Shifting Strategy

"Remember that your real competition-the ones that can kill your business-may not come from the handful of established companies...","It may come instead from an unanticipated source." 

     As the HBR competitor analysis reading suggests, institutions whose marketing strategies do not include thoughtful consideration of the unlikely or "unanticipated" competition, may find themselves taking a back seat view as emerging companies out pace them via innovation or shifts in consumer demands. In fact, the author's premise applies to nonprofit arts organizations, as well as military units.

     As recently as 2016, the U.S. Congress had taken up fights between supporting military bands, and those who would gut the budget of any arts in the military. Arguments over the decades have resulted in drastic shifts in strategy from using the military bands to support public concerts, to having military bands just perform on base as a means to propping up and supporting the presumed key constituents: the generals. It was thought by military band leaders, that if generals were going to fight to keep the bands, then the bands should be playing as many on base change of command or ceremonial services as possible, while essentially stopping off-base performances to the community. Over time the public saw less and less military band performances. As it turned out, that was a main source of marketing/promotion/advocacy for the bands.

     In 2016 Arizona's Marth McSally, a former Air Force pilot, proposed that it would be more cost efficient to simply send the USO and celebrity performers to bases and deployment zones, and spare the budget spent on military bands to ease the burdens born by dis-repaired A-10 planes. The competition for military bands was essentially cannibalizing. They were competing with dollars against other military units in the Department of Defense, as well the increase of celebrity tours.

     If we stop and consider the strategy of reducing off-base performances through the lens of the article, we can see how the bands actually shot themselves in the foot. It was true that the generals were advocates of the bands to congress. However, it became clear over time that if the main advocates, the tax payers, never saw a military band or had never even heard of such ideas as military bands, the less likely there would be any major uproar outside of defense sub-committees. The decades of reduced off-base performances led to the decline in public support and outcry to congressional members. Subsequently the bands received harsh reductions in budgets and personnel numbers repeatedly between 2009 and 2016.

     In this case, the unanticipated source of competition was the congress and other military units. The bands themselves failed to truly look at who they were in competition with. Companies must anticipate all threats of competition in their strategic planning, and avoid inventing strategies that may be counter-productive or not innovative enough.