Compass Points Reviews Eating The Big Fish: How Challenger Brands Can Compete Against Brand Leaders

Eating The Big Fish: How Challenger Brands Can Compete Against Brand Leaders

by Adam Morgan
Joh Wiley and Sons, Inc. 1999 - 286 pages $26.96 (at Amazon.com)

"Eat or be eaten" is the law of the sea. Or is it?

In the mid-1960’s there was Hertz, the big fish, and then there was everyone else in the car rental industry. What do you do if you are not number one? Well you try harder, of course. But more to the point, Avis created the perception that they were the clear #2 (when they were really just one of the second tier pack) and challenged the leader. They created the perception of a two horse race and stepped out from the crowd with one of the most successful marketing campaigns of all time. Then it happened again in 1984, when upstart Apple had the audacity to challenge IBM, the dominant player in the PC industry. And then the flood came with Absolut, Virgin Atlantic, Wonderbra, Jack in the Box, Southwest Airlines, Oakley... Rather than being gobbled up, these little fish struck back.

Many small to mid-sized companies look at the brand image of leaders in their category not only with great envy, but often a sense of despair as to how they can even begin to mount a challenge. Adam Morgan not only chronicles some of the best examples of how upstarts have challenged the leaders, but he also lays out a practical set of exercises for how to do it at your company.

Studying over forty smaller brands that have successfully demonstrated strong growth in the face of a powerful and established brand leader in their category, Morgan defines a “Challenger Brand” and the elements it takes to achieve success. He derives Eight Credos for developing a Challenger marketing strategy, and goes on to explain how attitude and behavior are essential ingredients for success.

More than just a series of success stories, Eating the Big Fish, gives a practical guide on how-to create a Challenger brand at your company. There are specific exercises that a team of managers can follow in a two-day session to apply the Eight Credos to building a brand. Morgan also talks about how to sustain a leadership brand by thinking like a number two.

Practitioners of Simplified Strategic Planning will recognize many of the elements of Morgan’s approach. He urges Challenger Brands to step out of the daily routine and examine their situation with fresh eyes. They need to have a clear vision of what they stand for and actively project that so that all take notice. Recognizing that challengers always have less resources than leaders, Morgan articulates the need for focus (he calls it “sacrifice”), to help companies decide what not to do.

In this world of increasingly shorter product life cycles and ease of copying physical products, brand is becoming a more important element of differentiation not only for consumer products, but also for industrial products and services. Eating the Big Fish will give your team a sound approach for crafting a novel approach to building your brand, and eluding the jaws of the big fish in your market.

For more information or to order your copy of Eating the Big Fish from Amazon.com, click on the title.

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