How Cowbell Beat Peak Without Being Bigger | #266

Now, for 40 years, there was only one milk brand in Nigeria.

And that brand was called Pig Milk.

They arrived in Nigeria in 1954.

They imported milk into Nigeria for what would become the name of, I think it's Fristland Kampina Wamko.

Fristland Kampina Wamko.

But he started local production of milk in Nigeria in 1975.

And that's important because I was born in 1975.

So they were the first in the category.

And the thing about category is that once you are the first, it makes it very, very difficult to... for people to shake you off their mind especially if you've done a great job all right however the challenge is that sometimes when a company is the first in its category if they're not careful they begin to rest on their laurel and that is sort of like what happened to pick milk now let's look at the outsider's insight about this then Carbell entered the market in 1993.

They said to themselves, these guys are number one.

They are the best.

They are the biggest.

And they said to themselves, in what way can we really, really serve this market? How can we become relevant, profitable in a large economy of close to 200 million people? Now, when they came into the market, they didn't start from Nigeria, though.

I think they started in Zaire, in Democratic Republic of Congo.

And then they came to Nigeria.

When they came into Nigeria, here's what they did.

They just copied exactly what Peak Milk was doing.

Peak Milk was selling their milk, I think in a 400 gram package.

And when Cowbell came, they also copied and started selling their milk in 400 gram package.

You know, human beings, we are memetic creatures.

We copy what we see other people do.

We call it monkey see, monkey do.

It happens a lot.

However, copying the incubants Or the category leader, a lot of times, is not the key to winning.

It's not the key to success in your business.