Battling it out at the bazaar

It's a war out there. Businesses vying with each other for mindshare, consumer recall, volume growth.... And in the cut-throat battle for market leadership, who better to help you plan your strategies than the master tactician himself?

Sun Tzu died more than 2,500 years ago but, next to Chairman Mao, he's still the best-known Chinese. Sun Tzu was a general in the Chinese army around 500 BC. He is believed to be the author of The Art of War, the best-known treatise on military tactics.

Although knowledge of Sun Tzu reached Europe some time before the French Revolution, he's shot up the popularity charts only since the 1970s. The American military has made The Art of War the subject of serious study and diplomats like Henry Kissinger made reference to it often.

But can he be of use in the market battlefield? Yes, believe Gerald and Steven Michaelson, authors of Sun Tzu Strategies for Marketing: 12 Essential Principles for Winning the War for Customers.

The basic tenet of Sun Tzu's philosophy is that if your strategy is well-founded, you will win "" and if you have a truly great strategy, you will win without fighting. Overcome your opponent with strategic wisdom "" war is won by foreknowledge, calculation, deception and manoeuvre. And those are tactics that apply equally well to business and everyday life.

But don't expect a bloodied and battered tome full of the heat and dust from the frontline: Sun Tzu Strategies is the sip-your-margarita-at-the-pool's-edge-and-soak-up-the-sun version of a battleplan. Sun Tzu was not a thinker who advocated sweating it out.

On the contrary, the ancient Chinese's treatise was more about how to avoid war than how to fight it. Team Michaelson sticks to that gameplan in its boiled-down version. "To win 100 victories in 100 battles is not the acme of skill. To subdue the enemy without fighting is the supreme excellence" stated Sun Tzu a few thousand years ago. Now, it is interpreted as: "The ultimate marketing strategy is attained with a product or service that is so unique it has no competition." Mahatma Gandhi would have been proud.

Sun Tzu Strategies is organised simply. The 12 principles detailed by the authors each take up a chapter, followed by one of "practical marketing examples from successful managers". That's essentially short pieces by diverse writers such as professors of marketing and CEOs and vice-presidents of different companies.

And the 12 principles? Again, nothing too taxing. Honour your customer; know your market as well as you know yourself; keep an eye on the aim; and find a good place to park. A strategic position is important, stress the writers, because it will help you spring surprise attacks on your opponent "" engage in frontal attacks only when your strength is overwhelming and you can maintain momentum.

Guerrilla warfare works every time. Drawing on examples from real life, and quoting from sources as diverse as other Chinese strategists, modern-day thinkers and even the Bible, Sun Tzu Strategies is an interesting amalgam of old-fashioned thinking and cutting-edge strategies (nothing too strenuous, of course). Some of it may even work.

But regardless of whether The Art of War is more suited for the battleground, the boardroom or the bazaar, there's one rule no executive can afford to forget. The greatest cause of defeat is victory: successful soldiers have no room for complacency.

That's sound advice, Jack Trout would tell you. In a world where you need to constantly run faster just to stay at the same place, you can't afford to let down your guard even for a moment. And here's a little nugget of information the guru of marketing hands out for the reader to chew and digest: the average human mind cannot digest more than seven units of anything at a time. And the average American supermarket has more than 40,000 stock keeping units. Talk about the tyranny of choice.

If you are the marketing brains for a product, your job then is to ensure you are one of the seven that registers in the mind, and not part of the out-in-the-cold 39,993. The market's a tough taskmaster. So, what works? It's not about TQM, BPR, SCM or CRM. Those who win in today's business environment have their business basics right. They constantly focus on creating reasons why you should buy from them and not their competitor. It's as simple as that.

And that's where strategy comes in, from deciding the competitive direction and product planning to the line of communication with consumers. Ho hum. As Trout himself points out, in the past 30 years "there have been 21,995 books written about strategic planning and marketing". But "" of course "" Trout is different.

For one, there's his definition of strategy: "What makes you unique and what is the best way to put that difference into the minds of your customers and prospects". If that sounds suspiciously like marketing to you, it's probably because Trout declares marketing and strategy must be intertwined for a business is to be successful.

Does Trout on strategy say anything vastly different from Trout on marketing or Trout on positioning or Trout on specialisation? Not really. This is a connect-the-dots version of all his previous books (and thoughts).

Reading Trout on Strategy is like reading a condensed version of his earlier works: Positioning, Marketing Warfare, The New Positioning and The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing. Trout is a witty writer, and he knows his subject inside out. But if you're familiar with his works, be prepared for a strong sense of deja vu.

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Sun Tzu Strategies for Marketing

Gerald A Michaelson and Steven W Michaelson
Tata McGraw-Hill
Price Rs195; Pages: 244

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Trout on Strategy

Jack Trout
Tata McGraw-Hilll
Price: Not mentioned
Pages:159