In the Vancouver area, Grouse Mountain is known as a year round destination attraction. In the summer, there is a really steep trail that leads from the Grouse parking lot up to the restaurant area known by everyone as The Grouse Grind. I’ve been leading weekly hikes this summer on the BC Mountaineering Club trail. This route starts and stops at the same place as The Grouse Grind, but it is longer, less steep, less crowded, and is an easier hike. Yet when I speak with people who about the BCMC trail I find that despite my always referring to the BCMC trail:
Hike on Grouse = Grouse Grind
My marketing efforts to promote a fun morning hike for all my entrepreneurial friends keeps getting confused with the marketing message from Grouse Mountain. Many assume there is only one trail up the mountain (The Grind) when there are in fact two. Congratulations to the marketing people at Grouse for keeping their hike top of mind awareness in the minds of people in Vancouver.
I’ve been trying to raise awareness of my hike against the well established Grouse marketing machine. This is a tough challenge. Contrast this with a Blue Ocean Strategy approach (BOS). In BOS, you define a new market (i.e., a blue ocean) where you can define your own market strategy. With no clutter, you are freely able to define your market and be the market leader
In a previous post, I featured Mike Jagger of Provident Security and his Blue Ocean Strategy (although we didn’t call it that). Provident promises it’s customers that they will be at the customer’s door within five minutes of an alarm going off — guaranteed. Few, if any, companies in the security business promise any response time. Mike’s promise of five minutes from the time an alarm goes off until one of his people are at your door defines a whole new market — security companies that promise a maximum response time and who deliver it. This new market is a blue ocean which Mike and his team at Provident have successfully capitalized on.
How can you redefine your market to give you a blue ocean to work in?
