← The Marketing Millennials
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- [00:02]
A
What is up marketing besties? We are kicking off a brand new mini series called Go to Marketplace where we break down one go to market move in under 10 minutes. Real tactics, zero fluff, Just the kind of stuff you actually use to launch smarter, grow faster and win your market. And joining me for this whole series is someone who lives and breathes Go to market, Tamara Graminski. She's an award winning product marketer, former VP of product marketing at Kajabi, and one of the sharpest minds in the game. Let's get into it. Welcome back, Tamara. Are you ready to show us how challenger brands can win against bigger players?
- [00:46]
B
Absolutely. Thanks for having me back. Super excited to be here. As a product marketer, I've spent a lot of time thinking about competitors and the competitive market. And I see so many companies and marketers just obsess over their competition. They're tracking every move. They're like down to the words and the taglines that people are using. They're trying to copy their playbook and it's like a race to the bottom. Brands end up all sounding the exact same. Right? We've all seen this, but some of my favorite challenger brands, they actually do the opposite. So a challenger brand is someone who comes out and there's already a competitor who kind of like owns the space. Right. The best challenger brands, they actually, they don't try to copy the incumbent. They contrast themselves against the competition. So they actually turn like their competition's weakness into their own strength. So today I want to break down for you a few things. First, how to position yourself against a bigger competitor. If there is one in the market, then why? I think the best go to market strategies create contrast, not copycats. And then we'll help the audience understand how they can run a competitor contrast campaign in like three simple steps. How does that sound?
- [02:00]
A
Sounds great. And I want to dig into the basics because there's a term that you, you've said is competitor contrast marketing. So I want to first dive into why that is just such a powerful go to market play.
- [02:15]
B
Totally. So competitor contrast marketing is all about owning the differences between you and your competition and not hiding from those differences, but actually making those differences be the lead in this story. Right. If we think back to so much marketing that we see today, most brands try to compete on features, they're like, I have this, they don't have that. But most buyers don't think in feature list, especially if most of your check marks are already being met. Really, buyers buy based on a feeling. When you experience a Brand, whether it's something you buy as a consumer or a tool that you use at work, you know, this feels like it was built for me or this isn't quite for me. I don't feel the vibe. It's like vibe buying. And so the best go to market teams. They don't just highlight what makes them better than the competition, they highlight what makes them different. And this difference has to be meaningful to the actual audience that they're trying to sell to. And so I brought an example with me today, and I think the best example of this is the Mac versus PC kind of legendary competition and campaign that happened.
- [03:27]
A
For anybody who don't know this or need a refresher, I'm glad we're breaking this one down because this one could go in the history books, and I think it actually is in the history books of marketing of compute2 computer companies at the day going at each other. But I want to go into why and what made this such a great example of contrast marketing.
- [03:51]
B
So Apple comes out in the market and again, they could have just made the decision to like compete based on the specs of their device versus Microsoft's device, right? So they could have said we have a better processor, we have a faster operating system, we look cooler, we're more sleek. But instead of just doing that feature list selling, they made it all about identity. And so to do this, they personified the two brands. Mac was this cool, creative, easygoing guy. And then PC was stiff, corporate boring. Like think the Office TV show, right? And so to help bring these personalities to life, they created the campaign that you just referenced, which was the Get A Mac campaign. And this was actually a series of commercials featuring two characters. And they lasted for years. It started as just one simple campaign, but if you remember, Mac was played by Justin Long, the actor. And he was young, cool, he was like really popular at the time. And then PC was played by John Hodgman and he was that stiff, awkward guy. And as I mentioned, so it was a big TV commercial campaign, but it was more than just ads. It was entertainment, right? That was like the brilliance of this. People actually wanted to tune in to see how the storylines were continuing. We got like attached to the characters. We actually wanted to see what was happening. And then in each story they were kind of like subtly contrasting why Mac was better than PC. So it was an entertaining storyline with kind of like a thoughtful message about the product in kind of hidden inside of it.
- [05:35]
A
I mean, Steve Jobs, like famously said that we don't compete on speed. And fees. We're competing against something deeper or something. Basically they competed on brand. And he understood brand and positioning better than anybody else. But I'm glad that Mac didn't just say we are better because that is the classic SaaS response. We are better. We're the number one. We are the best at X, Y and Z. They made PC really look like the outdated cool, unhip brand that if you were cool, come hang out with my club. If you're not cool, go hang out with bc.
- [06:16]
B
That's exactly it. This was a massive brand play. And to your point, it wasn't about price, it wasn't about features, it was about creating a sense of belonging, which I think is what a good brand does. Right. As I mentioned at the beginning, if it's a brand and you feel like you belong with that brand, you feel like you're being drawn together, magnetized to it versus if it's a brand that you don't resonate with, it's almost like you're being repelled against it. And so what Mac wanted to or Apple wanted to do with this Mac campaign was they wanted to attract you. If you were a creative person, a designer, a cool techie person, they wanted you to be a Mac person. And so that was really the power. To go back to the beginning of the competitor contrast here, Apple made it easy for customers to choose sides. It was clear which side you belonged on.
- [07:04]
A
And I mean they did it through everything, not only their marketing, from the little detail of showing the Apple sign on the back of a Mac computer when you're at a coffee shop to having white headphones walking around. It wasn't only a brand play, they, they took the brand. And I think that's what people mistake a lot of things with brand positioning is, brand is through everything. I mean, positioning is through has to be in the product, it has to be in the messaging, it has to be in all touch points. It can't just be saying one thing and not acting that way. But I know I want brands to do this easily or have a playbook. So I know. Do you have a, a three step playbook that someone could take today and do this for their brand?
- [07:52]
B
Yeah, I brought a few things that people can steal from Apple. So if you're looking to create contrast marketing against your competitor, the first thing you want to do is you want to kind of find your opposite. So you want to look at that dominant player who is in the space, who is your biggest competitor and you want to understand what do they stand for. So you're going to analyze them as a brand, as a product, what's their personality, what's their positioning as you just mentioned. And then you want to ask yourself how do we stand apart from that, right? So if they're corporate, maybe we lean into being scrappy or if they're super feature heavy, maybe we lean into being simple and easier, kind of like what Apple did. So that's step one. Step two is after you've done your analysis, you want to actually turn their strength into your advantage. So often we look at like the weaknesses of everyone else and then we try to fit into that space but we just want to flip the script here. So every competitor's biggest strength can be their biggest weakness. So if they're the biggest in the market, which they probably are if you're trying to run this playbook, they're probably also the slowest. Think about how long it takes for Salesforce to develop new features versus you know, a 10 person startup, right? If they're trying to compete on price and they're the most affordable, maybe they're actually not the best quality and that's something you can contrast on. Either way you want to find the thing that makes them dominant and then flip it to your advantage. And then the third one is you kind of hinted on this earlier is make the contrast obvious. Right? You, your brand promise also needs to kind of live up to the product experience as well. You can't be subtle about this. You need to be clear about the contrast otherwise the message is going to be a bit confusing and so use visuals. I loved your example of like the white headphones. I remember those ads so clearly. Use language and branding for customers to make it easy to pick sides. And as I mentioned, the goal here isn't just to get people to buy you. You want them to reject the alternative to you which naturally brings them to you. And that sense of belonging.
- [09:59]
A
I like that breakdown and I think people, the one thing that if you are going against the incumbent, the lead in the market is you have more wiggle room to do these type of things where when you're the leader, you're trying to protect your lead. I think the best brands, even when they are leaders and you could do this if you're a leader too is go on offense. You can't be defensive even if you get into the lead. So I love how you broke down this playbook and thank you for coming on. And next week we have another one coming. I'll keep it a secret so you all can wait but we have a good episode for next week, so tune in next week for Go to Marketplace. Thanks so much for listening. Keep tuning in to hear more great insights from the coolest marketers from around the world. If you haven't already, make sure to subscribe and follow the Marketing Millennials podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcast. And if you like what you hear, I would greatly appreciate you giving us a five star rating. It helps bring more marketers into our community.