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UPDATE...A
Business Weapon called FUD Last November I did a
CorpWar issue on FUD (Fear, Uncertainty & Doubt) as
a competitive weapon. Basically I described how it works and
why it's such an effective tool for giving your competitors
a very bad day. It's cheap and simple. For better or worse
there's no question FUD is truly one of the dogs of the
modern corporate battlefield.
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An interesting thing happened after we
sent that out. We immediately received several calls asking
if we would help engineer FUD "campaigns" (a euphemism for
"attacks") against the callers competitors. Since the calls
came from longtime readers I took the requests seriously but
declined. I declined not because I have anything against the
tool but because I knew, in at least two cases, the idea was
to use heavy FUD against other CorpWar readers, one of which
is also a search client of mine and I'm extremely protective
of my clients. So, after a couple of technical
conversations, we took a firm pass. Unfortunately, I think
one of those conversations was later put to effective use... His question was simple: Did I know
anything about who might be spreading the rumors (e.g. the
FUD)? Well, in fact, maybe. But what's the difference? The
attacker didn't even have to explicitly lie. It IS possible
to scratch the Nano's screen (of course you can scratch a
diamond too). The damage is done. FUD can be modeled via a
contagion model because it spreads like a biological agent
moving through a population. The more closed-in the
population the faster the contagion moves. And few things
move like good FUD since it doesn't require "old fashioned"
physical distribution (air, touch, etc.) especially when it
breaks out into the press where it can become an epidemic in
a couple of hours . These days FUD
can travel at almost the speed of light because that's how
fast data move down optical fiber. Think
about it. It's scary. But it's also an opportunity for the
true corporate warrior, that needs to make sales, to
survive. The funny thing (well, sort of funny) is the caller naturally thought that it might be one of Apple's big competitors that had initiated the FUD. Not necessarily. Knowing how flexible FUD can be in the hands of a clever corporate warrior, my response was simple: "Or, look for somebody very small. Somebody new that needs revenues badly and that can make them by mitigating a supposed flaw in the Nano's construction. Look around. They will be advertising or somehow in the press themselves for solving the problem." "You mean like a [music player] case maker or screen protector manufacturer?" "Exactly." I further described that a lot of people will buy the high utility Nano even if they think it has problems and, predictably, they will attempt to mitigate the problem via an accessory. It's the people on the fence that will be swayed by the FUD not to buy. And there are more than a few of them. (Note: I'm not one of them. I bought one for my plane. It's immensely excellent and I have yet to see any screen marring whatsoever.) Causing potential buyers to delay may just be a collateral effect. The real FUD benefactor here is the accessory maker who now has an accessory that's perceived of as a necessity . Very clever. Very good FUD unless you're an Apple shareholder. The underlying lesson here is it didn't take much effort on the front end to create the Fear, Uncertainly and Doubt. And it was created fast (in fact REALLY FAST) and cheaply. Think about this the next time you're taking on somebody much bigger, or you're really big yourself and feeling complacent and untouchable. Think about it... --CorpWar: Compete like you mean it!-- --------------------------------------------------
This newsletter is produced by Tal Newhart of Parcon Research. |
