REPOSITIONING: Marketing in an Era of Competition, Change and Crisis

CHAPTER SEVENA CRISIS CAN CHANGE THE GAME

In many ways, we’ve gone beyond the unpredictable. We live in the age of the unthinkable. That happens to be the title of a book by Joshua Cooper Ramo that everyone should read. The subtitle pretty much lays out what marketers face: “Why the new world disorder constantly surprises us and what we can do about it.”

Recent times have certainly educated us to the fact that we live in a time of uncertainty or crisis. And these crises come in two forms: macro and micro.

The macro variety would be the financial crisis that has swept the world, affecting just about everyone. As previously mentioned, a micro crisis would be one that threatens an entire company, such as GM or AIG. In either case, you wake up one ...