Knowing Your Competition

 

I was cycling home from Richmond Park yesterday here in London village and noticed a British Airways billboard ad I have seen a few times now. The photo above is the ad in question and it says

Now I know where BA are going with this ad but it struck me that it missed who BA’s real competition are these days. That would be Cisco. One look at the Cisco homepage proved this to me with their travel less, save more slogan.

 

 

Of course the BA billboard is really targeted at consumers and in that sense I totally agree with the message. NYC is a lot more compelling a street level than over a conference call. That set me off thinking about billboards more generally and whether they’re any use these days for advertising or are really just brand building given the many other more targeted ads we’re subjected to.

Nevertheless, it was a timely reminder to me to think thoroughly about who the competition really is. In the current economic times, you owe it to yourself to grab a piece of pen and paper, a coffee and sit down to work out who your competitors really are. Then execute a strategy.