Brand Relevance: Making Competitors Irrelevant - always yours

308 BRAND RELEVANCE
introducing Chicken McNuggets in 1983. 9 Finally, it is not easy
to deliver on the promise. Competitors who have led in a new
category or subcategory are real believers, and sometimes that is
what it takes.
Leapfrog the Innovation
A fourth potential strategy is to invest to create a superior product,
thereby leapfrogging the brand that created and owns the
new subcategory. Instead of being satisfi ed with being relegated
to a participant with a parity product, a fi rm could attempt to
take over the subcategory or at least to become a significant
player with a substantial or transformational innovation. The
payoff from a leapfrog strategy can be huge and it recognizes that
a parity strategy may not be successful. An offering matching
those of the early market leader of the new category or subcategory
with its associated authenticity, may be inadequate to
achieving relevance because the task of gaining visibility and
acceptance may be too diffi cult.
Leapfrogging can involve improving performance around
common features, adding new features, or reducing or eliminating
major limitations. Consider Amazon ’ s blockbuster hit the
Kindle, the digital book reader introduced in November 2007
and refi ned over the years with signifi cant improvements.
Sony and Apple were among the competitors attempting
to leapfrog the Kindle. Sony ’ s e - book Reader attempted to surpass
the Kindle with touch - screen control of page turning, the
option of writing on the page margins directly, a higher contrast
screen, and an open source system providing access to millions
of books from sources such as some nine thousand bookstores,
libraries, and Google, which offers free digital books. Apple, in
contrast, created the iPad alternative, which makes book reading
only one application out of a much larger set. The hope
of Apple is that users will read books on the iPad making
the Kindle irrelevant. Kindle is fi ghting the newcomers with