Marketing is a High Stakes Competition

What Time Is This?

The Monday Morning Memo by Roy H. Williams

Listen to the memo.

But yes, when someone plunks down $25,000, a whole other fellow shows up. “It’s Showtime! Prepare to be amazed!”

A close friend told me last week why his wife doesn’t like me: having seen me speak before a crowd, she is convinced I lack humility. I am a boastful man, arrogant and unprincipled, merciless and cold.

She’s not the first to have said these things.

I see her point and I make no argument. Marketing is a high-stakes competition for the time and attention of the public. Every business asking for time and attention is in a wrestling match with every other. The same is true of public speaking. It is survival of the fittest. “And though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil. For I am the meanest son-of-a-bitch in the valley.”

Yes, I definitely see her point.

In 2006, one of my longtime clients told me his principal competitor had filed bankruptcy and all his assets were being auctioned. I said, “Great. I’ve been trying to break that man for years.” My client was appalled until I reminded him that it was my job to plan the battles in which good men die. “Do you really want me to adopt the attitude that there’s enough business out there for everyone? ‘Be happy with what you’ve got? Don’t push for more?’ If that’s what you want from me, just say the word and my job will get a whole lot easier.” I reminded him of a statement by General George S. Patton, “You don’t win wars by dying for your country. You win by making the other poor bastard die for his.”

My client, a kind and generous man, finally understood my role as a marketing consultant and we never spoke of it again.

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