Jennifer Laycock in this item entitled, "Don't Just Manage Your Reputation, Respond to Your Competitor's," isn't saying anything new, but she's saying it very, very well and it is on a subject about which everyone in the marketing and communications business should be routinely reminded: competitive differentiation, with a focus in this case from Ms. Laycock, who is the editor of Search Engine Guide, on what to do when a corporate rival does something singularly bad or ignorant or… you fill in the blank.

What I like best about her item is that it is rich with both real and some imagined campaigns. If, for example, you ran an airline, what would you have done when Delta told a mother she could not openly breastfeed her baby on their plane? Trouble is, Ms. Laycock has to offer some of her own theoretical ideas on that particular example because no one in the real world running an airline had either the brains or the balloons to seize the opportunity as far as I know.

But my worry, quite frankly, if I may further the conversation on this, is that we're becoming a nation of politically correct marketeers, cowed by indictments of so-called 'negative campaigning.' No, differentiation shouldn't be personally destructive, but it should lay waste to a rival that has applied poor judgment. Savvy, gutsy brand managers have been doing this, and doing it very well, for years. It's no accident, for example, that Johnson & Johnson cuts and bleeds competitors using a jingle that goes something like 'I am stuck on BAND-AID cuz BAND-AID sticks on me.' Yet it seems a lot of brand managers fail to stick it to competitors that have stumbled. Maybe they think it will look like piling on? Maybe they think if they play nice, they'll be spared should they trip and fall flat on their face someday? Maybe they lack imagination? Creativity? Common sense? The killer instinct?

In my opinion, since we have long defined ourselves by how we are both alike and unalike others, then the kind of creative marketing Ms. Laycock is talking about deserves a place in corporate marketing and communications.

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