The Great Compete Against Themselves, Others Compete Against Them

You Should Find Your Fiercest Competitor In The Mirror

By David Miranda

Tiger Woods is the Number One Golfer in the world. Toyota is the most profitable car maker in the world. Google is the most successful search engine in the world. Competitors try and try but Tiger, Toyota, and Google still excel.

The question is why?

The simple answer is that their fiercest competition is themselves, not "the other guy." While their competition is investing time trying to analyze and copy them, they are investing their time on making themselves better than they were yesterday. Interesting approach.

Tiger Woods, even after achieving great success, decided to change his golf coach and his swing. Both his competitors and golf pundits alike were befuddled. Why tamper with success? When asked to explain, Tiger said he needed to improve. Tiger Woods improve? But improve he did! His fiercest competitor is himself.

During a recent interview Ford's new CEO stated that Ford was examining how Toyota was able to make better cars, be profitable, and continue to gain market share. His time might be better spent making better cars. By the time Ford is as good as Toyota is today, Toyota will be better than they are tomorrow. Toyota's fiercest competitor is Toyota.

Yahoo, AOL, Microsoft are all trying to compete with Google and Google continues to gain market share despite their individual and collective efforts. Google competes with itself.

Winners compete against themselves.

The lesson is this - if you want to be great, relentlessly great, compete with yourself.

Be your own fiercest competition. Be a Tiger!

Marketers - "Still Crazy After All These Years"

Why Do We Continue To Do Nutty Things?

By David Miranda

In the 1990 comedy, "Crazy People", Dudley Moore played a Madison Avenue advertising executive who had a mental breakdown. Before he was committed he developed new "let's be honest with consumers" campaigns for a number of clients including Jaguar, United Airlines, Metamucil, and AT&T. I am not able to publish all of the hilarious ads in the film, but the one created for AT&T will give you a hint.

"You may think phone service stinks since deregulation, but don't mess with us, because we're all you've got. In fact, if we fold, you'll have no damn phones. AT&T - we're tired of taking your crap! "

Today, the craziness continues, albeit in different forms. Here are some examples.

Cingular is now "the new AT&T". I am still confused why the name change. Better service? Better deals? Different positioning? Different strategy? Nope. Looks like all that's changed is the logo. Crazy!

The Coca-Cola Company created Coke Zero that has zero calories. I thought Diet Coke was Coke with zero calories. Crazy!

The Ford Motor Company retired the Taurus model and created the Ford Five Hundred . The Five Hundred has had disappointing sales and Ford has now decided to rename it the Taurus. Crazy!

Major corporations continue to pay exhorbitant marketing fees for the naming rights to sports venues. Some examples include Philips Arena (Atlanta) $160 million, FedEx Field (Raljon, MD) $205 million, and American Airlines Center (Dallas) $195 million. Do these investments really pay off? That's a lot of electronics, overnight deliveries, and airline tickets to justify. Crazy!

The typical NASCAR car displays hundreds of sponsor logos, some the size of a business cards. With these cars doing laps at nearly 200 mph do race fans (the intended audience) in person or on TV really notice them? Crazy!

Craziness? I will leave the final determination to the Board Of Directors and shareholders of companies based on the return on these marketing investments.

Unless that is a crazy idea!