Competition. What comes to mind? An epic struggle between two teams on a sports field? Candidates vying for an open position at a fast-growing, exciting tech company? Perhaps something more biblical, say, David vs Goliath?

For most of us leading and building B2B brands, the first thing that comes to mind is the other companies vying for our customers and clients.

The competition is ‘the other guys’ and we often know something about them. We may even have seen them at an event, met them, we may be friends with them, and quite possibly used to work for them.

And in my experience running a creative branding agency in Phoenix, as we work with, advise, and help build remarkable B2B brands, the activities of the competition (especially of the marketing variety) are something my clients care very much about. They follow their press releases, size up their booth at the tradeshow, and maybe even set up a friendly meeting with their counterpart in the other firm, and both attempt a little competitive-but-friendly game of digging for dirt.

Researching what competition is up to always seems to sound like a good idea. Stay ahead of the curve. Keep up with the Joneses. Get a leg up. Don’t get left behind.

And I certainly don’t disagree. In fact, I think there’s an incredibly crucial place in your B2B brand strategy for competitive analysis. But that said, I think many brands misplace the energy spent on keeping tabs on their competition. So let’s talk about that for a minute.


How Remarkable Brands Think About Competitive Research
Think about the remarkable brands in your industry — or really in any industry. Maybe consider a Nike, Apple, Amazon, or Coca-cola. Think for a moment about Southwest Airlines or Chick-fil-A or Barry-Wehmiller.

Now answer the question, “Do these companies focus more on their own brands or their competitors’ brands?” I’m pretty sure the answer is the former: they are far, far more focused on their own brand than what their competition is doing. Chick-fil-A doesn’t primarily train its staff by showing them what McDonald’s does and then saying ‘do the opposite’. They teach them how to act the Chick-fil-A way first and foremost. They create their own culture, not just ‘someone else’s but different’.
‘Outside-In’ Branding
The opposite of these brands’ strategy (when it comes to the competition) is ‘outside-in’ branding. That’s when you’re far more worried about what everyone else is doing than what your brand is doing. Your brand is less about what’s really true about your organization and more about how to position it amongst or against the competition.

I do think there’s value in making sure you’re looking around to see what everyone else is doing (just like a runner in the lead has to take quick stock of the pack every now and again). And we’ll get to some approaches for doing that right later in this article. But I think there’s a lot of temptation for brands to focus way too much on the competition, causing them to lose sight of their own authentic (and compelling) identity.

The real fundamental issue with ‘Outside-In’ branding: you are forever a follower. Your brand never leads. It can’t. It’s created from either the negative space between your competitors or from some herd-mentality (or some mutated amalgamation of the two). Here are some specific issues that arise for ‘outside-in’ brands:

Moved by the competition. Because in some way, shape, or form your brand is really built on what your competitors' brands are, what they do causes your brand to shift - whether actually because you choose to shift or just in terms of perception in the minds of your customers.
Reactionary. Very much related to the point above, you are put into a position of reaction. Everything you do is really just based on what your competition does. And this means they control you to some degree.
Low-grounded. You can’t hold the high ground if you’re not in the lead.

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