BLUE OCEAN STRATEGY

Creating Blue Oceans

 Much of our readings over the past couple of classes involved business plans. “Positioning” and “Three Questions to ask about your brand” discussed the topic of brand positioning.

 When we look at the fast-food market alone, we see Subway, McDonald’s, Burger King, &c; when we look at the carbonated drinks market, Coca-Cola and Pepsi alone dominate 9 out of 10 of the top sellers. It makes it highly improbable that a new brand can break into this market, without creating and capturing new demand well beyond existing industry boundaries.

 Which brings to mind the “Blue Ocean Strategy”, a book that I had read earlier in the year. Unlike the articles that approached the competition head-on, this revolves around the idea of creating uncontested market space and making competition irrelevant. A ‘red ocean’ represents an ocean of all the industries in existence today in which cutthroat competition makes the ocean bloody whereas a ‘blue ocean’ denotes all the industries not in existence today, in which there is an opportunity for highly profitable growth.

 The book, obviously, does not talk about the difficulties in creating of ‘Blue Oceans’. In my opinion, this is easier said than done. This business plan has been thought out by many and the industries of the world are already cluttered with competition. How often, do we see a company like Apple attempt to seize the MP3 market by storm, or Starbucks, which gave coffee a whole new meaning?

A topic that was covered in our Comm 101 class last week was on business ethics and unethical practices. The above picture is a billboard-style poster of Wayne Rooney (a popular icon in English soccer and one of the headline-hogging players of the recent World Cup) that was released by Nike in 2006.

Definition of unethical:

–           Not conforming to approved standards or social/professional behaviour.

The picture, at first glance, will seem like a fairly innocuous – the flag of St. George painted across someone’s body. But when we look closer (and we do not need to look THAT much closer, mind you), it seems as though Wayne Rooney is depicted as the “savior” of English soccer, much like how Jesus Christ is the savior to Christians. When many people look at this photo, it brings to mind the crucification of Jesus Christ because of the character’s outstretched arms and blood-red choice of color that was used for body paint.

The trivialisation of Jesus Christ’s suffering is highly offensive to Christians and as you would expect, this poster came under a lot of fire from the general public, and even prominent figureheads in the country. 

From another viewpoint, the aggression contained in the poster with “Rooney” stained in blood, bound up with the flag of St. George could be seen as a throwback to the Crusades, which would hardly go down well with Muslim countries.

Note to self: Being unethical does not simply mean to price-fix to put others out into business so as to monopolize the market, or to have insider information on the market. In this globalized world, we must remind ourselves to be sensitive and conscientious by taking others into consideration. Though this poster is not an obvious “unethical” advertisement in the form of a beautiful lady puffing on a cigarette, it was nonetheless offensive, as it triggered an uproar from the religious communities, for “not conforming to approved standards or social behaviour”.

References:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-391684/Nike-attacked-Rooney-warrior-picture.html

Today was the first morning that the Vancouver Sun was delivered to my apartment, after subscribing to it last week at the University’s “Shopping Week”. A student offer of $56.00 for 7 months, how could I turn this down?!

  “Dell to invest $100 billion in China by 2020”. I don’t think any explaining needs to be done as to why that headline caught my eye as I flipped through the Vancouver Sun this Saturday morning. The article talks of how Dell needs to invest in order to support rapid growth, research and development in the region.

 The Chinese economy has been expanding at breakneck speed over the past two decades. It’s GDP has grown from US$357 billion in 1990 to $4.33 trillion in 2008. China has sent an astronaut to the moon, hosted the recent Olympics and presently, the Shanghai Expo (which cost China some US$54 billion). These are just examples as to how China cannot be ignored as a rising power.

 As much as we may or may not like it, the emergence of China as an economic superpower is no longer a question. With a closed political and centralized system, China has the potential to bring financial shock to the world market…

References:

“Dell to invest $100 billion in China by 2020″ Vancouver Sun 18 September 2010: D5. Print.

 “Gross Domestic Product: GDP in current U.S. dollars″. Statistical chart. Google Public Data. Last updated 26 July 2010. ‹http://www.google.com/publicdata?ds=wb-wdi&met=ny_gdp_mktp_cd&idim=country:CHN&dl=en&hl=en&q=china+gdp+statistics›