Hi! Managers: In the month of Love, make it a point to show a little to your competitors

In today’s markets, we have seen many industries in many parts of the world struggling with upcoming challenges. Globally, we can’t avoid the challenge of the mature markets in the Western world, while in Asia we still see impressive growth, though many challenging signals have vividly outshone the bright opportunities, such as incremental labour and production cost rises and capability gaps in the labour market.
One thing that almost all markets need to face and can’t avoid is the threat of competition. Today, competition is fierce and aggressive. A sense of urgency is required to ensure you are able to keep up with your competitors. Hence your decisions require in-depth understanding and careful thinking, which can be a metaphor of a love relationship between a couple.
Why do we need to love our competitors? Because it helps create excitement in the market through the introduction of new campaigns and products. Once you have enticed your competitors to play with you, just like courting your loved one, it makes a great impact on consumers who enjoy a variety of choices, resulting in mutually helping grow the overall industry.
In contrast, if you aim at your competitors like enemies and try to eliminate them without understanding them, it seems you are formulating your marketing plan just to fulfil your arrogant winning mindset over them. This is a bit of a distortion of marketing doctrine, where you overlook consumers as the centrepiece of everything.
I would like to give you a few examples from my experience with Procter & Gamble Thailand. In 2006, we introduced leave-on conditioner for haircare products. We influenced competitors to play together in the industry. Players in our industry have been working hard to understand consumers, and we also tried to understand one another, what the game plan of each would be. This is a good example of how in the end consumers have enjoyed different choices of haircare products offered by the industry, resulting in the hair-conditioner business growing by more than two times. The investment injected into the market has really driven it to the next level.
Another example is the launch of Downy in Thailand a few years ago, while P&G Thailand was not a key player in the fabric-enhancer category before. The market was dominated by key players offering diluted formulas. Downy, a concentrated-formula fabric enhancer, was introduced into the market not only to change consumer behaviour but to initiate a change of the game plan in the market landscape. This launch of Downy has attracted key players, both local and global ones, to join in introducing new concentrated formulas. It has not only provided new offerings for consumers, which has brought more value for money to them, but also more investment to upsize the fabric-enhancer market to the next level. Today the market is very well balanced, and consumers are totally familiar with both diluted and concentrated formulas, while Downy has become a key player in the industry.
To love your competitors means putting in efforts to understanding them through marketing analysis or research. It also means you have cast your eyes on them like your lover by following or tracking their movements in the market. When they are irrationally aggressive in the market, it is as if you are having a fight with your lover. Hence you need deliberately to look back on what you have done and vice versa. This will give you the big picture of how to handle and nurture the relationship along the way. In the end, the benefits reward both you and the consumers. All players will have a chance to earn bigger market size and business opportunities while consumers enjoy new choices and offerings from every player in the market.
In the month of love, have you started sharing your love with your competitors and trying to understand them as your loved one yet? It’s not too late, as love is a good thing to start – and it’s not too late to wish you a belated lovely Valentine’s Day.

Medhee Jarumaneeroj influencer marketing & external relations leader, Asia Male Grooming, Procter & Gamble Asia.