Judo moves, George Carlin and in-house agencies
The judo move in strategy: finding the weakness in a rival brand's strength sometimes unlocks a pretty good insight.
Hello!
The difference between average and exceptional strategists isn’t what they know, but how they use what they know. It’s not hard to learn how to do good strategy, but that’s not the same thing as being a good strategist. If I do this newsletter right, you’ll get some of both - equal parts instructive and perspective. If I don’t, you can unsubscribe at the end of your 12-month contract. And you can always reach the complaint department (me) simply by hitting reply.
Here’s what I thought was interesting enough to write down this week:
A principle of judo is to use your opponent’s size and strength against them. There’s a way to execute this judo move in strategy too. I’ve got an example.
What makes a good insight? George Carlin shows you.
Brooks Running launches a new campaign and brand refresh - the first major work to come out of its in-house agency. Should outside (out-house?) agencies be worried about this trend?
If you’ve got nothing better to do for 6 minutes, read on.
The judo move in strategy
Something I talk about a lot when doing strategy is the “judo move.” A principle of judo is using your opponent’s size and strength against them. Here’s a real-life example from a pitch I did for a hotel brand:
The goal of the campaign we were pitching was to increase the percentage of total bookings that happened on the brand’s own site - essentially to steal share from aggregators like Expedia.
There were no extrinsic rewards for customers who did this. The price wasn’t lower, they weren’t eligible for more loyalty points, there was no preferential treatment we could promise. And we needed to focus on leisure travelers, because the hotel loyalty program was already pulling business travelers off of the aggregators.
The strength of the opponent
The aggregators’ key benefit is that customers can see every hotel available on their dates, making it easy to compare prices and location. People love comparison shopping. Or hate it, but feel compelled to do it anyway. We needed to come up with an idea that made people want to NOT comparison shop.
The insight
What causes a sub-optimal travel experience? Ever get to a hotel with a pool for a family vacation with young kids only to find the pool is out of service, or gross? Or check into a “non-smoking” room that smells like smoke? Or book a room with slightly sloping floors so the dresser drawers keep slowly sliding open? (That happened to me last week in Philly.)
Stuff like this can range from being a bummer, to actually ruining a trip - even if the rest of the trip is pretty great. Coming back to a hotel that annoys you or skeeves you out - even after an amazing day of whatever brought you to this part of the world in the first place - can drag down the entire trip. We hate ourselves when we make a bad choice. And when the hotel you chose sucks, well your kids will hate you too.
The judo move
The strength of aggregators is that they level the playing field for hotels by comparing them on attributes travelers want to shop by - price, availability and proximity. But all hotels don’t deserve to be on a level playing field. (Some in Philly don’t even have level floors.)
That's by design. Aggregators are designed for a satisfying shopping experience, not a satisfying travel experience.
This makes it easy to feel like you’re doing the right thing (your homework when shopping) when you’re actually doing the wrong thing (booking a room that will make your family judge you).
So the judo move here was to portray aggregators’ level playing field as allowing crappy hotels to hide among decent ones. Our strategy was to show travelers that if they booked direct with the brand there was no danger of being unpleasantly surprised at check-in.
The platform we landed on was
“Book direct with <Hotel> and it’s guaranteed not to suck.”
The judo move in positioning
That’s how you might use the judo move in creative strategy, but it works just as well in brand strategy, to inform positioning. Like in my business. For example, most strategy training is curriculum-based team or group training - easy to deliver and highly scalable. My 1:1 coaching is hard to deliver and not scalable. (Extremely not scalable.)
So the judo move for The Strategy Coach Company is to show clients how something that’s not scalable and hard to deliver benefits them. One way is to point out that something that’s scalable is used by everyone, and something that’s bespoke is used by by a select few experts and professionals.
(House ad)
Try the least scalable, hardest to deliver strategy training in the industry
There are over 5 million YouTube videos on “How to hit a golf ball.” Know why? Because YouTube videos are easy to make and distribute. Know who watches them? Millions of people who aren’t good at golf.
Do you know who doesn’t watch them? Professional golfers - people who are paid to be good at golf. They use coaches.
If you get paid to be good at strategy, maybe it’s time for you to think about working with a coach too.
George Carlin and the perfect insight
There's a great George Carlin bit about drivers.
"Have you ever noticed when you’re driving that anyone driving slower than you is an idiot? And anyone driving faster than you is a maniac?"
I think that's a perfect insight - it works because it's unexpected and also familiar. You hear it and say, "that's absolutely true, I've just never thought about it that way."
That's how you want your clients to react to insights. Insights shouldn't make clients re-assess what they thought they knew. They should affirm what they knew. You want your clients to say, "It's been there all along but I've never seen it until now."
Right brain
rebirth
there will be moments when
you will bloom fully and then
wilt. only to bloom again.
if we can learn anything from
flowers it is that resilience is born
even when we feel like we are
dying.
-Alex Elle
Brooks Running’s in-house agency bows brand refresh, platform and campaign
A couple of years ago Brooks cut ties with their AOR (don’t ask me how I know this) and brought creative services in-house to a newly formed internal agency dubbed Brooks Creative Lab. This week they launched their first major work - a brand refresh and a brand campaign anchored by the new tagline of “Let’s run there.” The tagline replaces long-running “Run Happy” which the brand debuted in the 1900s (ok 1999). Brooks also appears to have jettisoned much of the previous platform’s quirkiness and whimsy. Where “Run Happy” was inclusive and accessible, “Let’s run there” seems aimed squarely at the self-identified runner, who (along with nurses and your dad) have always been the brand’s mainstay.
If I had to reverse engineer the strategy I’d say it looks like the brand has ceded the responsibility of growing the category to “Big Sweat” (Nike, Adidas and UA), bowed out of the trend wars waged by Hoke, On and New Balance, and are aiming to cement their positioning as the brand for people whose lifestyle and identity are closely connected to the sport. But this strategy does require other brands to continue growing the category and introducing people to running shoes. And Brooks will need ways to convert these new-to-category customers to their brand, even when it wasn’t their brand that brought them to the category. So the new platform may feel more comfortable for Brooks, but that doesn’t mean it’s safer.
Their formation of an in-house agency is more interesting to me. Brooks is a $1.2B brand but not what most agencies would call a big advertiser. They require a steady stream of mostly digital campaign work for product launches and refreshes each year and a few activations around affinities and seasons. And being a Warren Buffet company they’re pretty risk averse and intentional. Much of their advertising work is a light strategy lift once the brand platform is built. So moving in-house feels like it could be a mostly creative exercise (the agency name - Brooks Creative Lab - attests to that) that teases a cost-savings upside that overcomes any loss of impact and innovation downside.
And they made this call 2 years ago - when AI was little more than an awkward chat bot that linked you to a poorly organized FAQ. It’s an even easier calculus today for brands pondering the benefits of going in-house.
This isn’t a case of “If Brooks goes in-house, anyone can.” But Brooks going in-house and being public about it gives other brands a reference point that mitigates some of the risk they may be perceiving. Agencies so far have focused on the delta in quality of the creative work coming from in-house teams and external agencies with deeper histories and culture around creativity. But (naturally) I think the it’s the lack of strategy they’ll miss more. Maybe not the artifact-driven, in-service-of-creative, strategy-as-a-phase version some agencies give them - that kind of strategy is pretty easy to replace internally, or do without. But rather the proactive, curious, insight hunting. long term thinking kind of strategy that isn’t in service to a campaign or project, but is in service to the brand and business. That’s harder to do and harder to sell, but that’s also what makes a good agency harder to replace.
Signal boost
DesignStudio is hosting an event on 5/22 on Why We Have to Move on from User-Centered Design, positing that we need to think more broadly about community-centered design. It’s in person in NY but it’s a big idea that wants broader thought and collaboration.
I almost always get a chuckle out of Soren Iverson’s unhinged product designs. His new coffee table book Can You Imagine is now available and makes a great gift for any product person in your life.
M.T. Fletcher writes about how pitches are broken, how to fix them, and why fixing them benefits both agencies and clients. His article is on AdAge (gift link).
Have something for a future Signal Boost? Email me or just reply to this newsletter.
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About The Strategy Coach Company
I’m Mike May and I founded the Strategy Coach Company to help brand and agency strategists get better at their job while doing their job. I provide 1:1 coaching, collaboration, real-time feedback and thought partnership on actual work in progress, because I know that’s the best way to get better at doing strategy, and at being a strategist. You can learn more at StrategyCoach.co, connect with me on LinkedIn, or just reply to this newsletter.