Eating the Big Fish: How Challenger Brands Can Compete Against Brand Leaders (Adweek Book) [Hardcover]

The title of this book comes from an advert from Avis, the car rental firm, published at a time of planned growth. It positioned Avis as a small fish being chased by a bigger one--a bigger car hire firm. They had to stay ahead or be swallowed. Morgan calls Avis and others like them "Challenger Brands" or second-raters, and he examines 40 of them in this book. His aim is to identify their common marketing strands as they find themselves in an increasingly vulnerable position. By using the lessons revealed in the book, second-raters can develop strategies to consolidate and, if they want to (they don't always), compete with the leaders. The book is divided into three sections. The relatively short opening one outlines the challenges facing the second-raters, but the real meat is in the much larger section two where Morgan lays out his Eight Credos of Challenger Brands, their key marketing features. The third and final section, again short, is very practical. It shows how any company can use the Eight Credos as part of a two day practical exercise to start improving their own market position. With wide ranging examples from both the US and Europe, Morgan stresses time and again that you can learn from those outside your own market as well as those within it. He makes his points very well indeed, revealing that second-raters will have to operate very differently from market leaders if they are to survive. --Sandra Vogel

: "Although out last year, Eating the Big Fish, is one of the most stimulating books on brands and has grown to become a must read." (Marketing Business – Year′s Best Books, January 2001)

"...full of such useful ideas that a whole generation of marketing folk bang on about [it]"  (Campaign, Friday 23rd November 2007)

"Always find your brands in the slipstream of the market leaders? Well this could be the book for you." (The Drum, October 17th 2008)

"...full of such useful ideas that a whole generation of marketing folk bang on about [it]"  (Campaign, Friday 23rd November 2007)

"In 1986, the Levi's(r) Dockers(r) brand challenged the biggest fish in the men's apparel sea, Haggar. And we beat the pants off them! In his new book, Adam Morgan adroitly presents many of the same fundamental marketing principles which worked so well for us. A must read for marketing professionals." -Steve Goldstein, V.P. Marketing & Research, Levi's Brand U.S.A.

"Eating the Big Fish gives an excellent insight into how the Challenger brands can pose a true threat to the rest of us." -Michel van Eesbeeck, Advertising Manager, Global Brand, The British Petroleum Company p.l.c.

"If you want to get rid of your preconceived ideas about marketing and become a true Challenger, you must read this book." -Gran Lundqvist, President, The Absolut Company.

"Adam Morgan's Eating the Big Fish is a marketing bible written like a fast-paced novel. It's filled with hardcore truths we can all learn from and others we should always be reminded of. A swift and enjoyable business read."

"...full of such useful ideas that a whole generation of marketing folk bang on about [it]"

"Although out last year, Eating the Big Fish, is one of the most stimulating books on brands and has grown to become a must read."

"Eating the Big Fish is on fire with ideas.
Best in the marketplace." –Steve Hayden, President, Worldwide Brand Services, Ogilvy & Mather
"In 1986, the Levi′s® Dockers® brand challenged the biggest fish in the men′s apparel sea, Haggar. And we beat the pants off them! In his new book, Adam Morgan adroitly presents many of the same fundamental marketing principles which worked so well for us. A must read for marketing professionals." –Steve Goldstein, V.P. Marketing & Research, Levi′s Brand U.S.A.

Years ago, Avis was a little fish in the car rental industry. Fearing the company would be swallowed up if they didn′t "try harder," Avis boldly announced its #2 status to the world through advertising–and the rest is history. Why has this approach become a marketing legend? Because there are more people who can relate to being #2, 3, or even 4, than can claim they know what it′s like to be the Big Fish.
There are plenty of little fish out there, circling in schools around the brand leaders they so desperately wish to surpass. Squeezed by new competition, a retreating consumer, and aggressive retailing practices, marketers of second– and third–rank brands are struggling to survive in a business environment where they have fewer resources and less control than ever before. But instead of watching–and copying–every move the Big Fish makes, these "Challenger" brands need their own set of marketing rules if they have any hopes of staying afloat and competing effectively against the leader.
Eating the Big Fish is the first book that sets out to define those rules. Adam Morgan offers an innovative mental and strategic framework for those who find themselves in this new, hostile middle ground, looking for aggressive growth against the market leader. Morgan, the Joint European Planning Director of TBWA (the international advertising agency behind the campaigns for such brands as Absolut vodka, Apple computers, and Sony Playstation), has examined in detail forty of the most successful Challenger brands of the last ten years –new or relaunched brands which have achieved rapid growth (and fame) with limited marketing resources. He outlines the reasons why Challengers must think differently in order to survive, offering hands–on advice, plentiful examples, and invaluable information to help a Challenger learn how to swim out of the shadow of the Big Fish.
At the heart of the book are the Eight Credos of Challenger Brands –Morgan′s analysis of the common marketing strands that these Challengers seem to share, which range in scope from the need to project who you are and what you believe in (#2, Build a Lighthouse Identity) to insights about the organizational structure and focus in such companies and brands (#8, Become Idea–Centered, Rather Than Consumer–Centered). Morgan fully analyzes each Credo, discussing in detail the marketing strategy and behavior of the specific Challenger brands that have shaped the rules. He provides case studies that include both his agency′s clients and other well–known brands, such as Lexus, Oakley, Fox TV, Energizer, Virgin Atlantic, Swatch, Nissan, and more. Morgan then draws the Credos together into a "Challenger Strategic Program" that can be applied to the reader′s own market and brand challenge, offering a proposed outline for a two–day Off–Site Program that will attempt to kick–start the Challenger process for a core group within any marketing or management team. In addition, Morgan looks at the great Challengers of the last ten years who have gone on to become brand leaders, and shows how even the rules of brand leadership have changed –why staying #1 now means, in fact, thinking and behaving like a #2.
Anyone can follow a leader. It takes a smart company to go up against the Big Fish, and Morgan′s innovative, strategic program will show even the littlest fish how to make a meal out of the competition.

Challenger brands can compete against Brand Leaders
"I'm grateful for some ideas from a timely book - Eating the Big Fish by adman Adam Morgan, just published by John Wiley. The core of his arguement is that if you are a second or third-ranker you cannot just imitate the first-rank brands. To do so is to play by the leader's rules, with less money. You have change the rules." - Hamish McRae, The Independent, 21 April 99

Years ago, Avis was a little fish in the car rental industry. Fearing the company would be swallowed up if they didn′t "try harder," Avis boldly announced its #2 status to the world through advertising–and the rest is history. Why has this approach become a marketing legend? Because there are more people who can relate to being #2, 3, or even 4, than can claim they know what it′s like to be the Big Fish. There are plenty of little fish out there, circling in schools around the brand leaders they so desperately wish to surpass. Squeezed by new competition, a retreating consumer, and aggressive retailing practices, marketers of second– and third–rank brands are struggling to survive in a business environment where they have fewer resources and less control than ever before. But instead of watching–and copying–every move the Big Fish makes, these "Challenger" brands need their own set of marketing rules if they have any hopes of staying afloat and competing effectively against the leader. Eating the Big Fish is the first book that sets out to define those rules. Adam Morgan offers an innovative mental and strategic framework for those who find themselves in this new, hostile middle ground, looking for aggressive growth against the market leader. Morgan, the Joint European Planning Director of TBWA (the international advertising agency behind the campaigns for such brands as Absolut vodka, Apple computers, and Sony Playstation), has examined in detail forty of the most successful Challenger brands of the last ten years–new or relaunched brands which have achieved rapid growth (and fame) with limited marketing resources. He outlines the reasons why Challengers must think differently in order to survive, offering hands–on advice, plentiful examples, and invaluable information to help a Challenger learn how to swim out of the shadow of the Big Fish. At the heart of the book are the Eight Credos of Challenger Brands–Morgan′s analysis of the common marketing strands that these Challengers seem to share, which range in scope from the need to project who you are and what you believe in (#2, Build a Lighthouse Identity) to insights about the organizational structure and focus in such companies and brands (#8, Become Idea–Centered, Rather Than Consumer–Centered). Morgan fully analyzes each Credo, discussing in detail the marketing strategy and behavior of the specific Challenger brands that have shaped the rules. He provides case studies that include both his agency′s clients and other well–known brands, such as Lexus, Oakley, Fox TV, Energizer, Virgin Atlantic, Swatch, Nissan, and more. Morgan then draws the Credos together into a "Challenger Strategic Program" that can be applied to the reader′s own market and brand challenge, offering a proposed outline for a two–day Off–Site Program that: will attempt to kick–start the Challenger process for a core group within any marketing or management team. In addition, Morgan looks at the great Challengers of the last ten years who have gone on to become brand leaders, and shows how even the rules of brand leadership have changed–why staying #1 now means, in fact, thinking and behaving like a #2. Anyone can follow a leader. It takes a smart company to go up against the Big Fish, and Morgan′s innovative, strategic program will show even the littlest fish how to make a meal out of the competition.

Years ago, Avis was a little fish in the car rental industry. Fearing the company would be swallowed up if they didn′t "try harder," Avis boldly announced its #2 status to the world through advertising–and the rest is history. Why has this approach become a marketing legend? Because there are more people who can relate to being #2, 3, or even 4, than can claim they know what it′s like to be the Big Fish.

There are plenty of little fish out there, circling in schools around the brand leaders they so desperately wish to surpass. Squeezed by new competition, a retreating consumer, and aggressive retailing practices, marketers of second– and third–rank brands are struggling to survive in a business environment where they have fewer resources and less control than ever before. But instead of watching–and copying–every move the Big Fish makes, these "Challenger" brands need their own set of marketing rules if they have any hopes of staying afloat and competing effectively against the leader.

Eating the Big Fish is the first book that sets out to define those rules. Adam Morgan offers an innovative mental and strategic framework for those who find themselves in this new, hostile middle ground, looking for aggressive growth against the market leader. Morgan, the Joint European Planning Director of TBWA (the international advertising agency behind the campaigns for such brands as Absolut vodka, Apple computers, and Sony Playstation), has examined in detail forty of the most successful Challenger brands of the last ten years–new or relaunched brands which have achieved rapid growth (and fame) with limited marketing resources. He outlines the reasons why Challengers must think differently in order to survive, offering hands–on advice, plentiful examples, and invaluable information to help a Challenger learn how to swim out of the shadow of the Big Fish.

At the heart of the book are the Eight Credos of Challenger Brands–Morgan′s analysis of the common marketing strands that these Challengers seem to share, which range in scope from the need to project who you are and what you believe in (#2, Build a Lighthouse Identity) to insights about the organizational structure and focus in such companies and brands (#8, Become Idea–Centered, Rather Than Consumer–Centered). Morgan fully analyzes each Credo, discussing in detail the marketing strategy and behavior of the specific Challenger brands that have shaped the rules. He provides case studies that include both his agency′s clients and other well–known brands, such as Lexus, Oakley, Fox TV, Energizer, Virgin Atlantic, Swatch, Nissan, and more. Morgan then draws the Credos together into a "Challenger Strategic Program" that can be applied to the reader′s own market and brand challenge, offering a proposed outline for a two–day Off–Site Program that will attempt to kick–start the Challenger process for a core group within any marketing or management team. In addition, Morgan looks at the great Challengers of the last ten years who have gone on to become brand leaders, and shows how even the rules of brand leadership have changed–why staying #1 now means, in fact, thinking and behaving like a #2.

Anyone can follow a leader. It takes a smart company to go up against the Big Fish, and Morgan′s innovative, strategic program will show even the littlest fish how to make a meal out of the competition.

ADAM MORGAN is Joint European Planning Director of TBWA, one of the world′s largest advertising agencies, whose clients include Absolut, Taco Bell, Nissan, Energizer, and Apple. Most recently, as Planning Director, North America for TBWA Chiat/Day, he has worked on the launch or relaunch of Challengers in markets as diverse as airlines (Virgin Atlantic) and video games (Sony Playstation), across the United States, Europe, and Latin America. Founder of the Challenger Project, a continually evolving worldwide study of Challenger brands (of which Eating the Big Fish is the first output), he has lectured on Challengers to audiences as diverse as American advertising directors, Portuguese business graduates, and the Global Marketing Conference in London.

Preface

They existed before Avis, of course: the second-rank brands, cruising the category reef in the shadow of the Big Fish. It was just that, before Avis, they always seemed just that - second rank. The brands we emulated, the brands we learned from, the brands we all wanted to be, underneath, were the brand leaders. "You know the new VP in marketing? I hear he comes from Clorox."

And then a car-rental company threw down a gauntlet to the brand leader in its category, and our view of what it meant to be number two changed. The strategy was smart, the image suddenly more desirable than even that of the brand leader: perhaps we were witnessing the birth of Number Two as Marketing Icon. Perhaps now we would start to see the marketing landscape change. Almost immediately, we enshrined the Avis story in legend: how the staff wore the badges of the slogan to enlist them in the cause, how the company used the little details to support a much higher emotional claim, how they weren't really number two at all, and that was the real brilliance of their strategy.

But Avis proved a false dawn. As second-rank brands went, there was some sterling support work in the years that followed from Pepsi - and that was it. Volkswagen was, well, the Beetle; and as much as everyone admired what it had done, it was hard to convince any marketeer that what they really wanted to be was another Beetle.

So the brand models remained the Brand Leaders. We read about Coca-Cola and Kellogg's, and all the other brands that had led their category since records began, and marveled. And if we wanted a number-two strategy, we had a choice of Avis or Pepsi: we could try harder, or go younger. But frankly, after a while that became a pretty thin diet for those of us working on second-rank brands. There were no real vitamins left in there, once everyone had taken a turn at chewing it over a few times. We had to go back to just trying to differentiate again.

And then, one afternoon in 1984, Apple bushwhacked IBM in the Redskins-Raiders Superbowl, and the Challenger brand was born again. People didn't remember the product details in the 20-page print insert that Apple ran the week following the game; all they remembered was a single 60-second commercial, and a girl with a hammer, and a declaration of intent that sent shock waves through the computer industry and imprinted Apple and Steve Jobs firmly on American popular culture. Hey, did you see that Apple ad? Apparently they only ran it once. The little guy was back. Avis lived again. The years that followed, the years of the bull market, were the years of the new entrepreneurs. Money men and women, yes, but also businessmen and women. Huizenga, Diller, Roddick, Branson, Murdoch. And with them came, it seemed, an explosion of new businesses and brands, challenging the hegemony of the old order. IBM didn't fall, but it wobbled, and suddenly it seemed as though anything was possible; the big brands seemed not omnipotent, but suddenly monolithic, immobile, old-fashioned, slow to react. The time of the new launch, let alone the number two, had come. The new marketing icons were not brands that had been market leaders since 1925; they were brands that had only been born two, three, five years ago and were turning the rules of their category upside down. Some stayed, some died, but the shape of the marketing landscape was changed forever. Which leads me back to why I started writing this book. For some reason, I have never seemed to work on brand leaders. I have worked on coffee shops and airlines, family cars and condoms, colorants and video games, but I have never seemed to find myself on the side of the big guy, the one with the muscles, sprawling confidently astride the category. Instead, I have always found myself in the opposite corner, picking up my gumshield on behalf of the number two or three-outspent, outpunched, and out to make a fight of it. It was fairly obvious to me even as a novice in this situation that the model of the brand leader was not one it was wise to follow. Not simply was success impossible for a number two by following their strategy, but we couldn't even succeed by imitating their kind of relationships with the consumer. While "trust" and "reassurance" and "simplification of choice" might be of value to an established player with perfect distribution, they certainly weren't going to be enough to create preference for us. It would take a different kind of relationship to persuade our consumer to walk past the long, convenient rows of red cans and bend down to pick out the little blue one at the end.

But what were the alternatives? I feared for my sanity if I ever heard again the desperate injunction, "Let's all try to think outside the box"; surely the way to overcome the strategic difficulties we faced lay in something more structured than two hours of wild brainstorming. Equally worrying was the simplistic reduction of our approach to one-dimensional talk about "differentiation." Surely there was more than this to be learned from those who had passed this way before? Surely the iconic second-rank brands had done more to earn their success than simply try to be "different," important though that undoubtedly was? Trying to find existing models to draw from didn't help. I could find lots of books about brand leaders, and brand leadership, that drew conclusions and compared one with another. But nobody seemed to have done the same with second-rank brands. There were books about individual companies and their founders, but no one seemed to have tried to trace what, if anything, the successful ones had in common. And this was curious, well, because surely there were so many more of us than them, the brand...