Of particular interest was the story Menkes related about how Jim Kilts, CEO of Gillette, responded to the competitive challenge presented by Schick’s groundbreaking Quattro four-blade razor. As Menkes explained, Kilts and his leadership team simply did not have a viable technological answer to their competitor’s new product. They were stuck, at least for the near future, in a “one blade down” position with their three-blade Mach3.
Ceding market share until they could strike back technologically wasn’t particularly attractive, so Kilts pushed his team to look at the larger competitive picture for other options. After all, the number of blades wasn’t the only factor that distinguished one razor from another. Recognizing that their Mach3 remained an appealing, high-quality shaving system, Kilts’ team decided to defend market share by promoting it vigorously before and during the launch of Schick’s Quattro. In fact, they went beyond promoting it — they relaunched the product as the “Mach3 Turbo Champion” to help offset Quattro’s “newness” advantage, redesigned the razor’s handle and packaging to maximize visual appeal, and employed aggressive marketing and advertising tactics to keep consumers excited about the Mach3. In short, they devised what Kilts later described as “a marketing solution to a technical problem.”
The bottom line? During a period when Schick’s new and arguably superior technology entered the marketplace, Gillette’s sales actually increased 34%! Having bought itself some time — to say the least — Gillette went on to recapture the technological high ground as well by developing the five-blade Fusion razor recently advertised during Super Bowl XL.
In his speech, Menkes used this anecdote to illustrate the importance of “frames” — the assumptions and perceptual filters that lead us to include some types of information in our decision-making process and exclude others. Kilts and his team succeeded, Menkes pointed out, because they framed this as a competitive situation involving far more than technology. Conversely, even smart, diligent and relentlessly logical people can arrive at dubious decisions if they misframe — if they start a decision-making process with too narrow a focus, faulty or outdated assumptions, or incomplete or inaccurate data.
The success of Gillette’s campaign doesn’t mean that “marketing” is a competitive cure-all. It’s not. But it is one of several interdependent disciplines that should exist, and ideally support one another, in most organizations regardless of size or industry. In our view, that’s another valuable lesson in Menkes’ story: Kilts’ team understood that success depended on the sum of the company’s efforts, not just a competitive advantage (or disadvantage) in one particular area. Because they were looking at the big picture, they saw that, in this specific instance, the company’s objectives were best served by enhancing and redirecting marketing.
Of course, it’s not entirely surprising that key leaders of an established retail giant doing combat in the consumer arena would see the value of marketing and come up with an innovative way to leverage it. Seeing and harnessing cross-disciplinary synergies can be more challenging for the types of fast-growth companies that Kolbrener serves. In many cases, such companies achieve initial success via a single aspect of their business, such as a cutting-edge technology, a superior product, extraordinary customer service, or a uniquely productive or quality-driven team of owners and employees. Other segments of the business may be underdeveloped or lumped together in ways that become problematical as the company becomes larger or needs to adapt to market shifts. On the other end of the spectrum, organizations with more evolved structures may become too compartmentalized. The pressures and complexities of fast growth can easily cause staff — and worse, management — from sales, product development, customer service, marketing, and so on, to become so focused on their department’s world that they lose sight of larger company goals and end up working at cross-purposes.
The challenge of seeing a company’s big picture extends to its outside consultants and suppliers as well. Be wary of agencies who push projects that conveniently match their capabilities but don’t take the time to understand whether such projects really fit your overall business objectives and operations. In the realm of marketing and advertising, you may or may not need something as comprehensive and formal as Kolbrener’s Brand Evolution Process™, but we strongly advise all fast-growth companies to work with partners who have a similarly integrated approach. As the Gillette story illustrates, the members of your decision-making team, whether internal or external, must be capable of framing a market situation accurately in order to make sound decisions that will deliver results.
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