The Competitor Obsession Trap

Okay.

So to start off, let's admit that most marketers have experienced a moment when a competitor launches something and someone immediately asks, should we be doing that? So right, Brian, you've been there, right? Like, oh, you see it? And it's like, should we be doing that? Especially like the onset of like social and all that, which was crazy.

But so what's a competitor move that made you or your team panic a little at some point in your career?

Well, you know, it was when I was in the wireless space, I mean, there was so much competitiveness.

Right.

So you had like at the at the time.

And again, I'll give you this.

It's sort of a layup here.

But I mean, you had like Sprint, you had AT&T and you had Verizon Wireless.

Right.

They were all sort of in that play.

And I can remember when T-Mobile came into the mix, everybody was like, oh, it's another competitor.

And then it was like, there was a lot of panic around it.

But then it was like one of those things where they had said like, oh, well, they're small, they're blah, blah, blah.

Don't worry about them.

And then the next thing you know, like we were worried about like T-Mobile as like one of our biggest competitive threats, right? So- It's always one of those things, I think, where you're just like, whoa, I didn't see them coming.

And the next thing you know, they're like right at your doorstep.

How about you?

I would say it's probably when I was in advertising, working for a big brand, and we kind of came up with a splash and really showed up with a new campaign.

And then, which made a big kind of stink, right? Like everyone was talking about all the trades and all that stuff, the industry.

And then a competitor, basically, you know, as we probably got a little more comfortable, a competitor came out with this like big campaign launch and splash that just like, you know, it got all the buzz.

And it was like, wait a minute, where does that mean we sit? And I will say, and I think in advertising that happens a lot because it's easily done with a Super Bowl spot or some kind of big splash.

There's big budgets involved, so clearly people can do big things.

But it was definitely more campaign-oriented than it was a product or a competitor coming into market, I would say.

But it puts everyone on their heels.