Dodo Loves Marketing

Only five years ago, most markets were dominated by a few leading companies, mighty icons with household names that seemed immortal. How quaint all that now seems. Today’s competitors are far more numerous, able, and fierce than ever before because they have to be: What used to be outstanding performance is now the norm.

A useful analogy is the sport of speed skating. In the 1980 Winter Olympics, American Eric Heiden accomplished an unprecedented feat—he won five gold medals Though it was unbeatable in 1980, twenty-five competitors surpassed Heiden’s record in Nagano, Japan, eighteen years later in the 5,000-meter race, and did so by at least 12 seconds. The gold medalist, Gianni Romme of the Netherlands, covered the distance in 6 minutes 22 seconds, eclipsing Heiden’s time by an unbelievable 40 seconds. For that competition, Heiden would not have even qualified. ..more

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In an age in which customers are scarce, any company’s best practices seldom remain proprietary. Business models are shamelessly imitated with inner corporate workings becoming public knowledge. Best practices travel at Internet speed.

People are becoming masters at imitation. If you don’t have a good idea yourself, you can always knock off someone else’s product. An imitation is not necessarily an exact copy. You use details to create a difference: the look, the product extension, the packaging—anything that can make the other company’s idea look less new And this is easier than it used to be. If once you could hold on to a secret formula for years or even decades, now it’s a matter of months or days before your competitors catch up and replicate it. ..more

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Innovation has become so commonplace that scarcely any product survives long enough to age. New ideas and items are born obsolete. The cycle never stops. Accordingly, customers and suppliers alike grow dizzy in their futile pursuit of the next best thing.

Last year, consumers in the United States were inundated by roughly twenty-three thousand new packaged goods—about 450 per week. Revlon, Inc., alone introduced four hundred new items. Combine that with the thousands of other new consumer products that appeared, from computer advances to car models, and you get a sense of the plethora of choices, a flood that would have daunted Noah. ..more

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