Wikipedia's First Mover Advantage

Wikipedia, the collaborative internet encyclopaedia, is about to get some competition. On 17 October, Larry Sanger, who helped set up Wikipedia in 2001, announced the launch of a site called Citizendium and declared his venture 'will soon attempt to unseat Wikipedia as the go-to destination for general information online'.

Wikipedia, the collaborative internet encyclopaedia, is about to get some competition. On 17 October, Larry Sanger, who helped set up Wikipedia in 2001, announced the launch of a site called Citizendium and declared his venture 'will soon attempt to unseat Wikipedia as the go-to destination for general information online'.

Since 2001 Wikipedia has grown from a small, well-meaning venture into one of the world's most popular websites. It relies on users to generate its content and, as a result, its 5m pages of information have grown exponentially, providing a continually evolving, instantly available (and free) reference source covering a vast array of topics.

Sanger, who left Wikipedia shortly after its launch, is motivated both by the desire to offer an improved alternative and the need to score a personal victory against his former partner, Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales.

Which will emerge as the dominant internet encyclopaedia? In the dotcom world, where there is little customer loyalty, the battle for market share can be swift and brutally conclusive. It looks like shaping up into a classic confrontation between two organisations that have a lot in common in terms of product, but come to the market in very different ways in terms of strategy.

Wikipedia is the first mover. It created the category and as a result enjoys a number of strategic advantages. First, it has already built up a great deal of residual brand equity. Wikipedia is up there with Google and eBay as one of the most familiar sites on the planet. It also has the advantage of the brand associations that come with being the original and authentic web encyclopaedia. Coupled with this are the operational competencies Wikipedia should have built up. As first mover, with millions of users, it should also have learned a lot about its market and be better placed to satisfy their needs in the future.

If this were 1999, I would be declaring Wikipedia the unassailable leader in this category. Then, marketing professors and analysts believed that being first to market, especially online, was vital to future success. But in recent years it has become clear that there are at least as many strategic advantages from following the leader into the market. The so-called second-mover advantage, of the kind enjoyed by Citizendium, could prove ultimately more powerful.

Second movers can avoid heavy investment in research and development by replicating the first mover's approach. Citizendium will start life as a 'progressive fork' of Wikipedia, opening up as an exact copy of its site, saving itself five years of development time, and evolving from there.

Second movers also enjoy the advantage of positioning. Sanger knows exactly how Wikipedia is perceived in the market. He is using that data cleverly to aim Citizendium at what he calls 'different social niches'.

Best of all, it can learn from its forerunner's mistakes. Citizendium is introducing developments such as site sponsorship and an editorial team of expert academics to improve accuracy. These initiatives should help it avoid many of the pitfalls to have befallen Wikipedia.

Whoever wins this battle, we should spare a thought for the market's real first mover - Encyclopaedia Britannica. Despite an overall head-start of more than two centuries, its online version is being eclipsed by Wikipedia, which has almost 60m users compared with Britannica's 300,000. When it comes to first-mover advantages, it all depends when you start the clock.

Bad Brand Positoning

The Golden Turnips are awarded each year for the worst brand positioning efforts...this year's results are just out

Yet again, it's time to teach another MBA class on brand management.

I like to look at as many applied examples as possible during these sessions and, in particular, focus not only on brand successes, but also stupid positioning strategies, to illustrate the pitfalls. Fortunately, there has never been a shortage of material, and I'd like to share with you the three overall winners in my search for 2006's dumbest brand-positioning strategies.

First, is the award for Most Generic Brand Position. Most corporates usually adopt a series of inane values that I call the usual suspects. These values don't actually mean anything and certainly don't confer any differentiation from all the other firms that also all claim them. If your brand wastes its resources claiming values such as reliability, trust, integrity, innovation or excellence, then I am afraid you are part of this pointless, generic majority.

This year's award goes to Rolls-Royce, which actually claims every single one of the usual suspects as its brand values. Most brands end up wasting their positioning potential with perhaps one or two of these values, but Rolls-Royce has a full house, making it the world's most generic brand.

http://www.rolls-royce.com/about/brand/values.jsp

What makes the company's achievement even more admirable is that its brand is, potentially, one of the most differentiated in existence. Unfortunately, 122 years of enormous brand equity have been lost behind a veneer of generic positioning that probably took an afternoon to knock off.

The second award is Most Super-Complex Brand Position. The golden rule of branding is that it is, ultimately, a means to the end of customer-based brand equity. It's all about getting customers to recognise the brand and then think a certain way about it. Customers tend to describe their brands in short, pithy descriptors, and great brand positioning has always replicated this economy of expression.

Bad brand positioning, by contrast, has triangles, wheels and multiple layers of complexity. The company may think it is getting value for money (50 words are better than three, right?), but the bigger and more complex the positioning, the less likely it is to have any actual impact. This year's winner of the award is MetLife for a quite remarkable job on its insurance brand.

 http://www.metlife.com/Applications/Corporate/MBC/CDA/PageGenerator/0,4132,P4329,00.html

MetLife has not one, not two, but seven different levels of complexity in its brand positioning. It has five key messages, one vision, a statement of purpose, a long-term goal, six core values (which, incidentally, include the usual suspects - innovation and integrity), a vivid description, and a vision. Either its brand agency was being paid by the yard, or someone at MetLife isn't getting it. The company even has a dreaded 'Brand Glossary' to help explain to its, presumably bemused, staff what it all means.

Finally, The Golden Turnip for Total Brand Stupidity award was to have gone to South West Trains for its positioning of Clapham Junction as 'Europe's busiest station'. The tagline is used internally, as well as being plastered all over the station on signs occasionally glimpsed as you fight your way through hundreds of commuters to catch your train. Incidentally, local resident group the Battersea Society complained to the Council last month that the station was too congested.

But at the last minute, an international entrant has displaced it with what might be the worst brand position I have ever seen. In 2005, US PR firm Russo, Marsh & Rogers started working with the Kurdish people on some country branding. The firm came up with TV ads and an interactive campaign centred on the remarkable positioning statement 'Kurdistan: the other Iraq'.

30 SECONDS ON ... POOR BRAND POSITIONING
- According to Rolls-Royce's corporate web page, the brand has three values: reliability, integrity and innovation. The company also has a vision of where it wants to be, based on 'trust, deliver and excellence'.

- MetLife is one of the oldest insurance companies in the US. It operates an extensive web resource, called its Brandcenter, to explain and outline its brand strategy.

- With more than 2000 trains passing through Clapham Junction every day, it was originally promoted as 'Britain's busiest station'. In 2005, Wandsworth Borough Council 'upgraded' the signs to indicate it was now 'Europe's busiest station'.

- In late July, the Kurdish regional government began a TV advertising campaign in both the US and the UK that portrays Kurdistan as 'The other Iraq'. It also aims to drive potential US and UK investors to its website www.theotheriraq.com.