Nature vs. Nurture.

I started playing football in the 5th grade and it changed my life. Before, I had lived in Chesapeake, Virginia where I played soccer for a tough sounding co-ed team called the Rainbows. Once we moved to Georgia, I suited up in pads and sought to clobber anything not running too fast to catch. For me, football had more off-the-field value than on. I liked playing but I liked the attention of being a football player even more. On Friday we would wear our jerseys to school and later than night to the high school game where they let youth league players in for free. The cheerleaders all gushed over wearing a player’s jersey and one couldn’t help but develop a snobbish sense of pride from all the fawning.



Then came my freshman year of high school. Thanks to hormones, both natural and injected, half of my former teammates had gained about 50 pounds the summer before our freshman year. The varsity players looked enormous and it broke my heart to know that the only position a 119-pound kid like me was fit for was guarding the Gatorade. Just like that, my keys to high school stardom no longer fit the door.



But being 119 pounds, scrappy and having a slight like for violence does have one advantage: wrestling. I went out for the wrestling team my freshman year and immediately found that it suited me. I remember it like it was yesterday, my first match ending with me barreling out, pretty much running the other kid over and pinning him in 110 seconds.



Wrestling can be scary. For starters, there’s no team to hide behind. Sure, we keep score and pretend it’s a team sport but when you lose out there in the middle of the mat, you’re the one who lost. In front of everyone and for everyone to see, your successes and failures now available for public scrutiny. I found that out in my second match. I contended in a higher weight class because the other team did not have a 119-pound kid. The other kid completely opened a can off whoop ass on me and then tried to stuff me in it. I felt so bad; I could have crawled in it myself.



Coach said I had ability. I was strong for my size and I could get real mean in a hurry. But mean alone doesn’t win matches. It would take technique, courage and tenacity to train like never before to make me a good wrestler. So, after the three hour practices each day, I ran five miles. I took lessons from a former Olympic wrestler and lifted weights at 5 a.m. every morning.

Eventually, I turned out to be a decent wrestler and better yet I learned about myself, getting a grasp on what I wanted and how I needed to get there. Innate ability might have got me to the mat but the training kept from repeatedly being pinned to it.



Today, I’m wrestling with something else. My client has innate ability. Perhaps innate is not the best term. The type of ability I am talking about is one that which is seemingly underlying but has benefited the company in a mode of marketing. Months ago we reviewed the client’s case and found a particular ability that syncs up with the desire of consumer. My team and I busily got down to finding sales and communication channels to shout this ability from the rooftops in hopes of bringing our client success. And then it hit me like a belly to back with a double chicken wing and a figure four: Innate ability is not enough.



My client has a marketable trait but it is faint and only partially believable. They have yet to do the real heavy lifting to develop the trait and it leaves me with little to help them pitch with. This is a common problem. Marketers often have innate or partially developed selling propositions and rather than develop the natural tendency into a skill, they opt to running out on the mat and getting their butt whopped. It is the business equivalent of telling the coach to put you on the varsity team now because with some training and hard work, you might become good someday.



I believe marketing has two main entities and conditions that bond or impede their connection. On one side is the customer. On the other is the offering. The customer has wants, needs and influences. The offering has propositions, channels and all the things that make up the brand. In between the two are all the communication strategies, channel efforts and pitches. An innate but undeveloped offering is like a thin strand connecting the two. There is a connection to be sure, but it wavers in the breezes of disbelief and is easily disjointed if a serious disturbance rolls by.



Marketers are wise to study the connection with consumers of their products and services. With a few questions, one can begin to see if the offering aligns with consumer desire. Here are a few suggestions:



Why should your target prospect care or want what you are offering?



Sure, you say it’s high quality and dependable, but who’s listening? After every sales claim you should ask yourself, “Why does the customer care?”



Is this reasoning believable, reasonable and/or compelling?



I have heard some amazing concoctions of consumer viewpoint in my experience, particularly with marketing to young people. If you want consumer perspectives about a product, ask them. Moreover, listen to what they have to say lest you fall into a trap similar to the marketers of Guns & Roses trading cards.



Why is your proposition better than the nearest competitor?



The competition is a reality. You might not be starring them in the face day-to-day but they still sit next to you on the shelf, web and in the customer’s mind. You better have a real differentiating proposition if you want to compete.



Is this reasoning believable, reasonable and/or compelling?



Again, do a reality check with your sales claims. Is it really stronger, better built, providing more value? I have a former client who rolled out a huge campaign based on the claims that were actually twice the price of the competition. In short, tell the truth.



What are you doing right now to reinforce your pitch to consumers?



Once you have a distilled concept, don’t rest on your laurels. Say you’re a brand of Louisiana fish fry whose pitch is the authentic experience. Don’t stop at just saying you’re the authentic experience. Put beads on your shipper displays. Offer authentic accessories for a real Louisiana fish fry. Don’t just say it. Do it and be it.



Make it your nature to nurture.



Innate ability is important and I don’t want to play that down. But innate ability is not enough. Marketers should take the efforts that are driving loyalty, action or purchase and augment those efforts. Rather than diffusing competitiveness, the differentiating factors of a product or service should be focused into lean, mean and powerful strategies.



Take a big white board. On one side, write your offering. On the other, write your best description of the prospective customer. Start connecting the two with propositions and pitches. Then ask the above questions in earnest. Answer them honestly and with the least amount of confused jargon. After this exercise, you may not fully pin the strategy but at least you’ll have it in a half nelson.



It’s just like wresting. Train and you’ll wipe the mat with that punk in the blue spandex. But lose your focus and you’ll lose big.

And everyone will see it.

Divide and conquer

John had a huge mouth that wrote checks his butt couldn’t cash. It was a quality that made our little clique love him and hate him concurrently. An excellent storyteller, John often used his wit to insult the kids a grade ahead of us. Such was the occasion when he gathered a few pages from a filthy magazine and penned a note in the margins about a classmate’s mother. To put it lightly, it was on.


We already had a strained relationship with this classmate. He once played bass in our garage band but we had to kick him out because of his doofus friends that would always show up sidecar at our practice wanting to join the band. John’s little “art project” was insult to injury and the impetus for the entire sophomore class rallying to teach us freshmen a lesson.


This would be the first fight of the year so word spread throughout the school like mono. John was my friend so I pledged to back him up. I have to admit, I was kind of looking forward to punching our old bassist in the neck. Just as well, he had earned it.


When the appointed hour arrived, a friend of mine from one town over (outside muscle, yeah, that’s how I roll) and I jumped in the most conspicuous car ever conceived: a yellow, railroad servicing truck with a utility bed. Did I mention it was yellow? We drove the few miles to Shorty Howell Park and ascended the hill getting ready to rumble. Shorty Howell is a few baseball and football fields with parking lots and a road encircling it. When we drove in, the entire sophomore class lined the street. Perhaps the stress has fogged my memory, but when I recall the moment, I remember the sophomores wielding tire irons, maltave cocktails and pineapple grenades. Regardless, they might as well have had baseball bats wrapped in rusty barbed wire because just as our giant yellow target entered the prescribed parking lot, I realized we were the only ones there. More specific, my friend wasn’t even really involved so really, I was the only one there.


We bolted as fast as such a practical and utilitarian vehicle could go. The sophomores tailed us, not like it was hard, but amazingly we lost them long enough to make a phone call. I called John asking why he wasn’t there to join me in martyrdom. “My Mom wants me to do some laundry” he replied. He could have said anything. Something like “my Mom wants me to negotiate commodity prices for a consortium of South American businesses”. It didn’t matter. What John was really saying was he wasn’t coming.


The small group of sophomore’s that were out for blood had managed to pull off one of the most perfect effects in war, politics and marketing. First, they divided. Then, they conquered. To begin, they let John know that he was the only freshman they were interested to pounding. That was enough to scare John off. Second they knew that the rest of us would not fight for John if he did not have the spine to show up. Third, they rallied a larger force, mostly just spectators, but the effect seemed like a mob waiting to tie our lifeless bodies to the goal posts.


One need not be a war scholar to recognize this effect in historic battles. Commanders routinely try to separate efforts from supply lines, divide armies and concentrate the most amount of force at the moment of decision. This is war 101 and we should glean some lessons from it.


Yet many marketers seem to fall in their latrines when it comes to battlefield strategy. Instead of focusing their forces, they spread out and try to take the hill with a line six miles long and one soldier deep. They get half way to an objective and redirect the force to a distant objective that, in the fog of war, looks more desirable. They win the wrong battle where the opposition doesn’t even show up and ultimately, they lose the war.


These principles are basic and applicable to most marketing efforts. I have a few tips to share- So lace up your boots, blow your nose and dress the line- It’s time for boot camp.


Know where to divide and who to conquer.


Proctor and Gamble are the kings of divide and conquer. They take a category (say, laundry detergent) and they split it into a million pieces and position their product at the peaks of every sub category. One brand for freshness. One for color. One for whiter whites and so on. The strategy is brilliant. They never give up a piece of the field and when a piece of vulnerable ground is spotted, they are the first to stake it.


Take a look at your category or categories. Can they be split? If you can’t rule the whole category can you rule a piece of it. We once advised a maker of anti- diarrhea products to eschew the broad category dominated by goliaths and instead focus specifically on the travelers diarrhea (what happens when you drink the water) market. The strategy begs a question that’s easy to answer. Why serve in plain diarrhea when you can rule in traveler’s diarrhea?



Rally the masses.



The sophomore didn’t want to kill us because of John’s x-rated collage. Instead, the pocket of incensed sophomores appealed to their classmates with a more attractive call to arms. Here was a group of sassy, punk freshmen that need to be taught a lesson. They insulted an upperclassman (more specifically, his Mom) and they need to pay. What sophomore could resist such a rallying cry?



Brand managers should never expect their motive to motivate the masses. Nobody bought an iPod to increase the share price of Apple. The iPod meant the liberation of music that can come from anywhere and go anywhere. The iPod has led the digital music revolution and while I would like to think that Apple’s motives are purely benevolent, truthfully my black, 80 GB model is an expensive piece of technology that makes the folks at Apple a lot of bucks. Yet Apple has begun to stand for so much more. The iPod thumbs its nose at corporate music and decrees that the user is king of what he or she listens to. And again, what sophomore could resist such a rallying cry?



Focus on the point of decision.


Getting John to chicken out was key to squashing our interclass strife. The sophomores, despite their ugly looks, were not dummies. They focused their strength at the point of decision and used their mass to display strength that made us cower.


Every purchase decision has a point of decision. When people eat, decide to buy a motor home or choose a urologist all have points of decision and are wise to think deeply about those points. It might be to apply recentcy to a TV schedule or getting the right referral materials in the hands of the people your prospect sees right before you. Recognize and concentrate on that point and you can turn back a brood of sassy freshman a thousand strong.


Hey, you’re kicked out of the band!


I have let the story meander in a way that might let you think the sophomores took the day. That’s not entirely accurate. When I realized that John left us to the mercy of 15-year-old punks, I called my brother- a giant, unpredictable senior. As the core of the sophomores trolled the town, trying to track down the yellow big bird mobile, they stopped at a gas station. We spotted them getting back into a sea foam green convertible (really, sea foam green). My brother pulled up and blocked in their car. He grabbed the driver and pulled him up and out of the car. I will paraphrase and censor but the substance of my brother’s oratory was to the effect of “My brother didn’t start this fight so if you don’t leave him alone- I’ll be using your empty skull for an ashtray”.



I guess, in all that excitement, they never thought I might know how to divide and conquer as well.