Preemptive marketing

The development and refinement of pre-emptive marketing is the starting point for strategic mapping. According to Pickar [34]:

Survival and success will depend on a company's ability to adapt trends in the marketplace and to gain solid, current information from narrowly focused markets. Successful firms will also engage in good, flexible, strategic thinking about what they should be doing and what marketing strategies will meet these goals...as the marketing gospel has spread, more firms have moved from reactive marketing (waiting for a project announcement) to proactive marketing (approaching the client before a project is announced). In the '90s progressive firms will move further, to pre-emptive marketing (offering solutions to the earliest problems a potential client may have).

During the last recession, it would have been possible, for example, to have anticipated three periods of market change: a period of survival, a time for consolidation and an opportunity for later expansion as confidence returned. Although potential clients might not have been in a position to commission work during the recession, they had an opportunity to have a strategic rethink about their plans for the future. At the onset of the recession it was possible to envisage a strategic map along these lines. You would not have known how long the recession would have lasted or how deep it would have been. However, it was possible to look at a set of scenarios that took account of the survival, consolidation and expansion phases. In the event, this would have been a scenario plan of almost six-year duration.

The development of the scenario plan after the beginning of the recession would not have required any great intellectual prowess or knowledge of global economics. It would have taken time to think about what was likely to happen and an ability to put oneself in the shoes of potential clients. The same logic can be applied to the remainder of the 1990s. There will undoubtedly be another recession. History suggests that there is one about every ten years. It is possible to envisage a period of expansion and confidence with a varying rate of growth in the market. When the next recession comes its onset will be as quick if not quicker than the previous recession because the financial markets can easily turn off the tap of investment and market confidence is correspondingly fragile. What position do you want your company to be in by the next recession? What changes will you make in your marketing and organization to survive in the long term and flourish during the good times? Taking a ten-year view does not seem unimaginable if you look at the market in this way. You must have a 'willing suspension of disbelief in order to develop a more intuitive response and a forward looking, pre-emptive marketing stance.

Strategic mapping, as part of a scenario planning and synthesis marketing exercise, is the route to success at both corporate and professional levels. Design professionals must begin to anticipate and influence changes in their environment. The challenges which are likely to face design practices in any strategic mapping exercise will include:

• the integration of a synthesis marketing function into the operation of your practice;
• the need to manage and organize your company so that it is able to respond quickly and effectively to shifts in market positions. Organizational forms will have to be changed to suit future markets;
• an acknowledgement of interdependence in whatever target market is identified. Your company will need to develop strategic alliances with other organizations if it wants to survive the competitive environment of the future;
• a concurrence of cultural, organizational, technological and marketing effort to meet individual challenges;
• a better understanding of how you can influence future events, and in particular the strategic thinking of potential clients;
• an appreciation of the impact of information technology as an integrating factor between various parts of your organization, your strategic alliances, and your client base.

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