This is a brief overview of the warfare metaphor as applied to marketing. It is dedicated to the brave men and women of our armed forces.

1. Marketing Strategic
options and tactics
Dr Andrew Hirst Room 9339 1

2. Session Guide
• Basic marketing strategy
• Introduction to War analogies
• Brief outline of Marketing Warfare
– Attack vs Defence
Focus on Guerrilla (not Gorilla)

3. Marketing Strategy
• Underlying principle
– STP
• Segmentation
• Targeting
• Positioning
– 4P's / 7P's
» Product
» Place
» Promotion
» Price
» People
» Physical Attributes
» Process

4. War Analogies
• Popularised in the '80s
– Popular coffee table reading
• The Art of War by Sun Tzu
• The Book of Five Rings by Miyamoto Musashi
• The Prince by Niccolò Machiavelli
• On War by Carl Von Clausewitz
Versions applied to business
– Rise and Trout's (1986) - Marketing Warfare
– Levinson's Guerrilla Marketing
– Other analogies include the Cola wars, price wars etc
– e.g Sainsbury vs Tesco 2013

5. Growth strategies often lead to
confrontation
At t a c ke r
Flanking Attack
Defender
Bypass Attack
Frontal Attack
Guerrilla
Attack
Encirclement
Attack

6. Attacking Strategies
• Frontal Attack (All out attack on opponents territory)
– Costly, requires superior resources and firepower
– Success - El Alamein 1942 - Monty defeat the Desert Fox Rommel.
Out numbered them with tanks and guns
– Failure - Balaclava 1854 and Trench Warfare 1916, French at
Agincourt
Business cases:
2013 BT vs SKY
Change in TV viewing technology
Historic classic cases
1970/80's IBM vs Apple Personal computing
1970's Freddy Laker vs British Airways Atlantic Charter flights

7. Attacking Strategies
• Flanking (attack weak points)
– Focus on the weaknesses of the competitor
• regional or underserved segment
– Capture market share to gain a foothold
– Use creativity
– eg. Japanese motor industry vs US 1980's Honda Cub
• Encirclement (attack on all fronts)
– Middle ages castle sieges
– Cut off supply
• e.g Supply of customers Tesco v Sainsbury 1990's
• e.g. Samsung vs Sony 2013

8. Attacking strategies (cont)
• Bypass
– Military Strategy Maginot line
– Technology leapfrog
– e.g iphone vs Blackberry or Nokia
• Guerrilla
– French Resistance
– Unconventional Tactics often disruptive behaviour to develop a
buzz
– Eg. Flashmobs, Popup shops, PR stunts, viral campaigns

9. Guerrilla marketing
The enemy advances, we retreat
The enemy camps we harass
The enemy tires we attach
The enemy retreats, we pursue
Mao Tse-Tang

10. Principles of Guerrilla marketing
• Find a market small enough to defend
– e.g. 1980's Apple graphics design industry
• Never act like a brand leader
– e.g. 2000's Google "never be evil like Microsoft"
• Be prepared to run away
– being nimble and adaptable to change

11. Conventional goals with
unconventional tactics
• Low cost
• Time
• Energy - Richard Branson
• Information - e.g. Google
• Artic Monkey's - MySpace

12. Examples
• Imagination
• Yob Golf
• Pop-up shops
• Pop-up bars

13. Modern Guerrilla tactics?
• With your neighbours consider potential
electronic tactics.
– Twitter
– Blogs
– Facebook
– Email
– Websites

14. Defending an Attack
Flanking
Attacker Defender
Counter/
Pre-emptive
Mobile
Contraction

15. Defensive strategies
• Fortification
– Leningrad in WW2
– Customer Loyalty
– Brand awareness and differentiation
• e.g. microsoft 1990's virtually unopposed for 15 years until
web techs
Flanking Defence
Strengthen offer
Predicting competitor actions e.g Own Label contracts

16. Defensive strategies
• Sun Tzu "The supreme art of war is to subdue the
enemy without fighting"
• Pre-emptive defence
– Deter competitors from attacking
– Create entry barriers
• Discounting to make the market segment cheaper
Counter offensive
– overstretched competitors
e.g Marlboro on the US - slashed prices to offset growth in
cheaper brands

17. Defensive Strategies
• Mobile
– Incremental product development
– Rapid prototyping
• Beta versions e.g. Google and Mozilla
• Contraction
– Withdraw from untenable ground
– E.g M&S in the US, Sainsbury US, Tesco Japan and
US

18. Summary
• Warfare analogies help us understand tactics
available to marketeers
– The choice of option depends on resources and
capability
– large firms can use a range of tactics
– Start-ups and young organisation need to think clearly
about the choice, often guerrilla tactics are effective
– Guerrilla tactics require time, energy and creativity

19. Reading
• Rise and Trout's (1986) - Marketing Warfare
• Levinson's (2008) - A start up guide to Guerrilla
Marketing for 1st time marketers
• Website - Levinson's Guerrilla Marketing
• Hunt S and A Menon (1995) Metaphors and Competitive
Advantage: Evaluating the Use of Metaphors in Theories
of Competitive Strategy. Journal of Business Research
33, 81-90
• Rindfleish A.(1996) Marketing as warfare: reassessing a
dominant metaphor. Business Horizons Sept- October 3-
10.
• Kotler and Singh (1981). Marketing Warfare in the
1980's. Journal of Business strategy. Winter 30-41

20. Agincourt

21. Charge of the light brigade
...All in the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.
'Forward the Light Brigade!
Charge for the guns!' he said:
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred...