When competitors adopt promotional policies, it's fair to say that few companies choose not to follow suit. Because if following is like seeking death, not following is even more so. It's better to face it head-on, perhaps turning passivity into initiative.

Over a decade in marketing, I've indeed seen companies respond calmly to competitor promotions without resorting to reactive or counter-promotions, instead using other means to ensure sales are not lost. For example, when Coca-Cola's Qoo faced competitors with dominant market share, they didn't cut prices or run promotions but quickly adopted a "character marketing" approach to connect with consumers and buyers (who sometimes differ), keeping them loyal to Qoo. Uni-President, facing heavy competitor promotions, leveraged its extensive product line to launch new products (like Lai Yi Tong instant noodles, Uni-100 large noodle cakes, and Mai Xiang Tea series) to distract consumers and disrupt rivals. Blue Ribbon Beer, due to the scarcity of foreign beer brands at the time, actually coordinated price increases with distributors when competitors cut prices, letting consumers' strong brand loyalty counter the rivals.

However, these are just isolated cases with special conditions, not universally applicable or learnable by every company.

From Trout's perspective that "marketing is war," when competitors promote, we should be mentally prepared, accept the fact calmly, and respond with better promotions. But at this point, our promotions should be more about "moving inventory" than blindly following or hastily deciding. We shouldn't ignore competitor promotions but thoroughly study their policies to devise a rational, orderly, and measured response.

These methods can be summarized as: first, position our promotional strategy, then adopt the "three more" policy: higher value attraction, faster action, and stronger execution. Through this policy (or one of its components), we can wage a decisive promotional battle!

1. Positioning

It's not easy to come from behind; to succeed with a late strike, you must find the opponent's weak spot. The same applies to promotions. Positioning here means, first, finding the promotional methods and policies that the market truly needs, thereby using your late promotion to seize the opponent's place in consumers' and channel members' minds, or making your positioning more prominent and attractive. Second, it means finding gaps in the opponent's strategy to strike, which not only secures a unique position but also undermines or shifts the opponent's positioning.

Many companies like to run in-store promotions at supermarkets, hiring numerous promoters and guides, creating lots of merchandising materials, spending heavily on attractive displays, and sometimes offering "buy X get one free" or price discounts. This is a common practice. However, since companies can only focus on one point at a time, when competitors are busy with supermarket promotions, their efforts in street retail stores may weaken or be ignored. That's where you can focus your response.

Of course, we can also adopt strategies like the opponent using large packaging while we use small, but the key is to deliver a greater impact on channels or consumers or to seize the opponent's gaps.

2. Higher Value Attraction

This is a common tactic for many companies, though not new, it's worth mentioning. Why? Products themselves embody value; promotions aim to provide channel members and consumers with higher value in a short time beyond the product's inherent worth. So, using higher value attraction is certainly "what everyone wants." This aligns with the channel value chain view: all levels of the channel and consumers are members who add value to the product; when they benefit, it promotes product flow, which is the essence of "promotion"!

Our current misconception, or the reason some companies oppose this view, is a superficial understanding of "higher value," only using "tit for tat" to solve problems. To avoid vicious competition, it's advisable to use higher value but with more ingenious or slightly differentiated methods that win hearts. For example, if competitors focus on channel members with buy-and-gift, discounts, high rebates, or subsidies, we can intensify one-on-one promotions at the terminal, such as freezing + display + single-item rewards + cumulative rewards. If the opponent offers "buy ten get one free," I wouldn't hesitate to do "buy eight get one free," but that disrupts the rules and is not advisable—it's a lose-lose approach.

If we recognize that the channel is a chain, as long as we make the product more valuable overall, or show more value or value for money, we've adopted a good promotional policy, thus avoiding a "promotion war."

3. Faster Action

It's often said that it's not the big fish that eats the small, but the fast fish that eats the slow—this is especially true in promotions. Promotions are inherently short-term sales boosts!

I once heard a real case: a company was secretly discussing an instant noodle promotion at a train station during a holiday, planning to act in three days. The information was immediately intercepted by a competitor, who quickly launched a similar promotion the very next day, achieving a great victory and killing the original company's plan, causing heavy losses. That competitor won a brilliant time-based promotional battle.

It's said that "the mantis stalks the cicada, unaware of the oriole behind," but in an era of rapid market changes and instant consumer gratification, this is increasingly less applicable. Once promotional products have filled distributors' warehouses and consumers have enjoyed the offers, new promotions lose their appeal. In the beverage market, "one more bottle" was all the rage, with companies rushing to imitate, but only the originator truly benefited.

Recently, while visiting markets, I've seen intense competition in many industries where a company launches a promotion and competitors follow within a day. This kind of "speed" isn't about promotion; it's about gambling on market and company fate, not truly understanding promotion. They are likely not beneficiaries but the biggest victims of promotions.

4. Stronger Execution

When competitors adopt promotional policies, besides devising better positioning, higher value, and faster action, many companies overlook one crucial aspect: flawless execution.

Often, we rely on distributors to execute our promotions, hoping that after giving them higher value, they'll help us promote. It's strange that we often delegate our own tasks to distributors! We assume that if we increase channel benefits, distributors will execute promotions 100%.

A major reason many companies fail in promotions is incomplete execution: promotional resources are withheld, materials aren't used where intended, and promotions don't reach the right places or levels.

Sometimes, company leaders think the sales frontline is bustling with promotions, but the expensive promotional posters printed in advance may not have been posted at all. Sometimes, information meant to reach all distributors and terminals in one day drags on for nearly half a month. Sometimes, promotional contracts and displays that should be signed within a week aren't signed even as the promotion period ends, with excuses of difficulties. Sometimes...

Success is 5% planning and 95% execution. When competitors promote, besides possibly having a better plan (the 5%), we must focus on the 95% execution rate. Often, we put the cart before the horse!

How to respond to competitor promotions is an eternal topic because it's a life-and-death competition, a bloody war. As marketers in the thick of it, we can only use the Olympic spirit "higher, faster, stronger" to inspire companies to win in promotional battles, ultimately all being successful. This is an endless race; we can only hope that industry peers, like in the Olympic arena, bring out their best skills and push this high-level competition to new heights!