Inspired by a number of things happening or we have seen this week we thought competition was an interesting subject. Mum has been watching a bit of the Sochi Winter Olympics on TV. She was telling me a story about when she got to do some work projects with Australian Olympic Gold Medalist Ariel Skier Alisa Camplin. During a presentation someone asked her if she watched her competition either at training or at events. Alisa’s response was that if you were out watching what your competitors were doing and worrying about them you weren’t putting your all into your own efforts.
That thought has stayed with mum but she also sees some parallels in the world of dog sports and blogging that have a slightly different take on Alisa’s quote.
The difference that mum sees between Allisa’s highest level sporting achievements and what we do in both dog sports and blogging is the community. A sports person at a high level has a support crew . They have a coach, a physio, nutritionist and probably a bunch of other specialist to help them. Instead in both dog sports and blogging quite often those that we turn to for advice, help and support are also our competitors. It is a community. It is healthy competition.
Using our community for support often means we are looking at what each other is doing. How did that handler and dog team tackle that sort of turn or how does that blogger handle comments? What makes it positive is knowing what makes you who you are. Evaluate what others are doing and consider if it is right for you (or in the case of dog sports your team). There may be some things that you can ‘borrow with pride’ but only if it makes sense for you and then you can put your own unique spin on it. When people are learning and building from each other it makes everyone better and that we see as a good thing.
I wrote a couple of weeks ago about what we perceived as good marketing coming out of Finland through One Mind Dogs. What makes it good marketing is the way it has been packaged up (hey that is what marketing is about isn’t it). Interestingly the tone that they put across, the challenges and sharing style of learning have also meant that this has travelled well and even here in Australia (other side of the world to Finland) there are groups (who are competing against each other at trials) coming together to learn this style and posting their version of the challenge online to show what they are doing to the rest of the world.
This OMD style also seems to have prompted other trainers to relaunch their training programs. Personally we see this as a good thing. Surely more thought going into how best to provide training programs assists both handlers and most importantly the dogs who are getting great bonding moments with their handlers. OMD bought a style of training to the fore. People seem to be interested. Others, such as Susan Garrett’s 360, seems to be taking some of the things, like the videos and social media communications, that look like they are working for OMD and putting her content into this form. We think this is great. Everyone wins…. Most importantly the end user (in agility it is the handler and dog…. In blogging this is the reader). It is about better quality.
So with all this positivity is there a negative side to competition? Well there can be if YOU make it to be. So using the example above about agility another well known handler instead took to social media whinging that this new European handling was just renaming moves and turns that have been around before. Being relatively new to agility that may well be the case but this is a blog about marketing and good marketing is about packaging up an offer in a way it appeals to people. Bad competition is when you are busy looking at the competition but not looking at it from a constructive perspective.
So we all read other blogs. The next time you are think;
– what do I like about this blog?
– what benefit is what I like bringing to the blog readers?
– would it be relevant to my blog readers?
– how do I make it fit with the personality of my blog?
There is nothing wrong with ‘borrowing with pride’… A quote Mum has used since hearing it in a presentation given by a senior UK Unilever Exec a few years back.
So today’s Dog Blog is from one of our training buddy’s and every week he posts a Workout Wednesday. It is a little like our Training Tip Tuesday but in his own style. We like it as it gives us a source of inspiration and new ideas… Both in training and for the blog. So pop over and check out Agility Pap’s Workout Wednesday.
Hope you enjoyed this week’s Marketing Monday and are inspired by. Bit of healthy competition. If you like Marketing Monday than sign up over on the side to get new post updates. You can also find 1st World Dog on Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest and Twitter @1stworlddogB to ensure you keep up with the pack.
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