While speaking on Authenticity & Marketing in Belgium recently, I participated in a small dinner for The House of Marketing and a few of its clients. During an extended Q&A period, one of them — an executive with a global company with a household name (literally, since it produces household goods) that you would recognize — asked a question related to competing with another large firm, but one with local roots, and hence thought of as more authentic.
In responding with various actions the company could take, I came to a new realization: the Here-and-Now Space of Chapter 9 could be used for competitive analysis! (I actually helped form one of the first competitive analysis departments at IBM in Rochester, Minnesota, in the early 1980s.)
I recommended that this company analyze the Here-and-Now Space of its key competitor and determine the boundaries around which it could not go and still be perceived as authentic. Then find a set of actions — a new purpose, new offerings, new capabilities, new markets, new demand-generation places, etc. — that would be outside of its competitors execution zone but inside its own. The competitor would not be able to follow without risking its perceived authenticity.
In fact, the best outcome might be one where the company was so successful with this new tack (a trajectory within its Here-and-Now Space) that the competitor did follow or even copy it, and hence become inauthentic in the minds of its customers!
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