---
title: "A Comprehensive Guide to Regional Brand and Regional Market Marketing Warfare: A Must-Read!"
description: "In the era of market squeeze, the strong will only get stronger. Competition in China's baijiu market has shifted from incremental growth to stock squeeze, where growth can only be achieved by crushing competitors. Regional market competition has become a life-and-death struggle, and only brands that truly dominate their region or price band can thrive. This article explores the four forms of marketing warfare—guerrilla, flanking, offensive, and defensive—and how they apply to regional market breakthroughs."
author: "朱志明"
publisher: "New Distribution"
email: "zhaobo258@gmail.com"
telephone: "+8615854817671"
published: "2017-03-30"
language: "en"
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# A Comprehensive Guide to Regional Brand and Regional Market Marketing Warfare: A Must-Read!

> In the era of market squeeze, the strong will only get stronger. Competition in China's baijiu market has shifted from incremental growth to stock squeeze, where growth can only be achieved by crushing competitors. Regional market competition has become a life-and-death struggle, and only brands that truly dominate their region or price band can thrive. This article explores the four forms of marketing warfare—guerrilla, flanking, offensive, and defensive—and how they apply to regional market breakthroughs.

**Preface: In the era of squeeze, the strong will only get stronger.**
Competition in China's baijiu market used to be about incremental growth; now it's about squeezing existing stock. Previously, as long as you represented a product, you could achieve certain sales. But now, no matter how optimistic industry data and media reports are, and even though there is still some growth, think about it: is the consumption capacity of Chinese baijiu really growing in practice? From my personal observation, it's not growing; it's actually declining. Facing this situation, if we break it down to individual brands, the only way to achieve growth, as I've said before, is to squeeze competitors' sales. **Only by eliminating competitors, or causing their sales to decline, can we achieve growth.**
At this point, **competition in regional markets has truly entered a life-and-death struggle, no longer the old 'everyone gets along' state. Only those brands that can truly occupy and dominate the market, that are truly regional kings or kings in a certain price band, can survive and thrive.** Other mediocre brands, in this regional market battle, face being reshuffled or eliminated. Competition in China's baijiu regional markets has become a real war. This is the core reason why I associate regional marketing or breakthroughs with warfare.
**Chapter 1: Understanding the War in the Liquor Industry**
What exactly is war?
Simply put, war is the use of force to fight or contend for living space or a dominant position.
**War has only one purpose: to occupy or control.** In war movies, we often see that whether the attacker or defender, the outcome or value of the war is determined by whether the target city or position is occupied or controlled. That is, only when one side achieves absolute dominance can the war end or avoid continuation. In fact, this applies not only to military war but also to commercial competition, cultural conflicts, political struggles, etc. Only when one side gains dominance or control can it completely prevent other forces or organizations from subverting it. Think about it, isn't that so?
So, how can one achieve absolute dominance?
Mencius once said: He who wins the people's hearts wins the world.
**To achieve absolute dominance, you must win people's hearts, not just a city or a piece of land, so as to avoid the continuation of war or the outbreak of new wars.**
So, what is the highest realm of war?
**The highest realm of war is to occupy people's hearts and minds.** In fact, marketing is exactly the same as war.
Where is the real battlefield of marketing?
The real battlefield of marketing is the consumer's mind. **Only by truly occupying the consumer's mind can you truly own the market and be less easily subverted by competitors.**
Think about it: in a certain price band, when someone wants to spend 30 yuan on a bottle of liquor, they think of you first; when they want to spend 80 yuan, they think of you first; when they want a soft-flavored liquor, they think of you first; when they want a small flat box, they think of you first; when they want half a jin, they think of you first; when they want three liang or two and a half liang, they think of you. At this point, you have occupied the consumer's mind, not just the market. So, your product or price must be based on the consumer's mind you want to occupy, not following the crowd.
For example, if others are doing the 40-yuan price band, or the 80-yuan price band, and there's a 60-yuan gap between them, if you do the 60-yuan price band, it may be tough and slow at first, but once you succeed, that price band is yours.
Take Baoding Wang, Mr. Sun's half-jin liquor. It may be difficult in the market now because it's not mainstream, but as long as he persists and slowly works on it, once he gains consumer recognition, he can achieve a unique position in the half-jin segment. At this point, he needs to cultivate and educate consumers, and go through a period of continuous market cultivation, guidance, promotion, and consumer trials. That is, he needs to do a lot of consumer-focused work and terminal support work, but every piece of work adds to his future. Once a large number of consumers are consuming this product, he is close to success. This may take half a year or even a year to gradually promote and educate the market and consumer awareness.
Take Xiaodao Yuanjiang, for example. Its price positioning in restaurants is about 25 to 30 yuan, which few national bare-bottle liquors do. But once it achieves a leading position in many regional markets or the industry, the sales of other price bands will be greatly affected.
Because once people recognize and consume bare-bottle liquor around 28 yuan, the group consuming 15-yuan or 10-yuan bare-bottle liquor will gradually shrink.
What is strategy?
**Strategy is unique positioning; strategy is unique choice, choosing to be different from others. The ultimate goal is to dominate the product type, price band, market, or region I want to segment.** I have repeatedly emphasized that your strategy must choose a distinctive positioning, then gain your own living space, competitive position, and leading advantage, and ultimately occupy and dominate the segment you want.
**Chapter 2: Regional Brand Marketing Warfare**
**Marketing warfare is also commercial warfare.** Trout divided war into four forms: guerrilla, flanking, offensive, and defensive. However, Trout interpreted these four forms from the perspective of corporate and brand management, while I interpret them from the perspective of regional market breakthrough and attack.
**I. Guerrilla Warfare**
**Guerrilla warfare is a survival strategy.** First, you find a very segmented market or a niche market that strong brands overlook but has living space. Although small, it can make you live comfortably and be defensible. Second, no matter how successful you become, don't imitate the market leaders or the big shots. Third, absolutely avoid head-on confrontation with strong brands; once attacked by a strong brand, be ready to retreat or abandon at any time. **The models we now talk about—customization, crowdfunding, bulk liquor, community projects, wineries—all fall under guerrilla warfare.**
For example, we see those panda-like enterprises or specialty enterprises that survive on geographical advantages. Because their products have a strong consumer base locally and are loved by local consumers, they can live comfortably. This is a survival battle in guerrilla warfare. Once attacked by a strong opponent, their survival advantages and space will be greatly impacted and squeezed. For example, local enterprises' bulk liquor shops or small beautiful wineries. Think about it: how can a strong brand attack your small beautiful winery? How can it attack your front-shop-back-factory or on-site brewing and selling bulk liquor shop? For instance, no matter how awesome Yanghe is, it can't learn to imitate and attack you; it can't do what you do, it's helpless, and it won't bother. So you live comfortably.
Take Bailaoquan, a model that had no competitors a few years ago. But Bailaoquan has established its leading position in the bulk liquor segment, becoming a brand without competitors because many strong bottled and boxed liquor brands look down on this market and are unwilling to invest resources to seize it.
During the golden decade, for example, those from Sichuan, Maotai Town, Gujing Town, Bozhou, Yanghe Town, etc., although they had the advantage of base liquor, they didn't elevate this model to a strategic level and didn't take measures to operate and promote it nationally. As a result, Bailaoquan and similar enterprises got in first and established their position in this category.
So, **when local enterprises face encroachment and squeeze from strong brands, head-on confrontation is a dead end.** In this situation, **the only thing they can do is adopt survival methods that strong opponents are unwilling to do, such as creating a local experience hall for self-brewed bulk liquor, with on-site brewing experience, on-site selection, and on-site purchase.** Or, if you are already a specialty brand locally with a certain market leading position, **when facing attacks from strong brands, what you can do is desperately focus on consumer experience and build your small factory into a beautiful, winery-style distillery.** For example, there is a distillery in Heze, Shandong, called Yanghu. Although its past success relied on conventional price band segmentation and positioning, then a super single product to break through, forming local influence and achieving a scale of 300 to 400 million yuan, it now faces the same squeeze from strong competitors, and its leading products are gradually being phased out. What it can do now is only two things: one is to build its distillery into a garden-style winery that locals are proud to visit, and the other is to launch a new leading product to stabilize its market position. But if the new leading product fails, it will lose this war. **If its winery doesn't truly form a competitive advantage in experience consumption, it will easily decline.**
So for many small local distilleries, if you are struggling on the edge of survival, the bulk liquor model is actually a better model. Some local enterprises, regardless of their scale, brand, resources, and other soft and hard conditions, cannot directly attack strong enterprises and brands. How do they do it? They build their enterprise into a small and beautiful winery locally, creating a stylistic difference from large distilleries' scale, modernization, and mechanization. They adopt retro styles, displaying traditional and ancient images. When you visit, you can't feel any modernity; it's like an ancient brewing workshop. But Yanghu hasn't done this yet; it hasn't become purely natural and ancient. They adopt this retro style, like the small taverns we see in martial arts movies. When consumers come to experience it, they can truly feel the culture of the liquor.
You may be small, but you are truly different. You influence every consumer who comes to experience with a completely different atmosphere from large enterprises, forming your own unique living space. At this point, your consumer base is not small, their loyalty is high, and this base is constantly growing. So many small distilleries adopt this approach and live beautifully and comfortably, leaving strong brands helpless. They may not even have products in the market, just doing group purchases and customization, selling 20 to 30 million yuan a year. So when you encounter a strong brand and engage in direct attack and hand-to-hand combat, it may not benefit you. Following trends and imitating only drains your profits and requires more resources, ultimately leaving you trampled under the iron heel of others.
So someone asked me, **what strategic form do many brands that follow trends and imitate belong to? Are they fighting guerrilla warfare? I say no. These types of brands and enterprises are typical speculative brands and enterprises.** How can they be guerrilla warfare? Guerrilla warfare is about finding a space where you can survive. They are speculators. The large consumer demand and market capacity in China's baijiu market allow many imitative brands to have some living space, but if they can't find their own market, the future only holds death. They are waiting to die, with no competitiveness at all.
**II. Flanking Warfare**
**Flanking warfare is a development strategy.**
Flanking warfare also requires segmentation to find a market or space that belongs to you and has no competition, but unlike guerrilla warfare, flanking warfare uses tactical surprise, relying on a tactical path to quickly establish a position, such as advertising, terminal interception, or consumer interaction, to achieve rapid success. That is, once you find a market that belongs to you and others are unwilling to do, you must use a tactical surprise method to quickly achieve success. Once you succeed quickly, you must strike while the iron is hot and pursue victory to gain a larger market.
**Rapid enterprise development often relies on flanking warfare; guerrilla warfare only lays the foundation for survival.**
In fact, at different stages of enterprise operation, there are three different strategies. **The first is sub-category strategy, which is diversification strategy.** What is sub-category strategy? It means you have a main category and other categories.
**The second is demand strategy, which segments the market by consumer groups.**
**The third is embedded strategy, where demand is homogeneous, but operational strategies and layouts have some differentiation.**
**Sub-category strategy suits strong brands or regional strong brands,** such as Wuliangye, Luzhou Laojiao, even Yanghe, and some regional strong brands. They often use multi-brand, multi-product forms to increase product volume, which is a sub-category strategy.
**Demand strategy and embedded strategy are both differentiation strategies, a form of flanking warfare, suitable for startups or new entrants into a non-fully competitive market. Demand strategy is product differentiation; embedded strategy is product homogeneity but marketing differentiation.**
**For example, Seed Liquor's low-line strategy breakthrough, Gaolujia's breakthrough through BC restaurant terminals, Yanghe's initial pan-dish-pan model, Laocunzhang and Jinjiu combine both demand and embedded strategies.**
Laocunzhang did bare-bottle liquor. At that time, famous liquors and regional strong brands didn't focus on bare-bottle liquor; they were all doing mid-to-high-end or high-end. Who would look at bare-bottle liquor? This gave Laocunzhang an opportunity in product category and price band. Now, many bare-bottle liquors have emerged, and although demand is homogeneous, Laocunzhang has done extremely well in promotions.
Jinjiu, think about how many competitors it has. It's a new category, health liquor, and it also did extremely well in terminal marketing, especially starting with restaurant breakthroughs. Jinjiu's success was also tortuous; initially, it tried the supermarket route and heavily advertised on CCTV, but consumers didn't respond.
Later, in Nanchang, a regional manager adopted a terminal model, specifically the BC restaurant terminal model, doing free tastings and promotional promotions at terminals. It succeeded immediately; Jinjiu was quickly accepted locally and even beat down non-similar products.
This method suddenly gave Jinjiu a development direction and a path for market breakthrough. They extracted the model and quickly replicated and promoted it.
Remember, models always originate from local markets, from a sales elite or a sales-minded leader, and then are refined and promoted by the company.
**III. Offensive Warfare**
**Offensive warfare is a war of transcendence.**
**When you have grown strong enough to launch an attack, when you've reached the position of second or third, you need to study the leader's strong position in the market, then find the leader's weaknesses to attack.** Look for weaknesses caused by their strengths, not just their weaknesses. Leaders can easily make up for their shortcomings, but they cannot make up for the disadvantages caused by their own strengths. For example, some products sell so well that it's hard to buy genuine ones. Take Niuer (Niulanshan Erguotou) now. Think about it: many bare-bottle liquors attack Niuer on the point of rampant counterfeits. Another is price chaos. That is, you need to seize the leader's inherent weaknesses caused by their strengths, which they cannot make up for, and attack. At this point, they become very passive. For example, some liquors are very soft; softness is a big trend now, but for another consumer group, it may not be strong enough, lacking the intense feeling they want. These are all opportunities, depending on how we attack. At the same time, you must focus on a narrow front to attack, like a needle, reducing the competitor's market share and dealing a fatal blow. Single product, promotion, channel, price—which aspect do you choose to attack? We must think carefully.
**IV. Defensive Warfare**
I won't elaborate much here. When you've reached the top position, you need systematic defense, leaving no opportunity for opponents. You must reinvent yourself, upgrade products, eliminate old products, and let the second generation surpass the first. In short, don't leave any opportunities or space for later entrants.
Above, I've explained Trout's understanding of the four marketing warfare forms from a brand perspective.
**Chapter 3: Regional Market Marketing Warfare**
How do I understand these four warfare forms in regional marketing and breakthrough?
**I. Guerrilla Warfare**
Why do we fight guerrilla warfare in a regional market?
First, your strategic position in this market is insufficient; the enterprise doesn't position this market as a leading, key, or core market, so it doesn't invest many resources, leaving the brand to fend for itself, adopting a guerrilla or opportunistic survival method. Second, the opponent is very strong, market opportunities are few, and enterprise resources are insufficient to launch flanking or direct attacks, so only guerrilla tactics are possible.
So what kind of regional market does guerrilla warfare correspond to? Two types of markets.
First, opportunity markets, meaning markets not yet valued by the enterprise.
Second, newly introduced markets, meaning new markets. So the purpose of guerrilla warfare is twofold: one is to create opportunities where none exist, and the other is to find new markets for differentiated survival.
Guerrilla warfare in regional market attack and breakthrough has three forms:
**1. Harassment, sabotage, and disruption,** creating your brand's advantages and opportunities by disrupting the market. I've seen many brands do this, using a reverse Tian Ji horse racing strategy. Instead of using their best horse against the opponent's worst, they use their worst against the opponent's best, competing with low-cost products against high-priced ones.
For example, if the cost is best set at 20 or 30 yuan, they price the product at 50 or higher. Then what do they do? They do high-price, high-promotion, directly targeting competitors in that price band for disruption and harassment. If competitors follow, they fall into the trap. Because this product is meant to be sacrificed, not to build the market. This disruptive product offers generous benefits to distributors, terminals, and consumers, including promotional resources.
It's particularly interesting: once competitors follow this promotional form, they are led by the nose and gradually become very passive. Then the brand quickly launches a higher cost-performance product, priced slightly higher, to attack the strong brand's leading product. This pincer attack continues until you are crippled. This is typical harassment and disruption: first, use any means to attack, then use your leading product to suppress. When suppressing, you follow conventional paths, doing the market properly, whether in terminal promotion, display, or consumer cultivation, pressing down on them.
**2. Infiltration, gradually cultivating from local markets or specific segmented channels, increasing consumers, and waiting until you have certain advantages and energy to launch a flanking attack.**
**3. Specialty survival, segmenting models, products, geography, and regions,** and if the opponent counterattacks, immediately withdraw from the market. For example, customization, bulk liquor, community models, etc., once attacked by strong competitors, they immediately retreat; otherwise, the money earned before may be lost.
What are the forms of guerrilla warfare? There are four forms.
**1. Product guerrilla warfare,** using your non-leading products to attack the strong brand's leading products for market disruption. Use specialty and differentiated products for survival, such as gift packs. You can make some gift packs each year and still have living space. You can take the supermarket route or core tobacco and liquor store route, giving them higher profits, and you can survive well.
**2. Segment zones, surviving in areas where competitors are not strong, cultivating the market.**
**3. Promotional guerrilla warfare.** Think about it: promotions are not inherently good; promotional guerrilla warfare is typical disruption. There's a fundamental characteristic of guerrilla warfare, let me tell you: the tactical means you use must be very powerful. For example, your promotion design must be very clever and clear. If you don't even understand promotions, how can you fight guerrilla warfare? How can you disrupt competitors? If competitors exert a little effort to counterattack, they'll cripple you. If you want to disrupt competitors through guerrilla warfare, your research on that aspect must be deeper than theirs. So in Mao Zedong's mobile warfare and guerrilla warfare, those who can fight guerrilla warfare are a very strong team when together, and each is a hero when separated. So when doing guerrilla warfare, you must fully consider and research the tactical means you choose, and how you can use it to disrupt strong competitors.
**4. Price guerrilla warfare,** as I just gave an example: pricing low-cost products high, then using big promotions to go from high to low, showing your advantage in that price band and the greater benefits to consumers, to attack the strong brand's leading products.
Guerrilla warfare has two key points:
**First, make the opponent unable to figure out your tactics; everything you do, they can't see clearly.** For example, if you do promotions and they follow, you change as soon as they get on track, and they don't know what you're really doing. If you let the opponent see through your tactics, you will definitely lose. In fact, when we see this phenomenon, you might say the promotion is too aggressive, the channel profit is too high, and this product will die. It will indeed die; it's meant to die, to harass you and defeat you. So, make the opponent unable to figure out your tactics.
**Second, when the enemy is in chaos, you remain calm; even if the opponent is chaotic, you stay calm and continue your own tactics.** If you follow the opponent's counterattack and play their game, even if your product is sacrificed, you won't achieve anything. When the enemy is in chaos, you stay calm, with clear purpose, absolutely not following or counterattacking. We must deeply understand Mao Zedong's sixteen-character guerrilla formula: Enemy advances, we retreat; enemy camps, we harass; enemy tires, we attack; enemy retreats, we pursue.
**II. Flanking Warfare**
What is flanking warfare? What kind of regional market fights flanking warfare? Problem markets or newly introduced markets can fight flanking warfare.
**A key point of flanking warfare is that you need to find opportunities,** create your own advantages and living space, then use them to drive straight in and achieve overall success.
How do problem markets arise? Often because we haven't found a breakthrough point in the market and haven't operated with regularity and rhythm.
Although we see some markets where the breakthrough point is found, the rhythm and pace of attack are wrong, resulting in the market being difficult to ignite or slowly simmering, with the product becoming an old small tree or dying prematurely.
So, the market emphasizes using opportunity breakthroughs and attack rhythm. Find opportunities or re-find survival opportunities and competitive space, and launch flanking warfare using opportunities. New markets are the same; because opportunities are discovered, you can directly use them to launch flanking warfare, choosing a good tactic, using rhythm and regularity, and directly launching flanking warfare.
**Flanking warfare has three cores:**
**1. Segmented market attack thinking.**
Seize segmented markets, avoid direct confrontation with strong competitors, adopt differentiated attack tactics, and seize new high ground. For example, Seed Liquor's low-line strategy, starting from second- or third-tier markets and low prices. Xinglin has a jar liquor strategy: everyone plays with bottled liquor, I play with jar liquor. Bottled liquor comes in boxes of four or six, right? My jar liquor is two jin per jar, two jars per box. I'm a porcelain jar. Your bottle sells for 168 or 138, right? My two-jin jar sells for 188 or 168. Your box is 400-500, my box is only 200-300. Isn't that good? So you must be different from others. I've told you before about Huanghelong's "extra two liang" defeating Bandaojing's one jin, and Bandaojing's "extra bottle" defeating Huanghelong's "extra two liang." So you must seize a segmented market, seize new high ground, and make consumers remember and know you. That is, your leading strategy and tactics must be different from others.
**2. Tactical surprise; tactical surprise is the core of flanking attack.**
A good flanking attack should not only be launched in an uncontested area but also focus resources to seize the high ground before the opponent reacts. Because the opponent is relatively strong, if they react, they have the advantage and ability to destroy you. In our regional market attack process, to put it bluntly, many enterprises, especially strong brands, either look down on attackers or think they won't succeed. Even if they take them seriously, they easily become complacent, or they don't deeply analyze and understand what others are doing, so they let them go. As a result, they don't use their advantageous resources to quickly eliminate others, giving them opportunities and making way for them.
**3. When we achieve true advantages, we must pursue victory and expand the market.**
**This is basically the same as Trout said.**
Flanking warfare has six forms:
**1. Product flanking warfare.** For example, others use bottles, you use jars; others use one jin, you use extra two liang; others use one bottle, you use an extra bottle; others use 1x4, you use 1x2; others use large bottles, you use small bottles; others use one jin, you use half jin, etc. These are all forms of product flanking warfare.
**2. Price flanking warfare.** For example, others are doing high-priced markets, leaving a big opportunity and gap in the low-priced market. Others are doing mainstream price bands, but you see a future price band for consumption upgrade, possibly even higher than competitors. Because it's higher, you have enough space to lead, guide, educate, and cultivate the market. But here's a key: your brand strength and brand genes must support your qualification to lead and cultivate a future trend price band.
**3. Promotion flanking warfare.** I've mentioned some cases earlier, like Gaolujia. At that time, Kouzijiao had bought out AB restaurants, so Gaolujia bought out BC terminals, which also matched its price band. Kouzijiao was at the 88-yuan price band, while Gaolujia's Pujia was at 68 yuan, one price band lower. As a result, it quickly became the king of that price band.
For example, when I was in Baoding, there was a brand called Laonijiao. It put a "one more box" coupon in every box, quickly activating consumers. For example, some junk advertising spots. A single junk ad spot is indeed bad, but if you cover most junk ad spots in a region, it becomes a beautiful sight. For example, a brand I served before only did PR for core consumers matching its product and brand, doing such extreme work, and it quickly succeeded.
**4. Channel flanking warfare.** For example, breakthroughs in restaurants, group purchases, small shops—if you seize these cores, you're awesome.
**5. Regional flanking warfare.** In fact, when Huaguan enters any market, it usually focuses on model streets or model areas, focuses on model stores, and then does it. Once successful, the market can be replicated quickly. In one or two years, a county market can contribute 40-50 million or even over 100 million in sales. Xiaodao's point-to-surface strategy, focusing on regions, core stores, and golden outlets, is the most effective way to quickly break through in regional markets.
**6. Core customer flanking warfare.** I don't do the surface, nor do I focus on regions. I only do core terminals, letting these core terminals drive core customers to achieve sales breakthroughs and lead the market.
**Flanking warfare has a seven-character formula: segment, focus, extreme, fast.**
**1. Segment:** Cut out an area with obvious competitive opportunities or advantages to attack.
**2. Focus:** Focus, focus, focus. You must focus superior forces and resources to form absolute advantage. Don't disperse market, resources, or energy, especially your thinking. Don't sit on the fence.
**3. Extreme:** Within the competitive opportunity or relative living space, achieve the extreme that opponents cannot surpass. Be the strongest at the attack point, such as restaurants, promotion, sales, or areas, and strike precisely, ruthlessly, and fiercely.
**4. Fast:** In flanking warfare, speed often determines fate. We can't afford a war of attrition; once it becomes a tug-of-war, it's about enduring and consuming, which we can't afford. So when fighting flanking warfare, you must be fast, absolutely not giving the opponent a chance to counterattack. When the opponent counterattacks, we've already formed a climate and occupied the market. When they want to counterattack, the people's hearts are already with us. So the highest realm of anything we do is to win people's hearts and win the world. The fundamental purpose of flanking warfare is to use opportunities, tear open a gap, build advantages, and then quickly leverage the entire market.
**III. Offensive Warfare**
What kind of market, and when do we launch offensive warfare?
In regional markets, growth markets often involve direct attacks. In the market you attack, you already have or have formed strong growth advantages, with the momentum to replace the leader. At this point, you need to seize the opponent's pigtail and annihilate them.
Let's think: what determines and forms a brand's market position? I'll explain from two aspects:
**1. You must create a super single product.** A brand's market position often rests on a super single product.
This super product must have obvious differentiation from the local best-selling brand's super product, whether in packaging differentiation, price staggering, alcohol degree differentiation, taste differentiation, process differentiation, cultural differentiation, or marketing tactic differentiation. In short, you must be different. Only by being different can you leverage to accumulate consumer groups and achieve sustained growth. Otherwise, no matter how hard you work, it will fizzle out. If you don't have obvious differentiation from the strong brand's leading product, you will definitely not succeed.
**2. Market share.** Competitors in the market generally fall into three categories: the strong, i.e., the leading brand; the favorable, not the market leader but in a favorable position; and the survivors, who can live but barely, with some sales but not affecting the market. This is the "number one or two, not three or four" rule.
As we all know, baijiu is particularly interesting in regional markets, especially in a certain price band. Once you become the leading brand, your market share can be over 70-80%, while the second and third players have pitiful shares. So market share also determines your market position in the industry.
**When your market share begins to decline, your brand position also begins to decline.**
**So, how to attack?** When your brand's super single product has formed and has a certain position, and consumers have begun to consciously consume your product, you have the opportunity to directly compete with the leader. **At this point, you must seize the opportunity, find the leader's inherent weaknesses that they cannot overcome, and attack fiercely and continuously until they are crippled, then surpass them.** For a weak brand, if you really want to make a difference in the market, you must adopt a differentiated attack strategy. Once you grow, consumers will shift in large numbers, as determined by baijiu consumption habits.
**Strong baijiu brands have three major weaknesses.**
**1. Channel value chain:** When a strong brand is very powerful, its service, customer relations, profits, and management for channel dealers will inevitably lag, and it will become arrogant. We need to discover, understand, and communicate more with terminals to find the deepest resentment in the channel.
**2. Consumption value chain:** Strong brands have three shortcomings at the consumption level: price instability (this terminal has this price, that terminal has that price); terminal instability (because of price instability, terminals may spread rumors due to insufficient profits, such as counterfeit liquor); and core consumer instability (when a strong brand grows stronger, it will no longer pay special attention to the core consumers who originally drove its product consumption). You must find these three shortcomings.
**3. Promotion value chain:** When a strong brand reaches a certain level, it will begin to harvest the market. During harvesting, its investment in PR, promotion, publicity, and momentum will be reduced. So at this point, you must analyze which aspect—channel, consumption, or promotion—can truly have a huge impact, strike there, and launch a beautiful, concentrated offensive war to surpass and replace it.
**There are also three major precautions for regional market offensive warfare:**
**1. Narrow-line attack:** You must focus on a single line, attacking on as narrow a front as possible, occupying one by one, or focusing on a single tactical point. Don't stretch the front or attack on multiple lines. If you choose channel attack, focus on the channel; if consumer attack, focus on consumers; if promotion attack, focus on promotion. Don't think about investing and attacking in all aspects; that's egalitarianism, which is harmful.
**2. Force concentration:** On the narrow front, your force investment must be superior to the opponent's, fighting an annihilation war. Direct attack is actually a resource-grabbing war, a war to seize channel, consumer, or promotion resources, but you must surpass the opponent's resources.
**3. The leader must show some unfavorable signs** before you can launch a direct attack and quickly surpass them. For example, channel interest chaos, serious channel dissatisfaction, obvious reduction in brand promotion, or the price band occupied by the brand being disrupted, such as price chaos, counterfeits, declining reputation, etc. You must find their weaknesses before attacking. Don't think that just because you've reached second or third place, you can directly attack the leader. If they maintain everything well, your attack won't achieve much and may even end in disaster. You need to slowly cultivate and guide, letting more consumers choose you, and wait for the opponent to have problems before immediately launching an attack.
**What are the differences and similarities between flanking warfare and offensive warfare?**
The similarity is that both choose opportunity points, use the opponent's gaps or weaknesses, and require force concentration.
The difference is: flanking warfare aims to use opportunities and living space to quickly create advantages, stand out, and improve market position.
Offensive warfare uses flanking warfare to grow to second or third place, then launches a major attack on the leader, using the leader's weaknesses caused by their strengths, launching a direct attack to defeat the opponent and form a leading position.
Flanking warfare and offensive warfare are sometimes sequential: after flanking warfare creates advantages, you then launch a direct offensive war to defeat the opponent.
**What's the difference between guerrilla warfare and flanking warfare?**
Guerrilla warfare uses segmentation to find a suitable space to live well; I don't launch any attack on the leader.
If the leader attacks me, I retreat because I can't compete with the leader.
Flanking warfare, on the other hand, uses the survival advantages gained from flanking warfare, targeting the leader's weaknesses, to prepare for a direct offensive war, aiming to defeat the leader and find development opportunities.
If we understand and grasp the mysteries of guerrilla warfare, flanking warfare, and offensive warfare, we can have some confidence in regional market breakthroughs. When you plan any market layout, you'll have a clear plan and even be adept.
**IV. Defensive Warfare**
When you are in a leading position in the market, with a dominant or absolutely strong competitive position, this type of market is mature. At this point, as Trout said, you need systematic defense, self-transcendence, and not giving later entrants any living opportunities or space, which is key. I won't elaborate much here.
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