The IC3 Blue Train - A little journal about design, marketing, sales and other matters

 
Yours competitors are not necessarily where you think and perennial procrastination is often the toughest one.

Good marketers spend a significant amount of time analyzing and outsmarting companies in their market sector. A marketer at Dell focuses primarily on Hewlett Packard, Lenovo and other PC makers. As marketer for Apple in Paris in the early 1980s (Apple Europe had just been founded), I had an Apple II at home and my guests enjoyed playing with it after dinner. One evening, I overheard a friend tell her husband: “… but, if we get one of those, we can’t buy anymore the small sailboat you want so badly”.

Ultimately, they bought the sailboat. This made me realise that our main competitors were not necessarily Commodore and Radio Shack. In that period of ‘market education’, our main challenge was to explain what a personal computer was all about and what benefits it could bring. That’s why Apple promoted the concept of “Wheels for the Mind”.

However, while a marketer has to sometimes compete against a company from a different market, the main obstacle he/she faces much more often is “do nothing”: the prospect is bewildered, unconvinced or frightened and delays the decision to buy. This procrastination can be overcome with stronger, smarter and persistent sales and marketing efforts. But “do nothing” can last for ever. We’ve all been, at some point or another, the one who does nothing, haven’t we?