| synopsis |
| The Deep Blue Sea of Marketing |
| Ashley Byrd |
 When I was a reporter for NPR in South Carolina, I was able to land many interesting stories by staying away - no, running away - from the crowd of reporters at events and interviews. I did not often follow the scripts of media handlers and so discovered there are many sides to a story AND people want to hear them.
In Blue Ocean Strategy, authors W. Chan Kim and Renee Mauborgne advise taking the same approach when it comes to staying away from another teeming pool of sharks: marketing pros who try to compete within the established and accepted parameters. They call these parameters "red oceans." Blue oceans are, on the other hand, "untapped…unknown market space."
The scholars from the global business school, INSEAD (pronounced IN-SEE-ADD), in this very easy-to-digest book, take a look at successful companies around the world. In essence, these blue ocean navigators not only think outside of the box of conventional marketing wisdom, but create a new box - or a new shape entirely.
This synopsis should serve as a teaser, because anyone entering the market these days could benefit from reading and discussing this book (and it's easy to find now, published by Harvard Business School Press). You'll enjoy the case studies of certain companies who have had the capacity - and tenacity - to create their own blue oceans. All of them, and their billion dollar bottom lines, will be familiar to you, further proof that their strategies work. For instance:
- Cirque du Soleil redefined the circus experience
- Texas-based Curves is the anti-health-club health club
- Home Depot first invited Americans to do-it-yourself (with their help, of course)
- CNN proved to us something we did not know: we want news available to us ALL the time.
And these are just a few. Once you see and actually chart the marketing approach to these companies, you'll be sure to notice others. Matter of fact, back here in Columbia, I can think of a street folk artist named Ernest Lee whose chickens painted on plywood now appear in million-dollar homes. Lee eschewed a more traditional route to artist notoriety, and instead drove his trailer to busy intersections and became a cult hero.
Blue Ocean Strategy will, in detail, help the reader identify and formulate strategy and it's worth the read. In the meantime, here are a few (just a few) of my favorite points:
- Reach beyond existing demand. Avoid creating tiny, fragmented target markets and instead "build on powerful commonalities." Look for the "noncustomer" and go get them.
- "Align the whole system of a firm's activities in pursuit of differentiation and low cost." This works best with companies that are internally driven. This means that all employees have sense of the values and mission of the company. This means overcoming "organizational hurdles and red-ocean" thinking throughout the company.
- If strategists (you) actually draw a curve of the company's values, they should have factors that stand apart and necessarily diverge from the company's competitors.
To continue the metaphor, then, don't listen for the sound of the sea you know. Create a new, larger audience. In this high-tech age, the possibilities are as vast as the ocean. Jump in, the water's fine!
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