Marketing Brawls and The Battle Of The *Business* Brands

I love to compete in business. I’ve been fortunate throughout my career to be with good companies and good teams, and most of the time I face quality competitors. I love to watch competitors outside of business. Love the Lakers, love the superstars that come to town and try to knock them off. Now lately I see some business competition that is decidedly gloves off. My concern is that the consumer doesn’t lose. Here’s what I’m talking about. During the fourth quarter of last year and into this year you saw DirecTV and the Dish Network go toe-to-toe. But here’s the problem. Sateliite programming needs work, it is getting work, and it is a limiting factor in customer satisfaction. So regardless of who gained marketshare, who won?

The key to marketing brawls is in the foundation of excellence. If you’re going to have it out in the marketplace make sure the consumer wins as a result. When Coke and Pepsi come back to their occasional taste test strategy everyone wins. Everyone drinks more cola because the product is appealing and solid at the base. The few hundredths of a percentage points gained in marketshare don’t matter as much as the fact that everyone is talking cola.

Now get ready for a really big brawl. The Wall Street Journal is coming after The New York Times. And the Times will come after The Journal. There’s a lot at stake here. The Times is getting ready to set up online pay walls while WSJ.com is based on subscriptions. The Journal is going to be a part of the Fox Business channel and it has an opportunity to damage the fortunes of Bloomberg’s brand. This will be fun to watch. Everybody has a good game so the strategy is sound. Hopefully the end result is people consuming more business news. It’s kind of like the Final Four of business news. But no “maybe next year” for the loser.