Flanking Strategy of Marketing

Flanking Strategy –

For most marketing managers, offensive and defensive are natural strategies. The leader defends, everyone else attacks. So what else is new?

Flanking. For most managers, flanking strategy may seem like a military concept with no marketing applications. Not so. Flanking is the most innovative way to fight a marketing war.

In both marketing and a military sense, a flanking operation is a bold move. A big gamble with big stakes. One that requires detailed planning on an hour-by-hour, day-to-day basis.

You might say a general accepts offensive and defensive assignments as a normal part of the job, but lives for the day he is chosen to lead a flanking attack. It’s the best hope for achieving a big, spectacular victory.

More than any other form of warfare, flanking requires knowledge of the principles involved and an ability to visualize how the battle will unfold after the attack is launched. These are much the same skills a good chess player develops.

Flanking Principle #.1

“A good flanking move must be made into an uncontested area.” You don’t drop your paratroops on top of the enemy’s machine-gun positions, and you don’t launch a flanking product into the teeth of an established product.

A flanking move does not necessarily require a new product unlike anything now on the market. But there must be some element of newness or exclusivity. The prospect must put you into a new category.

Digital Equipment flanked IBM with a small computer, which customers put into a new category called “mini- computers”-as opposed to IBM’s mainframe computers.

It might not be obvious, but the success of a flanking attack often hinges on your ability to create and maintain a separate category. This is not always easy, especially since the defender can be expected to try to blunt the attack by denying the existence of the new category.

Traditional marketing theory might call this approach segmentation, the search for segments or niches. This is an important qualification. To launch a true flanking attack, you must be the first one to occupy the segment. Otherwise, it’s just an offensive attack against a defended position.

The flanking strategy needs a exceptional foresight. The reason is the in goods flanking attack, there is no established market for the new product or service.

Flanking Principle #.2

“Tactical surprise ought to be an important element of the plan.”

By its nature, a flanking attack is a surprise attack. In this respect, it’s different from offensive or defensive attack where the nature and direction of attacks are pretty much expected. (If Ford is going to attack General Motors, they have to attack somewhere between Chevrolet and Cadillac.)

But flanking is different. The most successful flanking moves are the ones that are totally unexpected. The greater the surprise, the longer it will take the leader to react and try to cover.

Surprise also tends to demoralize the competition. Their sales force is temporarily tongue-tied. They often don’t know what to say until they get directions from headquarters.

Unfortunately, test marketing or too much research, which exposes the strategy to the competition, often undermines great flanking moves.

The classic example is Datril, which never had a chance because their test-marketing alerted the folks at Johnson & Johnson to the potential danger.

Test-marketing a proposed flanking attack is a catch- 22 proposition. If it fails, it fails. If it succeeds, it alerts the leader to take the steps necessary to ensure failure when the test-marketing is expanded to a regional or national basis.

What if the leader is foolish enough to ignore your successful market test? Then, of course, you might be able to launch the product or service on a national basis and have a bigger winner. In other words, you keep your fingers crossed and hope the competition won’t notice what you’re doing.

You might get lucky. On the other hand, taking a chance like this violates a cardinal principle of military planning: Base your strategy on what your enemy is able to do, not just on what he is likely to do.

Flanking Principle #.3

“The pursuit is just as critical as the attack itself”

This is the pour-it-on principle. “Without pursuit, no victory can have a great effect.”

Too many companies, however, quit after they’re ahead. They achieve their initial marketing targets and then they move resources on to other endeavors.

That’s a mistake, especially in a flanking move. Ancient military maxim: Reinforce success, abandon failure.

Let’s say a company has five products, three winners and two losers. Who do you think gets the time and attention of top management? That’s right, the losers.

It should be just the opposite. Shoot the losers and send their petrol rations to the tank commanders who are making the most progress.

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