[Getting lazier. The essay in progress thus far is in the previous few posts. This post nearly stands alone, and I've added two links for context.]
We study and pour over marketing case stories for clues we can use. And often we re-enact the behaviors without fundamentally understanding (and better yet, fundamentally donning) the underlying mindset that drives those actions. When we share much in common with a mindset and its similar decision-making framework, we nod in recognition and can quickly grasp how we’d adapt the ideas within our unique context – and our market, products, and company. When we’re coming from an entirely different mental map, we may toss the advice because it’s confusing and goes against almost everything we believe about marketing, about business, about the way the world operates and about who we are. Or seeing that it “worked for them,” we copy it superficially and verbatim because it’s such an utterly foreign language that we’ve got to stick close to the phrasebook.
One of the major misconceptions about Red Bull is that it chases cool. Instead, it simply targeted anyone in need of an energy boost. It became cool because of the way it was marketed, not to whom it was marketed.
Ultimately, Coke, Pepsi and A-B [Anheuser-Busch] have entered the energy drink category by attempting to mimic Red Bull’s tactics. Although they got a lot of the particulars correct, they couldn’t copy the spirit of Red Bull. – Alex Wipperfurth, from Brand Hijack
Re-read: They couldn’t copy the spirit of Red Bull. And thus the big boys have gunned for Red Bull without much inroads into the marketplace.
That said, questions abound. What the heck is the spirit of Red Bull? And exactly what is the spirit of the Seasons Bungalows’ owners and staff of whom I wrote about earlier? And is fellow essayist Jory des Jardin’s friend Calvin simply an enigma?
Self-realization is not a sudden superimposition of a particular knowledge; it is the culmination of the evolutionary process in man. - Swami Chinmayananda
Comments