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.