Now here’s a thing - Bet you didn’t know that there are ‘Chief Strategy Officers’ out there [we used to call them Strategy Directors in UK corporations]! McK Q says they are turning up in organizations of all kinds as companies struggle to balance their short- and long-term goals in an increasingly complex and volatile [...]

I am reminded of what may be one of the most dangerous articles on competitive strategy I ever read. ‘Hardball: Five Killer Strategies for Trouncing the Competition.’, Stalk and Lachenauer, Harvard Business Review, April 2004, pp. 62-71. This urges management to deploy five strategies ‘in bursts of ruthless intensity’:

devastate rivals’ profit sanctuaries
plagiarise with pride
deceive the [...]

I am amazed how little companies seem to know about competitors, and how they lack any specific plans for dealing with specific rivals – most just drag on, trying to capture small points of market share here and there from wherever and whoever they can pick it up. Such broad-spectrum ‘competing’ is expensive, takes for [...]

I see Wrigley, of chewing-gum and mints fame, accepted a $23 billion takeover from Mars, which includes Snickers, M&M’s and Uncle Ben’s rice among its brands, making it the world’s biggest confectioner. Strange then how we keep being told that take-overs are mostly a bad idea for the acquiring company, with all the benefits [or [...]

Good to see Strategy+Business looking at ROI on marketing in a grown-up way. The proliferation of digital media and the fragmentation of audiences have rendered audience exposure, the traditional currency of advertising, much less compelling. [Was that ever a useful indicator? – It got measured because that’s what the agencies could deliver – whether their [...]