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Ignoring this advice from Jeff Bezos

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos is often quoted talking about how he's more interested in focusing on customers than competitors. But is he right?

Clearly just focusing on your competitors isn't the right strategy, but here's why you should at least be aware of what they are doing from a PR / marketing perspective:

• See where competitors are getting press coverage.

It's a great way of seeing titles your press teams should also be targeting and reading. Although don't forget to do some due diligence. For example a competitor for one of my clients was featured in a publication I wasn't familiar with. But when I looked at the site, the reach was extremely low, less than 100 followers, so not worth our resources in pursuing.

• Seeing what you can do differently.

I recently watched a brilliant documentary on Channel 4 called Mad Women - which describes itself as the story of pioneering women making iconic TV ads that changed the world: from Shake n' Vac and Levi's, to the Flake girl in the bath.

In the doc, Daryl Fielding recalls her time as MD at Ogilvy + Mather when working on a new campaign for Dove: "We chose to do more than stand out, we chose to stand alone."

She mentioned how they covered the walls with ads from their competitors and how seeing the imagery prompted them to discuss how the ads made them as women feel as if they didn't measure up and whether it could be a universally held reaction. This led to the creation of Dove's 'The Campaign for Real Beauty' a theme that is still used in marketing today.

So many marketing campaigns could easily be mistaken for a competitor so consider how your messaging can stand alone and not be mistaken for a competitor. As the adage goes, when they zig... you zag.

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Thanks,

Karolina

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