Create Your Own Competitive Field
Change the rules instead of fighting an incumbent on theirs.
- Difficulty
- Advanced
- Time to result
- ~months to results
- Steps
- 5
- Confidence
- 99%
Refuse to define success using the incumbent's preferred rules when those rules reward its head start, capital, expertise, or distribution. First identify the dimensions on which established competitors reliably win. Then create a different field based on a new category, audience, medium, pricing logic, or customer experience that favors the challenger's strengths. Red Bull did not behave like another conventional soft drink advertiser; it built an energy-drink category and competed through extreme sports, owned events, distinctive packaging, and premium positioning. The mechanism is a changed basis of competition reducing incumbent advantage and allowing the challenger to become the rule-maker. The new game must still solve a meaningful customer problem and attract enough participation to matter.
Origin
Extracted from Marketing Against The Grain through its concluding decision rule about creating a separate competitive field with different rules.
Core principles
- 01Incumbents are strongest on the field they designed.
- 02A challenger can compete by changing the basis of choice.
- 03New rules should exploit the challenger's distinctive capabilities.
- 04The new field must become relevant enough for customers to enter it.
How to run it
- 1
Identify the Incumbent's Field
List the dimensions, channels, economics, and capabilities that determine success in the existing category.
Pro tip Distinguish customer requirements from conventions established by dominant competitors.
Watch out Do not underestimate an incumbent merely because its methods look traditional.
- 2
Locate Structural Disadvantage
Determine where matching the incumbent would require more money, time, expertise, or distribution than the challenger possesses.
Pro tip Quantify the disadvantage instead of treating it as a vague competitive concern.
Watch out Trying harder rarely overcomes a fundamentally unequal game.
- 3
Design Different Rules
Choose a new basis of competition that customers value and that highlights the challenger's strengths.
Pro tip Consider changing the audience, category, channel, experience, business model, or definition of quality.
Watch out Rules designed only to flatter the company will not attract customers.
- 4
Popularize the New Field
Teach customers why the new basis of choice matters through demonstrations, positioning, media, and consistent execution.
Pro tip Name and explain the category in language customers can repeat.
Watch out A private game creates no advantage if the market never adopts it.
- 5
Defend Rule-Making Advantage
Continue innovating within the new field and strengthen the assets that competitors must now imitate.
Pro tip Use consistency and owned distribution to make your rules synonymous with the category.
Watch out Expect incumbents to respond once the new field proves valuable.
In the wild
Rather than competing as another conventionally advertised beverage, Red Bull established a premium energy-drink position and built its marketing around extreme sports, stunts, and owned media. These choices created a game in which its distinctive capabilities mattered more than an incumbent's traditional advertising scale.
→ Red Bull became a category-defining brand instead of a minor participant in an incumbent-controlled contest.
Common mistakes
Playing the Incumbent's Game Better
A challenger usually cannot erase a competitor's head start by copying the same channels, rules, and investments.
Inventing Rules Customers Ignore
A new category or competitive dimension creates no advantage unless customers understand and value it.
Is it for you?
Best for
It is best for differentiated entrants facing incumbents with greater capital, distribution, expertise, or historical advantage.
Not ideal for
It is not ideal when customers require strict compatibility or when no alternative basis of competition matters to them.
From the transcript
“And my line on this is like don't play on your competitors' field. Create a field of your own with a different set of rules…”
“Because the person who understands the rules the best wins the game.”
“It's much easier to make the rules of a game and make that game popular and force your competition to play it than to go…”
From the episode
How to Copy Red Bull's $16 Billion Marketing Strategy in 4 Simple Steps