There is nothing new about books on branding, but this one caught our eye. Eating the Big Fish, or How Challenger Brands Can Compete Against Brand Leaders, by marketing consultant Adam Morgan has some messages that are well worth paying attention to.
As the author points out, most companies are not brand leaders; they are somewhere lower down the list, striving to achieve greater return with increasingly limited resources – the Challenger Brands.
His own experience working with several of these Challenger Brands has allowed Morgan to observe eight common characteristics that these companies shared in the way that they prepared for, approached and behaved in the marketplace. He calls these the Eight Credos.
With a chapter devoted to each of the eight, Morgan conveys the essence of the fighting spirit and ideas-centred approach that successful Challenger Brands bring to the market. More than a ‘How To’ book, Eating The Big Fish gives you another vision of what is possible if you do not want to just settle down and wait for retirement.
If you follow the message of this book, you will find yourself digging deep to ask yourself what your business is really all about; your levels of commitment will be tested and re-examined. Again and again the message comes through that being a Challenger is a state of mind.
The reason we like this book is because the Challenger Brand message is exactly what the players in the Halal Market need to hear. We are up of Challenger Brands, whether we are in the Halal Food business, Islamic Finance, Takaful, Muslim Travel, Islamic Fashion… we are all challengers.
Again and again while reading this book, I thought myself, this is what the Halal industry needs to hear. So many of the ideas fit ‘Malaysia Boleh’ spirit. Malaysia is a Challenger Brand; Halal, if you will, is a Challenger Brand.
One of the best examples in the book is the way the Swiss Watch manufacturers responded when confronted with extinction in the form of a new breed of Japanese watch manufacturers. They completely re-invented themselves, and broke with almost every single dimension of their long illustrious history of Swiss watch making. They made cheap disposable watches in brightly coloured plastics that were fun rather than formal, and so created not only one of the most successful business stories of the last thirty years, but an icon of popular culture. Swatch was born.
With Halal now on the brink of global recognition, and a consuming public hungry for products – including financial ones – that are clean, safe, ethical and trustworthy, the message of this book is music to the ears of any company with an appetite for bigger fish. Read it and let your enthusiasm flow. Then put its message into practice.
**This article was first published in The Halal Journal May/Jun 2005 edition.
