How McDonald’s Got Beaten At Their Own Game

This is the second post of ten in the Predatory Inspiration's series by Ashton Bishop, Head of Strategy at Step Change Marketing.

The theme of this series is Predatory Marketing.

Predatory Marketing is defined as: strike at the weaknesses that arise out of your competitor's greatest strength. If that sounds familiar, then read it again. It's not 'strike at your competitor's weakness' and it's not 'talk about what's different'. This is more powerful.

See, when you strike at the weaknesses that arise out of your competitor's greatest strength you strike at the part of your competitor that they are least willing to change. It also changes the conversation from the same marketing words that every other company in your category uses, to a conversation that leverages your relative advantages.

These case studies demonstrate how Predatory Marketing has been applied.

McDonald’s doesn’t lead the chicken category. They need to say WHY you should have a McChicken over KFC. KFC have made McDonald’s job much harder with some cracking predatory work.

Target

McDonalds

Greatest strength

They have processes for everything - it’s a systemised business.

The weaknesses that arise from their strength

They process the chicken too.

Relative advantages

KFC only use whole chicken pieces. There’s less of a disconnect from the poultry to the plate and consumers can have more faith in eating a quality product.

Predatory recap

Strike at the weaknesses that arise out of your competitors greatest strength. This achieves greatest impact and makes response more difficult.

In the next post, Ashton talks about a "good for you, good for others" proposition that helped set a small player apart form the big boys.