I’ve seen this before and we’ll see it again. Smaller company attacks larger company based on semi-truthful claim. Bigger company retaliates by launching campaign to counteract the perceived impact smaller company is having (because how dare the attack us). Bigger company goes off current communications strategy and throws together fast, not very well thought out campaign. Smaller company laughs. Bigger company gets even more angry and files lawsuit. Smaller company counter sues. Bigger company has just legitimized smaller companies claims.

You see, it’s textbook and yet larger companies fall for it every time. It’s largely a product of ego. Everyone knows that there’s more than enough money to go around in the world (even during a recession) but being number one is about ego satisfaction.

At my second job, I had the experience of working on a very large pizza chain (we’ll call the “The House”) account. An upstart smaller chain (we’ll call them “Father Jim’s”) came out claiming that they had better, fresher ingredients. They spent a good chunk of money behind the assertion until the higher ups and “The House” couldn’t stand it anymore. The abandoned their current campaign, siphoned off part of their budget just for competitive blunting and created a campaign that was meant to put “Father Jim’s” in its place. The problem was that “The House” never realized this was a no win situation.

In psychology, this is called a “double bind.” It means your damned if you do and damned if you don’t. It’s also like in middle school when the other kids tease you about liking Bobby or Susie. If you don’t say anything, then you like Bobby or Susie. If you react strongly, then you like Bobby or Susie. You just can’t win. In the case of communication strategy, this has ll sorts of ill effects:

1. Diluting your current message – you are taking funds from your core message to combat someone elses claims so you are taking media power away from your core messaging.
2. Validating their claims – by reacting, you are showing that they got under your skin…and if they got under your skin, there must be some truth to it
3. You are communicating for your competition – It’s a proven fact that the general population associates messaging predominantly with one entity. You if you try to combat that messaging by turning it on them (i.e. AT&T directly speaking to the “There’s a map for that” concept), they are effectively spending their money while actually advertising for the competition.
4. You’ve now opened the door for David to sling his stones at Goliath

That’s exactly what happened to “The House” when dealing with “Father Jim’s.” In the end, “Father Jim’s” gained huge market share in large part due to the help of “The House.”

So what do you do? If you’re the smaller guy, attack the bigger one. Find the biggest one you can and unload. What can they do? If they fight back, they look like a bully (which makes for a great PR Campaign for you). If they do nothing, you gain some market share.

If you are the big guys, the best thing you can do is stay on strategy. Get more innovative. Look at yourself and make sure your claims are really true. Be prepared to take a minor hit but stay the course and become redetermined about your conviction to your messaging. If you have a good communications agency or firm partner, they will tell you this. If you did your homework and actually developed a meaningful and unique communications strategy, drive that message home. Use your size and power to make sure that message resonates. Remember, competition is good and healthy and spurs on innovation in the end.

Victors & Spoils, the proclaimed first agency built upon the business model of crowdsourcing, recently unveiled the fruits of their first experiment into the crowdsourcing world. Via crowdspring.com (one of our gracious interviewees of the first episode) Victors & Spoils sourced their own identity utilizing their own methodology, a quality controlled version of crowdsourcing. You can see the result above.