March 2009 

By Ken Schmaltz, Marketing Director, Twist Marketing

A few weeks ago I wrote about one of my former lives in which the CEO directed me to place an ad in the Wall Street Journal. As I wrote, the ad was to announce that we were going to start giving away one of our enterprise search products for free. Google had entered the market with a low-cost solution, and was commoditizing that end of the market. To counter this, we were going to take control and drive the commoditization faster and further. We were going to disrupt things. We were going to be pirates in our market.

Usually, disruption in the marketplace is considered a bad thing. And it is...if you’re not the one doing the disrupting. Everything you’ve based your plans on—from wild assumptions to scientific research—is suddenly wrong. Your strategies are no longer valid. You have to be reactive instead of proactive. But if you’re the one doing the disrupting, it’s your competitors that have do the reacting.

And that’s exactly why you should consider being disruptive now. Economic downturns are the perfect time to hoist the Jolly Roger and become pirates in your marketplace. While your competition is battening down the hatches, cutting their marketing spend and looking for a safe harbor in which to wait out the recession, change the rules of engagement.

How? In any number of ways. Target their customers with aggressive pricing and promotions. Introduce new features, products or services that force them to shift resources and strategies to match. Launch a thought leadership program that plays your strengths against their weaknesses and positions them as laggards. Ramp up your marketing programs across the board to create so much noise that you drown out their message.

The Twist: Whether you like it or not, your market is in a continuous state of disruption. Take advantage of this by driving the disruption instead of letting it drive you.


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