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Misha Cornes is Director of Strategy at Organic, a leading digital marketing agency that is a wholly owned subsidiary of Omnicom. With over 15 years of experience, Misha translates strategic marketing goals into exceptional online experiences for companies like Sprint, Mitsubishi Motors North America, and Bank of America. He provides leadership to cross-disciplinary creative teams to ensure that every project is rooted in a deep understanding of customer needs. Prior to Organic, he was a management consultant with Booz Allen Hamilton. Misha also serves as editor-in-chief of Organic's blog, ThreeMinds.

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The Underdog Marketing Theory: Embracing Success but Never Forgetting What Got You There

Written on
March 29th 2007
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by Misha Cornes  |
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Social networking offers an even more compressed look at the perils of climbing to the top of the heap. When MySpace first took on Friendster, Facebook, and others, it played the underdog role to perfection. MySpace succeeded in part because it seemed new and different. Its open design system and decidedly lo-fi look made the site ownable and more personable than the competition. By the time Fox entered the picture, MySpace was no longer an underdog company — it was a major player. Today, the next generation of social networking sites are niche offerings that are determined to maintain a connection to a core user base. They are the anti-MySpace: homegrown and clubby destinations for those in the know.

Examples abound: Club Penguin is an avatar-based tweener site where kids congregate to build igloos and show off their handiwork. Stickam mashes up webcam voyeurism and social networking to create the ultimate look-at-me experience for modern teens. Takkle is a site for high school athletes to show off their prowess to other jocks (and to college recruiters). MingleNow is aimed at single club-goers, and its over-21 membership makes it a natural fit for a partnership with Anheuser-Busch. Eons targets baby boomers with a promise to “celebrate life on the flipside of 50″. Wink is simply a directory of some of the largest social networks that allows you to locate contacts quickly. Each of these sites is chipping away at MySpace’s dominance- and its ad dollars.

As a marketer, you may feel that promoting a dominant brand is a great problem to have. But in the current environment, your brand can move from scrappy upstart to crumbling monolith in the space of a few short years. Or perhaps your or your client is a challenger brand that needs to stay relevant as it grows.

Here are some techniques that may help underdogs sustain their relevance and appeal.

Practice Scarcity and Strategy

(Forced) scarcity is an important trend in traditional retailing that is finding expression online. Megabrands like Adidas still offer limited runs of certain products to maintain a sense of exclusivity. Gmail started the trend of invitation-only beta launches, and now websites like Forzieri.com, an online purveyor of luxury fashion goods, are offering private shopping areas as well. Could your brand stay relevant with a limited product run targeted at its core customers?

Savor the Underdog Role

Follow the example of Caribou Coffee of Minneapolis, the nation’s second largest specialty coffee retailer. You may never have heard of them, but that may not be a bad thing. The company has pursued a steady regionally-focused development strategy, quietly going public in the process. It’s still the local coffee company for many Midwesterners. When Starbucks abruptly stopped accepting a sharable coupon that it had emailed out to all its employees, claiming that it had been distributed far beyond the company’s original intent, Caribou stepped in to honor it. What can your underdog brand to acknowledge and even celebrate being #2?

Take a Look at Challenger Brands

Don’t be too proud to take ideas from challenger brands and implement them as your own on a larger scale. The Pepsi-Cola company has been masterful at examining local trends in the beverage industry and turning them into new products on a national scale. Its investment in flavored waters and non-carbonated diet drinks has the company well-positioned in the successor battle to the Cola Wars. What can you learn from the strategies and tactics of smaller rivals?

Remember, You’re Only as Good as Your Last Hit

In the tech industry in particular, brands can appear out of nowhere, rise to prominence, and fall out of favor in less time than it took Britney Spears to go from pop star to rehab poster child. Take a lesson from the cut-throat world of Hollywood. Embrace change, dare to keep innovating, and never forget what put you on the map in the first place.



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Reader Comments.

Misha,

Great post.

Your summary line - Embrace change, dare to keep innovating, and never forget what put you on the map in the first place - should be posted on cube walls and corner offices all over the tech world.

Shawn

Posted by Shawn Freeman | 3:24 pm on March 30, 2007.

Misha,

Great post.

Many of us in the world of tech marketing would be well served to follow the advice from your summary sentence — “Embrace change, dare to keep innovating, and never forget what put you on the map in the first place.”

Shawn

Posted by Shawn Freeman | 3:28 pm on March 30, 2007.

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