Never Criticize Your Competitors

http://loiclemeur.com/english/2009/03/never-criticize-your-competitors.html

by sgrove • 17 years ago

78 29 17 years ago

sgrove2• 17 years ago

It's easy to get too caught up in the heat of competition to remember civility. Suppressing the, "I'm gonna CRUSH the competition" urges makes for more enjoyable relationships, a better atmosphere, and most importantly, better decisions.

JacobAldridge• 17 years ago

Even if some of these benefits seem long term or irrelevant (like being bought out by a competitor), the tip about growing the overall market is both immediate and gold.

If you have 10% market share you can grow by taking customers from the competition, or by maintaining that percentage while you and competitors help the market to grow and grow. Both are worthwhile strategies, the latter especially so in emerging industries / technologies.

xenophanes• 17 years ago

Apple's TV ads criticize Microsoft. I think "never" is too strong, but you should definitely be careful, and do it in good humor.

pmorici3• 17 years ago

There's a fine line between criticism vs. compare and contrast.

dannyr2• 17 years ago

There's also a fine line between humor and making fun of people. For me, "I'm a Mac and I'm a PC" is not humor.

By the way, I'm a PC guy.

sgrove2• 17 years ago

That's true, but as you said, Apple is very careful in phrasing their criticisms. Microsoft's flaws are drawn out from comparisons, not explicitly stated by Apple's guy (I don't know the actor's name). The viewer then makes the predetermined conclusion on "independently".

It's a crafty technique put to good use by Apple's marketing department. Whether it's something a small startup could use to put a dent in a market goliath, I'm not so sure.

joechung• 17 years ago

The actor who plays the Apple guy is Justin Long.

sili• 17 years ago

They are also careful to say PC not Microsoft even though everyone understands what they mean.

Goladus• 17 years ago

Whatever you might think of Apple's TV ads, Steve Jobs is rather notable for not being afraid to slam Microsoft.

edw519• 17 years ago

"We are competitors, not enemies." - Bill Clinton

known• 17 years ago

But the reality is competition breeds hatred.

maxniederhofer• 17 years ago

1. Never generalize.

2. This is helpful in the sense that criticism isn't necessarily the best way to compete, especially if you're growing a new market.

3. Sometimes it's good to ignore your competition, sometimes it's good to partner with them, sometimes it's best to undercut them on price, or best them on features. And sometimes it's best to tell everyone the raw deal they've been getting.

4. Criticizing your competition generally works better in established markets where you're resegmenting.

ckinnan2• 17 years ago

Be careful having lunch with competitors; conversations to set prices or market share are illegal in the US.

DenisM• 17 years ago

I long for the day when this becomes a concern for me.

zackattack• 17 years ago

At what point does a casual conversation become illegal collusion?

Edit: Alex Rampell, CEO of TrialPay, says this:

don't worry about that. you have to control the market and the market has to be big enough to cause economic damage if it is controlled. VERY hard to make an anti-trust case stick.

ckinnan2• 17 years ago

There is no economic damage requirement if you engage in explicit price or output fixing (which could be a verbal agreement). See: http://www.ftc.gov/os/2000/04/ftcdojguidelines.pdf

"Types of agreements that have been held per se illegal include agreements among competitors to fix prices or output, rig bids, or share or divide markets by allocating customers, suppliers, territories, or lines of commerce. The courts conclusively presume such agreements, once identified, to be illegal, without inquiring into their claimed business purposes, anticompetitive harms, procompetitive benefits, or overall competitive effects."

Obviously small players aren't worth prosecuting but that's a different question.

fatdog789• 17 years ago

Don't trust a CEO.

Collusion is always illegal when it's anti-competitive, whatever the size of the participants of the collusion. The key point to take away though, is that the authorities are unlikely to enforce antitrust laws against minor/negligible market participants. However, as little as 2% combined total market share has been enough to justify enforcement of antitrust laws for collusion.

zngtk4• 17 years ago

At what point does a casual conversation become illegal collusion?

Unfortunately, the law provides no clear definition, just as there's no clear point at which competitive behavior become "anti-competitive."

I'm not sure I'd agree with the statement that it's "VERY hard to make an anti-trust case stick" -- the antitrust laws are used a lot more than you hear about in the regular news (and the government doesn't have to be the one who brings them since you can be sued under the laws). For instance, in 2003 Nestle and Dreyer's Ice Cream were blocked from merging on antitrust grounds because the government defined the market they would gain a large share in as "The Market for Superpremium Ice Cream" (not the market for desserts or the market for ice cream). Many other deals aren't even attempted for fear of antitrust.

Not only that, but you can be found guilty of price fixing even if you didn't have a conversation about prices.

But if you're big enough for this to be a concern, you're already thinking about hiring Washington lobbyists to protect yourself and not reading Hacker News.

benatkin• 17 years ago

"Tony Hsieh the CEO of Zappos does"

After seeing the tense on this, I guessed that this article must have been written before Amazon bought them. I was right.

I hope the Zappos culture lives on, even though they got bought by Amazon. They've been a great example for aspiring entrepreneurs.

plainspace• 17 years ago

brilliant post. there is a fine line here but imagine a world in which criticism was not the knee jerk reaction? not just in business but in general. at school, in the playground, on the playing field, in politics. it makes me think of 2 things: Ben Zander's "the art of possibility" and something else that I can't remember right now.

billswift• 17 years ago

Beyond the civility issue, if you think your competition is doing something wrong, don't criticize them, just do it better and capture more of the market. (This doesn't apply in his illustration of France Telecom's tactics, but it's the first thing that occurred to me before I actually read the essay.)

rbanffy• 17 years ago

And, if your competition is doing something really, really wrong (as in "illegal"), report them to the authorities immediately.

aw3c2• 17 years ago

How can this be missing this:

If you critize your competition, you basically give them a good handle where to improve themselves. You do not want your competition to improve if you want to make money.

Never Criticize Your Competitors

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