertheless.

I just love to do that from time to time. Then sit back and see how long it takes the Umpqua spiders to hit the blog. Amazing, really. They certainly have it going on with that!

Wrote this between 5:20 and 5:26 on June 16. I’ll let you know how soon they arrive.

They arrived at 5:26:29. Remarkable!

Business is not a philosophy class or a smoke filled dorm room in the middle of the night. It’s really pretty simple. Do you offer something people want at a price they want to pay? If so, say so. If not, change your price, change your offering, or fold up your tent and go home.

We have been enjoying working with a new brand concept for a few months now. They are great folks (and that is not something you can ever take for granted). But what makes it really enjoyable to work on their business is that they know what they stand for. They are out there on a limb, saying, “people are willing to pay for a really awesome steak!” If they’re wrong, well, they are out there on that limb. But if they’re right (and it’s looking as if they are), they have that limb all to themselves.

Funny, isn’t it, that a you can go back about fifty years, and walk down a street in a pedestrian neighborhood in Brooklyn, and bump right smack into a breakthrough 21st century brand concept. Great piece of meat. Knowledgeable, friendly service. Some good stuff to go with it, to round out the meal. Seems like a no-brainer, which is a pretty good indicator that either it has already been done (which does not appear to be the case) or it’s a sure winner.

We will see.