Defending Your Brand: How Smart Companies use Defensive Strategy to Deal with Competitive Attacks

Tim Calkins' book "Defending Your Brand" is an excellent blueprint for a key marketing strategy that is under-utilized and rarely discussed. As his vivid case examples will show, lack of brand defense has led to the demise of some key consumer staples while a strong defense is absolutely essential to long-term brand preservation. Calkins effectively details a set of powerful "how to" tactics for effectively fighting off potential and existing competitors. The author does a phenomenal job in providing diverse examples across varying products and industries, which enables his recommendations to be highly applicable and tangible.As someone with a career in marketing, this book has been and will continue to be a powerful tool for me when designing strategy. This guide is a must have for marketers and general managers at companies big or small.

It's a stark reminder of a topic that is so easily overlooked yet one that we can least afford to ignore in business. It serves as a compass for making sound strategic decisions on an ongoing basis. The groundbreaking theory is brought to life through practical examples which makes it a clear and easy read. I would highly recommend this book to anyone who is focused on running a successful company.Smriti DeokuleNuVista Strategies, Inc.

Great book, easy to read. A completely different view of how to deal with competitors. Excellent examples. Must read if you are in a competitive environment. "If a competitor's launch makes no apparent sense, it usually means that you don't understand what's going on"

Quality is very good for a used book

It is really great! I spent one day on reading it and I can say it covers all the key elements of a sound brand defending strategy. It is really great in the sense that you close this book with some concrete takeaways.

I thought this book is okay. It's cheap enough and it has a nice cover. Hope next time I can get the same product.

When I picked up Defending Your Brand, I thought it was going to be just a handbook for big, successful companies that need to defend their mature business positions against upstarts. It is that handbook, and a very good one. Yet it's much more. Even a successful company needs to innovate and shake up the market from time to time, and of course an early-stage firm can succeed only by bringing something valuable to an underserved market. This book will be just as useful to companies that are trying to shake up the status quo as to companies determined to preserve it. When you're innovating and trying to bring something new to customers, you'd better worry about what incumbents in the market might do to defend against you. If you can understand how incumbents are likely to react, you can make plans accordingly and increase your chances of success.Tim Calkins does a thorough job outlining the major strategies and tactics commonly used to defend a market, including disrupting launch timing, limiting awareness, discouraging trial, and making it more difficult to line up distribution channels. He notes that some defensive tactics can approach or cross into legally questionable zones, and includes a very good chapter by attorney Stephen Calkins that gives executives principles for staying on the right side of the antitrust laws around the world. Finally, he includes a chapter that addresses how to keep your organizations's people in the right frame of mind, and recognized/rewarded for their actions that build long-term brand strength. Customer loyalty, he says, is probably the best defense of all.Just as the players on a basketball team must be able to quickly change from playing offense to playing defense as they run up and down the court, every executive needs a mental framework and playbook for handling both these aspects of their "game." Defending Your Brand is a unique and valuable book that I will strongly recommend to the board members, CEOs, marketing and sales leaders, and other executives I work with.

Calkins debunks the myth of "The Best Defense is a Good Offense" by challenging the reader to realize that "The Best Defense is the Best Defense". The point is that defense has its own unique tactics and strategies, and that it requires different approaches and attention.The primary focus of the book is on defending your brand from a competitive launch of new products/services. The point is made that by simply delaying the competitor's new product launch; your brand will typically be better off (assuming your brand evaluates the situation and decides it merits defense). It recommends taking timely action as more effective rather than waiting to develop the perfect defense. This is because slowing the new product launch down has a major impact on the launch finances and the competitor's internal beliefs about success. The author points out that it is much harder to stop a competitive launch after it has achieved positive momentum of success.The two themes I liked best were (1) the focus on the competition's financial goals, and (2) the focus on timing. By preventing the competition from reaching their financial goal, and making the competitor believe they won't or can't succeed financially, they are more likely to stop the effort earlier. Most of the included examples show that the financial impact of losing `small' market share is much more costly to the incumbent than to the challenger. It also points out that if the competitor appears irrational, it's likely that you don't understand, and need to take the time to better understand their financials and motivations.