If you are a challenger in a market, the goal is usually to capture customers from competitors (including leaders) and convert non-users into customers. These goals can be achieved by leveraging your strengths and exploiting your competitors’ weaknesses. A unique and underutilized way of exploiting weaknesses in a game is called judo strategy.
Judo is a modern Japanese martial art based on the principle of maximum efficiency with minimum effort. Jigoro Kano, the founder of judo, described the core principles of judo this way: “In short, resisting a stronger opponent will lead to your defeat, while adjusting to and dodging your opponent’s attacks will cause him to lose his balance and weaken your strength. will defeat him. This can apply any relative value of strength, making it possible for a weaker opponent to defeat a significantly stronger opponent.
Applying this principle in the competitive world of business involves three techniques:
1. Move: Shift customers to value skill over size, try to be friendly, and engage in guerrilla warfare by avoiding head-on confrontation.
2. Leverage: Turn a leader’s strengths into weaknesses (e.g., scale -> inability to customize; country -> lack of local knowledge and relationships)
3. Balance: Define the boundaries of the game by where you can win, and play your game (a game that is different from your opponent’s game).
Judo emphasizes using your opponent’s strength and weight to defeat them while conserving your energy and resources. It claims that technology can trump sheer force. When you first hear the words “liquid death,” a lot of nasty things come to mind, but bottled water probably isn’t one of them.
The global bottled water market size is estimated at US$283 billion and is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 6.7%. The market is dominated by large players, including National Beverage Corp.’s LaCroix, PepsiCo Inc.’s Aquafina and Bubly. Big businesses have the size (available almost anywhere), scale (traditional advertising requires a lot of money), and branding to evoke seriousness about life, health, and serenity in raw plastic bottles.
If it took the same approach, Liquid Death wouldn’t be able to successfully compete with its much larger rivals. They used unconventional marketing techniques to take on deep-pocketed competitors and began to carve out a place for themselves in the market by turning the advantages of traditional players into sharp points of contrast. Start with cans that resemble beer or energy drinks, decorated with black and skull illustrations, instead of plastic bottles with soothing images. With a mix of flavors like Mango Chainsaw, Lime and Berry, coupled with their manifesto slogans “Murder Thirst” and “Death by Plastic,” their image breaks the mold.
How about a YouTube video titled “blind test” Two men posted comments online saying “Liquid Death” was the worst water they had ever tasted and were taste tested. What if they chose Liquid Death after a blind taste test of various major bottled waters? For the worst, they would get $1,000. However, if they chose another brand, they would be electrocuted by a 50,000-volt Taser. As the video shows, they were literally electrocuted.
Liquid Death has been released album Titled “The Biggest Hate,” it consists of product reviews that include “I thought it was alcohol” and “Your product is stupid.” Liquid Death turns traditional competitors’ advantages in size, scale, and conservative traditional marketing into disadvantages in the eyes of their target market. as Steve Nelson“No one is doing anything interesting with water branding and messaging. We’re going to be a bee in the hat,” said the vice president of lifestyle marketing.
As you consider your position in the market, ask yourself the following questions:
1. Do we have internal bottlenecks in the form of process issues, dissonance, or lack of urgency that are preventing us from accelerating profitable business growth?
2. How do we turn our key competitors’ strengths into weaknesses in the minds of our target customers?
3. Where should we win?
It’s common to hear people complain that their products or services are too difficult to differentiate. Well, Liquid Death sets the stage for success by distinguishing…water. A study of 25,000 companies over the past 40 years found that companies that focused on differentiation had the top 10% return on assets. As PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel wrote, “All happy companies are different. All failed companies are the same. If you want to create and capture lasting value, don’t build an undifferentiated business. Until Only in death can we tell the difference.
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