It’s Super Bowl season and that means it’s time to dust off the playbooks and review those stat sheets. With the New Year underway, companies and teams alike are assessing their results from the previous year– what worked? What didn’t? Where did we strive, where can we grow? Are just a few of the questions going through executives’ minds while planning for the months to come in 2016.
Unfortunately sometimes these answers are not so clearly defined, maybe there was a business strategy that worked in one way but caused some pain in the process. PR professionals face this dilemma with the need to stay up to date with the trends of a company’s industry before the flame simmers, build new relationships with journalists beyond the existing lists, all while executing a strategy that will spread awareness of a company and present a fresh angle. Luckily for all marketing executives out there, John Zagula and Richard Tong, former leaders of Microsoft Windows and Office marketing have uncovered a way to choose both — a strategy called ‘Best-of-Both’ that allows companies to run up the middle between opposing alternatives and deliver a solution that will gives them the best field position in a converging market.
Knowing when to run up the middle and create a new business category can be tough, the opportunity needs to be present and serious research and evaluation of your options needs to take place to determine if the conditions to run this play are likely to achieve success. Creating a new category allows a brand to achieve a leadership position and pioneer a new industry. Communiqué worked with VoloMetrix (acquired by Microsoft) to research analytics trends to help them dominate the people analytics category. Also Communiqué worked with Mobidia to support the emerging category of app analytics. The playing field for these companies was made possible through attentiveness to news, playing off existing consumer trends and applying them to the enterprise – specifically, the concept of the quantified-self applied to businesses around the globe.
In The Marketing Playbook, Zagula and Tong share five “battle-tested” plays with the potential to capture and keep the leading position in any market. Below is list of how to implement the grand-daddy of them all, number five: The Best-of-Both Play.
- Identify a key trend that promises to shake up your category. The trend you select must be familiar among your target audiences. The trend needs to be strong and difficult for people to discount. And above all, you must be committed and convinced that you can execute the Best-of-Both.
- Target the current most annoying trade-offs and drive them to the extremes. Since you are focusing on two categories already available, you must perform a situation analysis that will expose the current dissatisfaction customers feel from having to choose between these two opposite options. Your findings will present the audience and need your new category will satisfy.
- Capture the best of each end while discarding the worst. After you have identified the trend and an argument strong enough to overcome the current gap, you must label your differentiator. Do not try and create a new category until you have outlined this irrefutable differentiator.
- Once you have a real Best-of-Both offering, trumpet it to high heaven. Since you are aiming for the Super Bowl trophy, you’ll need to present an offering that was thought to be an impossible match before your announcement. After you have accomplished the impossible, share it. Educate the customers you discovered were feeling the pain from your situation analysis.
- Target one end first and then drive right up the middle. Do not wait to go after your target audience. Once you have announced this new third category, competitors will try to place themselves next to you. You are the pioneer, establish your position and defend it passionately.
With that being said, the Best-of-Both play is an ambitious strategy with many risks. Your approach and activities following category creation must clearly outline the differentiators that you can claim beyond your competitors. Since you are borrowing from two already existing categories, originality is a must. In order to hold credibility as the pioneer in this space, you will need to follow your “run up the middle” with effective marketing. Integrating public relations and social media are just two of the ways to raise awareness and communicate the associated messages for the category and your brand.