Marketing of combat

The expression marketing of combat at the beginning was invented to translate the American expression Marketing Warfare invented by two advertizing executives new yorkais Jack Trout Ries et al. to sell seminars with large spectacle in the whole world, recovery and popularized by Philip Kotler in an article of the Journal off Business Strategy (1981) then recovered by the two inventors for their book on the subject.

It appears for the first time in France like titrates of an article of Direction and Gestion in June 1980, then like titrates of a forum organized in Paris by the National association of Old of the institute of Control and Management in November of the same year.

She wanted to be with the generic departure only one expression, that of a type of marketing among others, but will be deposited like marks in the Eighties.

As it recovers two very different designs of marketing, we will distinguish them by naming them marketing from combat (of type 1) - without capital letter - and Marketing from combat (of type 2) - with a capital letter.

Marketing warfare and warlike marketing

One finds a presentation very complete of the Marketing Warfare of Philip Kotler in the english language version of Wikipedia Marketing warfare strategies. It is included in the successive editions of Marketing Management , Publi-Union.

The Marketing Warfare of Trout and Ries (1986) was translated under the title Warlike Marketing , McGraw-Hill, 1996.

In both cases the authors distinguish four power struggles or from size: leader, challenger, follower and to nest, which results in having to adopt four types of strategies: defense, attacks frontal, attacks side and guerilla.

The marketing of combat (of type 1)

It is about a transposition of methodologies of strategic decision making and tactics of large staffs (France, the USA, NATO, the USSR, etc) to decision making in competing universe. In the Seventies, in France, Method of Reasoning Tactical (the MRT) of the University of War. Today, the MEDO and MARCH of the College Interarmées de Défense. And diagram OODA of Boyd.

In this spirit, one can quote the book of Swedish Düro, a consultant, and Sandstrom, a coastal artillery colonel. Simply, the transposed method is that of NATO, used by the Swedish army.

In practice, they are Business-wargame S, methodological transposition of the Wargame S soldiers.

Holding of this form of marketing of combat and the corresponding business-wargames were in general soldiers (of career or reserve) and have a good military culture: Benjamin Gilad was officer of information in the army israêlienne; Jay Kurz, colonel in the Canadian army; Bjorn Sandström, colonel in the Swedish army; Gil Fiévet, brigadier general; Gerard Coulon, major general.

For good to be different from the Marketing of combat (of type 2), this “marketing of combat” became, at the end of the Eighties, the “Warketing”, then following the increasingly large use of new technologies in the preparation and the organization of the businesses-wargames, the “WWWarketing”.

The Marketing of combat (of type 2)

It does not act more than one simple transposition carried out by soldiers but of a structured unit of concepts, methods and technologies which want to constitute a progress compared to the Marketing-management of Philip Kotler. Yves H. Philoleau, the creator of the Marketing of combat, develops to with it:

a vision of the human behavior ( motifonctionnelle Analysis inspired by phenomenology)
of new concepts marketing (By ex: the target indicates the unfavourable offer and not the customers)
of the definitions and original developments on the strategy, the tactics or the operation, conceived like universal concepts related to any form of conflict.

The Marketing of combat is art to conceive and promote produced S and/or advantageous service S for the Entreprise, that a definite share of the coveted customers will prefer with the products and/or the competitor services, while obstructing its adversaries in the use of their means or their manner of fighting in order to reduce the cost of the forces to be engaged.

The Marketing of combat is the marketing of the preference in opposition to the marketing of the difference . For the theorists and the experts of the marketing of combat, it is not only the customers which generate the offer, it is also competition. The stress is laid on the added-value perceived of the offer to promote and on the operations of positioning.

For the Marketing of combat, the Marketing is not a Science: it is a Art to make. On the other hand, it applies to its fields of expertise (behaviors of the customers, effects of the Publicité, Return on investment, etc), the scientific data of the experimental Psychologie, the Statistiques or the Microéconomie.

7 pillars of the Marketing of combat

Theater of operations : the theater of operations of the Marketing, it is the spirit of the customer S. the offers is positioned and clashes in a Univers of preferences.
Target : the targets are not the customers but are the images of the unfavourable offers. It is with their detriment that we maintain or increase our " starts from préférences".
Projects: the preference of a type of customers for a marked offer is justified by its Projet S and not by its needs. It is conditioned by its instincts, its knowledge and its practices.
Operations : the combat marketing are gained by the psychological movements of the images of the marked offers and not by the simple reinforcement of their positionings. The design of the operations of positioning thus precedes the design by the offers.
Persuasion : the operations of positioning aim at modifying the point of view of certain customers on the promoted offer. They are carried out by the persuasion campaigns.
Strategy : to gain, it is also to make lose its adversaries. It is the function of the tactic and the strategy.
Simulation : the future is not in the figures. It is in the head of those which do it. The projects of the customers and those of the adversaries play a part more important than the economic conjunctures. The future does not result, it is simulated.

Limits of the marketing of combat and marketing warriors

The marketing of combat and other marketing warriors, which aim at the competitors, can have in certain cases the opposite effect to reinforce them, or to be denounced as being unfair competition.

To focus on an extremely narrow interest, they can also make lose the direction of the general interest and reinforce the negative tendencies of our companies: individualism, carefree consumerism of the environmental pollution, ignorance of the geopolitical stakes, etc

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