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For more than 25 years, I’ve helped teams build marketing that cuts through noise and scales revenue.

Geoff’s Growth Guide is where I share the strategy, go-to-market frameworks, and execution systems that work in practice. Not theory. Not hype. Just the mechanics behind durable growth.

One of the most common mistakes in competitive marketing is trying to convince customers that a competitor’s biggest strength isn’t really a strength at all. But when the market already believes something about a brand, fighting that perception can be an expensive way to make very little progress.

A stronger approach is often to accept the competitor’s strength as true, then change what that strength means.

The most effective examples don’t say, “They’re not actually good at that.”

They say, “Yes, they are. And here’s the tradeoff that comes with it.”

For example:

• Amazon is known for enormous scale and convenience, but that scale can also make the experience feel impersonal.
• Salesforce is known for an enormous breadth of features and customisation, but that flexibility can also create complexity for teams trying to implement and manage it.
• Apple is known for relentless product innovation, but that steady stream of new devices can also encourage customers to replace products that still work perfectly well.

That last example is exactly what Back Market did with Apple.

Apple spent years making “Shot on iPhone” synonymous with better cameras, better technology and the appeal of the latest device. Back Market didn’t try to undermine that association. Instead, it borrowed the familiar language and used it to ask a very different question:

How many upgrades do we actually need?

The strength stayed intact. Apple still represented technological progress. But Back Market reframed the consequence of that progress: more upgrades can also mean more perfectly usable phones being replaced and discarded.

That’s what makes this approach so powerful. You’re not asking customers to abandon something they already believe. You’re using that belief as the starting point for your own positioning.

The opportunity is to identify the natural tradeoff behind a competitor’s strongest advantage, then decide whether that tradeoff matters to the customers you want to reach.

Because sometimes the most effective way to attack a competitor’s weakness is to start by agreeing with their strength.

If this resonates, I’d love to hear what you think. Just hit “reply” or click here. I read every response.

One of the easiest mistakes to make in competitive marketing is assuming that differentiation requires proving a competitor is wrong. In reality, some of the strongest positioning starts by accepting that the market already believes something positive about them.

The opportunity is to look at what happens because that strength is true.

Every competitive advantage creates some kind of tradeoff. Scale can create distance. Choice can create complexity. Premium positioning can create a higher barrier to entry. Constant innovation can create pressure to replace products that may still work perfectly well.

That doesn’t mean every strength should be reframed as a weakness. The connection has to be credible, relevant to the customer and closely tied to what your own brand offers instead.

The best examples work because they don’t manufacture a problem. They identify a tension that already exists, then make it easier for customers to see.

Back Market’s use of Apple’s familiar “Shot on iPhone” language is a particularly clear example. Rather than arguing against Apple’s reputation for innovation, the campaign used that reputation to raise a different question: what happens when continual improvement also encourages continual replacement?

The examples below show several ways brands have used a competitor’s established strength as the starting point for a very different story, and why that approach can be far more persuasive than simply claiming to be better.

Apple has spent years making each new iPhone launch feel like progress. Its “Shot on iPhone” campaign helped reinforce that idea by using striking photography to demonstrate what increasingly capable cameras could do.

Back Market didn’t try to argue that the cameras weren’t getting better. Instead, its “Let’s End Fast Tech” campaign borrowed the visual language of “Shot on iPhone” and paired images of the same landscapes taken years apart, alongside the iPhone generations released during that period. The question underneath was simple: “How many upgrades do we have left?”

That changes the meaning of Apple’s strength. A steady stream of better technology becomes evidence of a steady stream of replacement. For Back Market, which sells refurbished electronics, that creates exactly the contrast it wants: newer isn’t necessarily the same thing as necessary.

My Take: The campaign works because Back Market never has to convince people that Apple is bad at innovation. It can accept that Apple is extremely good at it and ask customers to consider the consequence of participating in every upgrade cycle.

McDonald’s has competitive advantages Burger King would struggle to replicate quickly: an enormous restaurant footprint and an enormous advertising presence.

So Burger King found ways to use both.

For its 2018 Whopper Detour, Burger King geofenced thousands of McDonald’s locations. Customers who came within 600 feet of one could use the Burger King app to unlock a Whopper for one cent, before being directed to a nearby Burger King to collect it. 

Then Burger King pushed the same idea further with Burn That Ad in Brazil. Customers could point the Burger King app at McDonald’s advertising and use augmented reality to make the ad appear to burn away, revealing a coupon for a free Whopper. In effect, McDonald’s own media spend became a trigger for Burger King’s promotion. 

That’s what makes these campaigns such useful examples. Burger King didn’t need to overcome McDonald’s superior reach. The greater McDonald’s reach became, the more opportunities Burger King had to exploit it.

My Take: The weakness doesn’t always have to be a negative customer perception. Sometimes the opportunity is simply to ask: Can the infrastructure, awareness or behaviour created by the market leader be used to make our own proposition stronger?

Adobe built its reputation on extraordinarily powerful creative software. Photoshop, Illustrator and the wider Creative Cloud became industry standards precisely because professional designers could do so much with them.

Canva didn’t need to argue that Adobe lacked capability. It changed the criterion.

Instead of competing on who could offer the deepest professional toolset, Canva built its proposition around making visual creation easier and more accessible to people who weren’t professional designers. Its recent brand messaging continues to emphasise easy, enjoyable design and collaboration across teams.

That reframes one of Adobe’s greatest strengths. Power and flexibility still matter, but for a different audience they can also mean complexity, training and more product than the customer actually needs.

The contrast became strong enough that Adobe has itself pushed further into simpler, more accessible creation through Adobe Express, explicitly targeting small businesses, solopreneurs and non-design professionals. 

My Take: This is what strong competitive positioning looks like when you don’t try to beat the incumbent at its own game. Canva didn’t need to prove Adobe wasn’t powerful. It made power less important than accessibility for the audience it wanted to win.

The strongest version of this strategy starts with something the market already accepts as true. You identify a competitor’s established strength, uncover the tradeoff created by that strength, and then reframe it around something your audience cares about.

That distinction matters. This isn’t about forcing a negative interpretation onto every competitor advantage or manufacturing a weakness that customers don’t actually experience. The connection between the strength and the tradeoff has to feel natural, credible and relevant.

Get it right and you gain an important advantage: you don’t have to create a new belief from scratch. You can use an existing one as the foundation for your own positioning.

I’ve found there are three practical steps to doing that well.

Look for an advantage your competitor clearly owns in the minds of customers. It might be scale, innovation, market leadership, breadth of features, convenience or premium quality.

The stronger and more established that perception is, the less work you have to do.

Back Market didn’t need to convince people that Apple continually releases better technology. Burger King didn’t need to prove that McDonald’s has locations everywhere. Avis didn’t need to pretend Hertz wasn’t the market leader.

Start with the truth. Don’t waste your marketing trying to argue against it.

Next, ask what becomes true because that advantage exists.

Constant innovation can encourage constant replacement. Massive scale can create distance or make a competitor’s infrastructure something you can exploit. Market leadership can make a smaller challenger appear hungrier for the customer’s business.

The strongest tradeoffs aren’t invented in a brainstorm. They are tensions customers already recognise once you point them out.

A useful question is:
“If this strength became even more extreme, what downside would become harder to ignore?”

That often reveals the positioning opportunity.

Finding the tradeoff isn’t enough. It needs to connect directly to a reason your target customer might choose you.

Back Market connects frequent upgrades to sustainability and extending the life of existing devices. Avis connected being No. 2 to greater effort and service. Burger King turned McDonald’s physical reach into an opportunity to drive customers toward its own app and product.

The objective isn’t simply to make the competitor look worse. It’s to make your alternative feel more relevant.

That’s the difference between a clever competitive jab and useful positioning.

The best reframes leave the competitor’s original strength intact while giving the customer a new lens through which to evaluate it.

The temptation in competitive marketing is to start with your competitor’s weaknesses. But the more interesting opportunity is often hiding inside the thing they are already best known for.

Before you build your next campaign, spend some time looking at the market from a different angle. Don’t ask only where your competitor is vulnerable. Ask where their greatest strength creates a tradeoff, tension or unintended consequence that matters to the customers you want to reach.

Here are five practical ways to find that opening.

Start with perception, not your internal competitor analysis.

What is your competitor genuinely known for? Scale? Innovation? Convenience? Premium quality? Choice? Speed? Market leadership?

The best opportunities usually come from attributes customers already accept without much persuasion. If you have to spend half the campaign convincing people the strength exists, you’ve already made the job harder.

Think about Apple and innovation, Amazon and convenience, McDonald’s and ubiquity, or Salesforce and the breadth of its platform. You don’t need to build a campaign proving those associations first. They already exist in the customer’s mind, which means you can start with the accepted strength and spend your marketing effort changing how they interpret it.

Once you know which strength the market already believes, the more interesting question is what that strength costs the customer.

Consider This: What would your customers say your competitor is best at without looking at a website or sales deck?

Every strength creates some kind of tradeoff.

More choice can mean more complexity. Greater scale can mean less personal attention. Constant innovation can encourage unnecessary replacement. Premium positioning can mean a higher price or greater perceived risk.

Don’t stop at “what are they good at?” Ask what customers may experience because they are so good at it.

Consider This: If your competitor’s biggest strength became even more extreme, what downside would become harder for customers to ignore?

The strongest reframes reveal something customers already sense but may not have articulated.

That matters because your campaign should create recognition, not confusion. When the audience sees the message, the reaction should be closer to “That’s exactly what bothers me” than “I suppose that could technically be true.”

Customer interviews, reviews, sales conversations and support feedback are often better sources for these tensions than a traditional SWOT exercise.

P&O Ferries’ There Is Another Way campaign is a strong recent example of this concept.  Instead of trying to beat airlines and rail on their established strengths, it focused on the tradeoffs travellers already disliked (cramped space, stressful journeys, lack of views) and positioned the ferry journey itself as the advantage.

The campaign won a 2024 Marketing Week Award and reportedly lifted bookings 120% during the campaign period year over year. 

Consider This: What frustration do customers repeatedly describe that can be traced back to one of your competitor’s advantages?

A clever criticism is not the same thing as positioning.

If you highlight the downside of complexity, your product should genuinely be simpler. If you challenge impersonal scale, your experience should actually feel more personal. If you question constant replacement, your offer should provide a credible alternative.

The tradeoff only becomes strategically useful when your brand can resolve it.

Consider This: Once you expose the tradeoff, can you clearly explain why your product or service is better suited to the customer who cares about it?

This approach works because the underlying truth remains intact.

Apple can still be innovative. McDonald’s can still have enormous reach. The market leader can still be the market leader.

Your job isn’t to convince people that an obvious strength is secretly a weakness. It’s to introduce a second interpretation that changes how the customer evaluates it.

That’s what makes the positioning feel sharp rather than forced.

Consider This: Does your message make the customer see the competitor’s strength differently, or does it require them to stop believing something they already know is true?

Question for you:
Are you looking closely enough at your competitor’s strengths to see the opportunity hidden inside them?

Strong competitive positioning doesn’t always come from finding something your competitor does badly. Sometimes the more powerful move is to start with something they do exceptionally well, then identify the tradeoff that comes with it.

That works because you aren’t asking customers to abandon an established belief. You’re using that belief as the foundation for a different conclusion.

The key is relevance. The tradeoff has to matter to the audience you want to reach, and your own product or brand needs to offer a credible alternative. Otherwise, it’s just a clever observation.

Get those pieces right, though, and you can turn an entrenched competitor advantage into a reason for the right customers to look at you differently.

Have you seen a brand do this particularly well? Or found a competitor strength that created an unexpected positioning opportunity for your own business? Hit reply and tell me or simply click here and share your experiences. I respond directly, and the strongest topics often shape future editions.

See you in the next edition,
Geoff

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