Chapter 21. Marketing is courtship, not combat
War is often used as a metaphor for marketing. It’s not uncommon to view headlines in the business press such as “Texas is Prime Turf in Truck War” or “ExpressJet Adopts Guerilla Marketing.” Books such as Marketing Warfare continue to reinforce marketing as combat, with discussions of “flanking maneuvers” and “frontal assaults.”
Such thinking is inevitably competitor-focused rather than consumer-focused. After all, war is essentially about destroying or subjugating the competition. Being competitor-focused leads to “me-too” imitation products (gee, if your competition offers this product, you should too), copying strategies (under the assumption that you don’t know what you should be doing, but somehow ...
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