Hey there—it’s Andy 👋

I love taking walks. It helps my mind wander a bit.

Some local businesses on my route compete against one another. Here’s how a few differentiate.

MOVIE THEATERS:

• Regal Cinema: shows all the new releases

• Kiggins Theater: shows indie movies, classics, and hosts film festivals

BOBA TEA:

• Short & Sweet: Makes boba tea, and also banh mi and mochi donuts

• Softea: Makes boba tea, and also soft serve ice cream

BOOK STORES:

• White Oak Books: sells new books—all the popular releases

• Birdhouse Books: sells used books and hosts community book clubs

Competition is everywhere. You can't escape it.

Even when you go on walks to “clear your head” from competitive intel stuff 🙃

JUICY SCOOPS 🧃

What’s happening now

• 🤝 | Bravado launched Bravado Talent to compete against LinkedIn Recruiter for sales hiring—and Corporate Bro helped market with a hilarious new skit [watch here]

• 😅 | Elon Musk hinted at taking on Gmail with “XMail” [post here]

• 💦 | Move over, Gatorade, Walmart has a new best-selling hydration drink—and it’s not even close [more here]

• 🤖 | This billion-dollar startup and might give OpenAI and Microsoft Copilot a run for their money [more here]

• 👀 | Reddit filed to go public and named three tiers of competitors: social networks, marketplaces, and LLMs like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Anthropic [read more]

EXAMPLES 🍊

Your weekly dose of vitamin C(ompete)

"DON'T MENTION COMPETITORS. IT JUST GIVES THEM ATTENTION."

Or maybe just be creative, funny, and back your claims up with research to make your competitive messaging actually just... good marketing? 🤷

Here's why this recent competitive announcement worked for Mr. Beast:

1. It's a new product challenging a category leader
   Punching up is a-ok. The opposite? Not so much. People love a David vs. Goliath story (even if David is led by the biggest YouTuber in the world).

2. It's backed by "research"
   I have no idea how legit that taste-testing research scene in the video is. But it does its job—shows average consumers picking Feastables over competitors, and gives the product some credibility.

3. It's FUN
   The announcement gives you product info, but it also has skits... a contest... interesting content that breaks up the monotony of a typical launch.

"but, but, but it's Mr. Beast. He has unlimited resources, and a massive following. He can do anything he wants."

Those things are true. But tbh, all he did was turn the dial up to 11.

You can (and should) be backing your new product announcements up with research, customer proof, and being creative and fun. We know these things!

But you should also definitely mention the category leader that you're up against :-)

COMPETE GEEKS ONLY 🛑✋

From the Community

It's easy to think you're hot 💩 when you're working on something alone.

For bands, there's even an informal phrase for this: "basement syndrome"

i.e. when bands spend too much time jamming, and no time actually playing shows with other bands, that lack of exposure to other talent leads to egos getting unnecessarily inflated.

This thinking is common in the working world too. And I was guilty of it for competitive intel until I surrounded myself with other CI pros.

Surrounding yourself with friends that are doing similar work as you is the biggest "hack" I can think of to leveling up in any skill or profession, and it’s why I started the Healthy Competition community (to bring CI folks together in one place).

Here are a couple threads that got folks talking this week.

If you’re interested in this stuff, we’d love to have you.

Peachy memes 🍑

Stay Healthy, my friends.

💚Andy