Running for Senior Class President.

It might surprise you to know I was a shy kid in high school. Well, most of high school, at least. I came into high school having an older brother who was a bit of an ass-whooper. Not such a bad resource when you think about it. But once Chris was gone, I had to fend for myself, which meant I was pretty quiet. I was a decently small kid, weighing in on the Jr. Varsity wrestling team at about 119 pounds. Like Chris, I could be an ass-whooper, but only on the mat against opponents of similar weight. The halls of high school were not as fairly matched.

But something happened during the end of my junior year. Maybe it was the impending authority of being seniors. Maybe it was the fact I had managed to break 130. Whatever it was, I decided to no longer be the quiet kid in the back of the class. So I did what every kid does when they decide to come out of their shell: I ran for senior class president.

Senior class president is a worthless position which amounts to essentially two things: 1) You will be forever remembered as the one who peaked in high school; your old classmates will never think that you amounted to anything outside of the grand halls of the 400 building. 2) You get to pick the color of the balloons at prom, so long as you pick silver, black or purple.

The other kids running were the typical cast of characters. Two cheerleaders with poofy bangs. The odd kid who smelled like graham crackers. The overachiever girl involved in every extracurricular activity on the quest for the perfect high school resume. The guy with the nice car. And the guy known for really, really liking pot. (Distinct from someone who just smokes pot, this Mary Jane groupie felt a greater calling to promote pot through the wearing of pot-themed clothes, the displaying of pro-pot bumper stickers, the utterance of pot-themed catch phrases and the listening to of Peter Tosh.)

Teddy Grahams and Smokey Robinson were not much competition and nobody took the cheerleaders seriously, so I focused on Richie Rich and Valedictorian.
Richie Rich was a bit of a tool, but his parents were rich so he had some popularity. He hung out with the jocks, which made him vulnerable because nobody liked the jocks. I'm not saying that nobody ever likes jocks, but our jocks were terrible at their respective sports, a fact none of them seemed aware of. Plus most of them were juicers and liked to beat up freshmen during 3rd period lunch. Valedictorian was a slightly different problem, but not unbeatable. She had been doing everything since elementary school. School paper, yearbook, flag corps or team. All of which made her a nice target. The disdain most had for her was enough to unify the freaks, geeks, nerds, Goths, drama dorks and straight-edgers.

I huddled my campaign strategy team, which essentially consisted of a guy who could draw, the class clown and some crazed weirdo holed up in the guy-who-could-draw's basement. We discussed strategy. The key to winning would be to find the holes in my opponents' denim armor that corresponded with my strengths. We talked at length about how Richie Rich was really a dork who people pretended to like because he had money. We discussed how Valedictorian had pretty much alienated everyone because she always had to be in charge of everything. Then the strategy became clear. My strategy would be that I was not them. I had never thrust myself to the head of the Spanish club or yearbook committee. I was a normal guy who had to bum rides to school, owing to a lack of car (a common situation for a high school junior in those days).

My crack team set to making some fliers. We focused on me being a regular student that regular students could identify with. We focused on the fact that I had no touchdown record or National Honor Society membership. The competition had no recourse. The more they tried to say that they too were just normal students, the more ridiculous they looked. All through high school, their entire image was based on being better than the average student. To say that they were anything but above the rest of us went against the very thing they stood for. Their position was that they should be president because they were above us meager plebes. My approach took the wind out of their sails.

This is my favorite marketing tactic. I love it when we develop a brand that invalidates a competitor's position. You can almost hear them wince in the paralyzing indecision of how to move forward.

I worked on a campaign for a client once entirely rooted in the idea of "we're not them". We made fun of the competitor's staff, products and we even spoofed their commercials. Man, were they pissed. As our share steadily grew, I got word from media reps who said they saw the brass at a competitor's office watching and cursing our TV spots. It was awesome. We pulled off the marketing equivalent of a kick in the balls. There is no recourse. They simply fall to their knees and whimper.

And what can they do? They will have to come out with the marketing campaign themed, "Nuh-uhh!" If they face you head on with their existing strategy, they only amplify your position as the alternative. If they change strategy, two things happen. First, no one will believe them. Second, abruptly changing strategy puts a company off center. Another competitor might move in on their unguarded original strategy.

Some famous examples are out there of this phenomenon. My favorite was the rise of The Body Shop. In the ultra sleek and stylish world of cosmetics, The Body Shop came out with a position of health, natural beauty and conscientiousness. The fabulous set didn't know how to respond. If they followed The Body Shop into the realm of peace, love and coco butter, they would invalidate their existing position. The Body Shop, however, was robbing their market share based on a strategy of, "Hey, those people suck...and we're not them".

I cannot list all the specific ways to invalidate your competitor here. I do have, however, some quick criteria to get you started.

Want to kick your competitor in the balls? Ask these questions:
What is it that consumers put up with from our competitor begrudgingly and is that a position we can capitalize on?
What is the opposite of our competitor's position? For example, if they are high tech, can we be simple? If they are lavish, can we be humble? If they are the original, can we be the product for the new generation?
If our competitor does not have a clear position, can we give them one that consumers will believe and accept?
What prevailing consumer values has our competitor failed to adopt or convey?
What change to values, structure and our offering are we willing to make and are we able to put our whole effort into developing and maintaining this position?
How will we sell this up the ladder so the brass doesn't get all itchy?
What will be our competitor's reaction? What about other competitors? How will they react?
This list is by no means thorough. I encourage you to think about what else can be done to violate your competitor's position. If you have some good ideas, consider going to our blog and sharing with everyone else (Just your tips, not your strategies!).

And in case you're wondering, I didn't win the student election, but it was not from a lack of strategy. My heart wasn't in it. It turned out that I really was just a normal student. And, let's be honest, no normal student really cares if they go down in history as the person who got to pick the color of the balloons at prom.

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.

Horatio jumped the shark.

Normally my wife and I share television preferences. We love Studio 60. We like Law and Order. We tolerate Heroes. But CSI Miami suits my wife’s palate while I think it’s a dish best left un-served. I’d rather degrease my bike than watch CSI Miami. It wasn’t always that way. Initially, we would watch the show if only to make fun of the patronizing portrayal of the clichéd southern belle turned cop and the airhead kid who looks like the happenstance of being a crime investigator just happened to be a convenient detour from following the Warped Tour. That, and the dauntingly dramatic dumb-dumb Horatio. It’s worth watching CSI Miami if only to make fun of Horatio.

Horatio is not your typical cop. He looks like the Mad Magazine spokes-cartoon Alfred E. Newman except he wears all black and cheesy sunglasses. Horatio does have one superpower, however. He can instantly and powerfully pick the most stupid one-liners to follow each pocket of drama, and he delivers these lines in a voice that one might imagine Don Corleone’s pillow talk might have sounded. It’s kind of like Schwarzenegger’s cheesy deliveries of “I’ll be back” or “He had to blow off some steam!” (famously said in Commando after he impales an enemy into a boiler and steam rushes out of the pipe). So imagine Schwarzenegger but 130 pounds lighter, seven shades paler, bright red hair and instead of having Arnold’s famously tough character names like John Matrix, John Kimble, “Dutch" Schaefer, and the ultimate, Conan the Barbarian, Horatio rolls off the tongue of toughness into the sink. Hey, don’t get your feelings hurt: movie tough guys don’t get names like Jeff either.

But I don’t care that Horatio dresses like he works at a New York ad agency. I don’t really mind that he sounds like he’s gargling hot asphalt. I can tolerate the fact that he delivers his lines with the proficiency of an understudy in the Folsom State Prison Christmas play.

I didn’t give up on Horatio until he jumped the shark.

Within a forgettable plot, Horatio is on a hill with a sniper rifle. (Remember, he is a crime scene investigator that works in a lab.) A terrorist-driven box truck comes over the hill to assault freedom, and Horatio, with a single shot, blows the truck into a million bits. He probably had some kitschy line like “light my fire” as well, but I stopped listening

That, my friends, is a textbook case of jumping the shark.

Jumping the shark is a not-so-old term used to describe when a television program has run out of good ideas and is on bad idea life support. Like the fact the hit hospital drama ER has resorted to helicopter crashes and hospital shootings in every episode just to keep things interesting. The original shark jump can be attributed to Henry Winkler, aka the Fonz. Apparently, Happy Days ratings were not so happy and writers decided that one solution to raise interest would be to have Fonzie compete in a water skiing contest during which he would jump a shark. Yes, he would jump a shark. Henceforth, television programs with endless plot extensions, characters returning from the dead multiple times and successive episodes of at least one character in the reoccurring cast getting shot are said to have jumped the shark. And now you know.

But we can’t save such a fun term just for TV. I mean, come on, TV already has its exclusives like telethons and Ryan Seacrest. Is TV really the only place were a shark gets jumped? I’ll answer the question with a question. Remember when Buick resurrected Harvey Earl to hawk their cars? As if the only answer to fading brand excitement was to bring old Harvey back from the dead. Yeah, cleared the shark by two feet.

And how do you drag an old barn side American brand like Maxwell House into the new millennium? Well, you keep the hokey imagery but then have good ole red-blooded Americans sing a British pop song with enthusiasm not seen since Designing Women jumped the shark all those years ago. Look out sharks, Maxwell House coming over head!

It’s not hard for a brand to jump the shark in its marketing. It is difficult to find the right mix and chemistry for a marketing plan, so it is understandable that marketers might want to dance with the one that brought them. But brands do age and unlike sharks, they don’t always have a second set of teeth to take a bite out of the competition when opportunity avails. Simply put, relevance to the consumer must be kept relevant. However, it is important to know that such a shark jumping demise is not imminent for a brand. Had Fonzie meandered down another plot line with interest, perhaps he never would have come anywhere near the sign up table for the water skiing contest.

Brands can insulate themselves from sharks and waterskiing contests by performing a few thoughtful tasks.

1) Don't make any sudden movements.

Brands often grow stale and therefore feel forced to make knee-jerk reactions. The results are often undesirable. Instead, marketers should consider brand planning as a long-term strategy which evolves in the market. Of course, all this could be eliminated by continually refreshing the brand. Which brings up……

2) Review the brand continuously.

The exercise of reviewing a brand and its relevance to the consumer is not like going to the dentist twice a year. It needs to be done daily. All efforts that are meant to be touch points with consumers need to be reviewed with the brand for relevance and then the brand itself needs to be evaluated with the different opportunities and products. It is crucial to gauge consumer attitudes for each touch point. Marketers are wise to update and refresh their brands and to glean new insight with every single interaction they have with the consumer.

3) Know thy true self.

Brands have a tendency to think of themselves within the context of their founding or heyday. This is a mistake. It is important to understand the role of the brand in the consumer's life and how that role functions in the present day and the days to come.

An important note: Points 1 and 2 are different. Point 1 refers to strategy which should be rooted, strong and hard to change. Point 2 refers to tactics which should be updated with time. It is important to point this out, as many companies change strategy at every coffee break but keep a tactic for some faux nostalgia they insist consumers have.

Want to be in a water skiing contest?

All businesses age, and the ones that are successful through multiple decades have a commitment to learn from every interaction. The greater message here is for marketing to get the same tinkering and refining as R&D does. Manufacturing is improved by R&D to save money and effort. So can be the effort of continued improvements of functioning and relevance to consumers.

The alternative is to suck the potency out of the brand and allow it to expire into irrelevance. You may try to reenergize the brand and jumping that shark may not seem like that bad of an idea. Just remember, even if Fonzie had won the water skiing contest with his amazing and flawless shark jump, Happy Days still lost.




Snowden Tatarski is a brand consultancy based in Athens, Georgia that focuses on the development and implementation of the whole brand experience. The agency offers marketing research, marketing strategies, advertising creative development, media strategy and planning, sales consultation and the production of advertising, sales collateral, broadcast and interactive systems and materials. Information online at www.sn-ta.com

The Archnemesis

My wife had an archnemesis, a situation that I find neither normal nor disturbing. I guess I just assumed that archnemeses only existed in movies like The Karate Kid 1, 2 and 3 (but not 4). I never had an archnemesis - it was just different for boys. If you had a problem with someone, you just met up at the football practice field or Shorty Howell Park or the local gas station (one near us was even called The Fina Arena) and you pounded each others’ skulls in until you liked each other again. This very situation was graphically illustrated in The Karate Kid when Daniel delivers the final crane kick to the face to win the tournament at which time the opponent, a kid who has earlier beat Daniel unconscious, assaulted Daniel’s girlfriend and mowed Daniel down with a motorcycle, then comes up to Daniel, hands him the trophy and says, “This is for you.” Aesop’s moral is, there’s no contention a little kick to the face can’t correct. Chuck Norris must have made up with his enemies long ago.

But my wife is not Chuck Norris or Daniel Laruso, and I am thankful for that fact. However, her strife with her archnemesis, a girl who had jealously spread vicious rumors about her, was a protracted and vicious affair that no amount of front kicks to the maw would repair. I eagerly bring up the fact that Maura had an archnemesis when we are at social engagements, and the listeners seem eager to hear every detail about Maura’s sworn enemy. Better yet, Maura beams with pride when she talks about her archnemesis as if she is locked in some sort of medieval strife over taxation rights in the duchy.
My opinion: having an archnemesis keeps the drab days of high school more interesting.

While I didn’t have an archnemesis in high school or college, I certainly have had them in the working world. Sometimes they are coworkers. Sometimes they are the boss. Sometimes they competitors and sadly, sometimes they are my very clients themselves. I have to admit though, I must have missed out on the power of focused resentment in my early years. Now, my frustration, disenfranchisement, anger and any other negative feeling that the life of consulting conjures up can happily reside in the persona of whoever my archnemesis du jour may be. If only I had focused as such on the ninth grade wrestling team, I might have better than a 4th place medal. And yeah, I didn’t think they gave a medal for forth place either.

Today, I’ve learned to get mad and channel it. If we are pitching an account against another firm, then the inevitable outcome is that someone will win and someone will lose. And while your nemesis is not so directly responsible for your loss of market share, mind share and profit that you foam at the mouth at the mention of their name, the inevitable results (loss of bonus, decline in job security, addiction to Pepcid) should be enough to make you see red. It has always amazed me how some people insist on being so sedate and spineless at the idea of competition. It must have been that wave of politically correct gameplaying that swept the playgrounds of the late eighties. People were taught games where no one won or lost and basically you just ran around with a ball and had no real goal or objective. When I played seven-year-old soccer for the rainbows in Great Bridge, we went for the shins and throats because Chesapeake pizza always tastes better after you won. Not to mention, when you’ve had a chance to lose, you learn how to make losing into a winning strategy. The hurt and fear of losing can steel any effort into a hardened attack machine and often one learns more from a loss than a win.

I am going to go ahead and give the disclaimer now that I don’t advocate for people truly hating people. By the virtue of my faith and beliefs, I would not want nor condone you to take my words to mean you should go out and find someone to hate. However, hate in the spirit of lively competition is another thing altogether and that’s what I’m talking about when I say you should hate something. In such spirit, I hate the Norcross blue devils, The Florida Gators, all of my clients’ competitors and most consultants and ad agencies I’ve ever pitched against.


There are plenty of books on winning and competition out there and I really don’t want to microwave and serve their leftovers. What I can serve up is my few suggestions about competition and enemies in marketing that I have learned from rugged battles with a few of my most beloved archnemeses.

Don’t be a communist.

In Rocky 4, Ivan Drago was six-and-a-half feet of corded hate. Drago was just mean about everything except perhaps steroids and mother Russia. When Drago killed Apollo Creed, it was just unfocused hate against unfocused buffoonery. Enter Balboa. When Rocky sought to take down the towering socialist, he focused his hate right at Drago. He moved to a drafty farm house in what appeared to be Siberia. He ran in the snow while the KGB followed behind him. He carried the weight of the American ideal that struggle and hard work pay off in proportion. While Drago trained in his state of the art gym/planetarium, Rocky was lifting potato sacks full of rocks, chopping wood and drawing faces on Drago’s picture. When was the last time you did that? No, not ran from the KGB- I mean drew faces on a particularly despicable enemy? It’s liberating. Go do it right now.

The point is focus. Rocky knew who he wanted to beat and he focused that motivation in its highest concentration at the point of decision. That is an old, tried and true military concept and it deserves repeating. When battling an opponent, concentrate the build of your resources at the decision point. Drago hated everyone and everything sans the motherland. Rocky just hated Drago and perhaps Russia. Drago spread it out, Rocky concentrated and Rocky won.

Just because you don’t have an enemy doesn’t mean that someone else hasn’t pegged you as theirs.

There will always be a company that wants what you have. They want your clients and your reputation. They want your distribution and your R and D staff. They want your marketing and credibility with the public. You can pretend all you want, but the truth is somebody is gunning for you right now and it is better the flush them out in the open where you can get a clear shot.

I’m not saying to get all paranoid. Competition is healthy for a business and competitors can be as valuable as allies, if not more. So don’t cower in your office waiting on the attack. Instead, do a little recon and see who sniffs around your camp. You might do a little sniffing around their camp as well.

Then again the enemy may lie in more sinister places. Like in the interdepartmental feuds over what a company really does and how it should be communicated to the outside world. Or perhaps the stagnation of a brand that begins a momentous slide into shrinkage. I know the old saying says better the enemy you know than the one you don’t know but any of you who’ve taken on a home grown enemy probably agree you rather face Drago with your hands tied behind your back.

A true friend is a trusted enemy.

Friends in business are a curious phenomenon. I’m not talking Brian who goes with you to get a latte and scones. I’m talking about strategic partners and supposed allies who agree to relationships that essentially boils down to the equivalent commitment of they won’t let the dog poop in your yard if you have the same respect with your dog and their yard. In the Godfather, the Don said it: keep your enemies closer. At least an enemy is committed and has unwavering faithfulness to hating you. You can rely and even plan on your archnemesis’ disdain. All the while your supposed friends are working up other deals with other friends that all of a sudden propel them to stardom and you to the doldrums. Oops. Their bad!

Controlling your fate as it relates to your partners and competitors is an art that is tough to master. The easy place to start is to follow some rules the Don might have suggested. Be in no ones pocket. Be beholden to no one and make no excuses for protecting your businesses. Attack the weak before they get strong. Take every threat seriously. Don’t let your guard down for anyone whose fate is not inexplicably linked to the fate of the organization. Use the competitors’ force against them. And remember, while it is not war, it is how you make a living and provide for your family. If that is not worth a little fight once and a while, I’m not sure what is.

I wish Maura would just go ahead and kick that girl in the mouth.

It has been many years since Maura has seen her archnemesis, but it’s not the same with me. Some of my ardent critics are now close confidants. I have truly enjoyed the competition and now friendship of people I once pondered sending a poisonous snake to in the mail. Oh, don’t scoff. I know you’ve dreamed up worse.

So do it right now. Get a picture of the competition and hang it in the company bathroom for everyone to deface. Put it on a dart board or put a dialogue bubble coming from the mouth, unleashing a torrent of self-depreciating obscenities. If you don’t have an archnemesis, invent one. Take all that is despicable in your sector and embody it in a symbol of ugly stuffed animal or stupid trinket. Take your enemy and your disdain for them seriously.

Because it is better to have hated and won
Than to have not cared and lost anyway.


Snowden Tatarski is a marketing consultancy based in Athens, Georgia that focuses on the development and implementation strategic marketing plans. The company offers marketing research, marketing strategies, advertising development, media strategy and planning, sales consultation, trade communication strategies and the production of advertising, sales collateral, broadcast and interactive systems and materials. Information online at www.sn-ta.com

War. Huh. Good Gosh Yall.

The Cola War has been long and tiresome. There have been chemical weapons (Crystal Pepsi), dirty bombs (Christina Aguilera) and, most recently at Coke, a few insurgents. Yet still each year, a few inches are lost and a few are gained and to what end? The campaign’s budgets are only exceeded by the ambition to have a cola replace organized religion. You know, “catch that Pepsi spirit.”

North Korea isn’t the only one testing new weapons.

So now, Pepsi’s got them a newfangled brand idea and they intend to use it no matter what the UN says. The concept is “Feel the Pepsi” and its aim is to capture the volume and sheer awe of their 1970’s spirit catching effort. My recommendation: bring back epic “spokes dancer” Michael Jackson, incorporate “Taste of the New Generation” concepts and release a slightly modified campaign called “Feel the Youth”.

Doesn’t that just grab you?

This cola war has been studied for so long it’s gone flat. The once scenic market space of soda is now a wasteland of fads, slogans, once revolutionary media and aging pop stars. But the war has its lessons and we should take heed. The cola war cut the teeth of many a brand manager and the biggest lesson might be in a battle that has yet to happen.

Many, many years ago, the generals of Coca-Cola developed a secret weapon that would surely undo the enemy. This weapon was developed from years of frontline battles and its early tests assured a damaging blow to the competition. Coke loaded the weapon into its superior deployment system. They flew directly over the target and opened the bomb bay doors. The weapon released with a roar, plummeted towards the earth, hit the ground and failed to explode. Pepsi executives approached the weapon and admired its shining outer case proudly displaying “New Coke.”

What did Pepsi’s generals do with the unexploded ordinance? They hurled it over the line right into the Coke encampment after which it exploded with a ferocity not seen on aisle 12 in a long time. Coke’s bomb had exploded in their own face.

Every commander is expected to write a post mortem and Coke’s brass was no different. It seems every MBA class has something to say about New Coke. They spoke of the consumers who rebelled and favor the way Coke “used to be.” They reported the protest against changing a brand which people had used to define themselves. They acknowledged that it seemed that sabotage from the most loyal consumers was New Coke’s undoing. We now study that battle under the mantra of “the consumer is king”.

The dust has settled on aisle 12. Cola has become more of a cold war and the stockpiling of arms in other sectors seems to be the way of the foreseeable future. Both sides now have the “water bomb” and both sides have built alliances with major delivery systems. But what did Coke really learn? Will those who refuse to listen to history surely repeat it?

The next cola war: A prediction.

It will be a day not unlike today. People will gather in a conference room in one of the cola giant’s bunkers and amidst discussion the realization that things just aren’t what they used to be will appear. Awareness that distribution channels have changed, brand perception has shifted and consumers are just not who they used to be will creep over the room and set off terror within. The first strike will be a test.

One product will be repositioned. Perhaps steering Dr. Pepper in a nostalgia direction or maybe it’s a new way to “Do the Dew.” However it happens, the intention of the first strike is to make sure the weapons work after all those years in the silos. Will the bottlers march in step? With today’s fractured audience, can we really get the air power in the brief window available for a sweeping attack? And will Coke use the secret weapon?

The secret weapon was revealed in the New Coke attack. Consumers stood up and said they wanted a product that understood their heritage and roots. Consumers hoarded the Classic Coke as if their very identity was being stripped away and in a way, it was. There is real potency is the identification of heritage, enduring values and respect for a way of life that Coke seems more able to invoke than anyone or any brand.

The big lessons from the cola wars.

Get good intelligence.

There seems to be a tendency to want to sterilize and commoditize market intelligence. Coke’s focus groups said the product tasted better, so why the flop? Coke assumed that the consumer affinity was all about taste and ignored the more important intangible of persona and self identification. Perhaps more “feet on the street” intelligence would have warned against a disaster.

Keep your eyes in the boat.

Pepsi and Coke have barreled after some products with such focus that other opportunities get left unguarded. Tea, energy drinks and water are all sectors that Coke and Pepsi could have owned considering the pre-existing relationships and logistical systems. Concentration elsewhere have made Arizona, Red Bull and Evian little nuclear powers of their own.

3. Ideas are the most powerful weapon.

The reason that beverage sectors have developed in spite of the dominance of the two big kids is because of ideas. Ideas have changed the balance in many a war and marketers are wise to be on the lookout for good ideas. One need not be a maverick entrepreneur working in a garage to get great ideas. Procter & Gamble has an entire system dedicated to the best ideas money can buy. You don’t have as many successes as P&G and not recognize the power of great thinking.

Charge!!!!!

The big one is coming. Swelling arsenals and the stoking of quarterly stock expectations means it is inevitable that the two biggest kids in the lunchroom are going to have to fight. Pepsi has their posse called the new generation. They’ve got a standing army and every soldier in it feels the Pepsi. And then there’s Coke. They’re no youngster. They’ve got the muscle and the mean. They have the weapon. But will they use it?



Snowden Tatarski is a brand consultancy based in Athens, Georgia that focuses on the development and implementation of the whole brand experience. The agency offers marketing research, marketing strategies, advertising creative development, media strategy and planning, sales consultation and the production of advertising, sales collateral, broadcast and interactive systems and materials. Information online at www.sn-ta.com