Introduction

conomists have game theory. Biologists have the phylogenetic tree. Chem- ists have the periodic table of elements. Software developers have object- oriented programming. But for those whose work centers on strategy, E positioning, or some form of marketplace spin there is nothing. There is nothing for those whose jobs involve the pursuit of infl uence and, accordingly, the management of opinions, perceptions, behaviors, and decisions. There is no table of elements, per se, for this emerging class of free-form yet indispensable professionals I call playmakers. There are myriad principles, best practices, laws, rules, and admoni- tions in what amounts to vast collections of terms of art. But there is no science and no transforming framework to give these pursuits measure and meaning. The subject of this book, The Playmaker’s Standard, is the result of a painstaking effort to This new system takes the mystery out of the illustrate, describe, sort, classify, and name the cultish fascinations for word-of-mouth, buzz, fi rst generic set of unique moves that are made and spin and the guesswork out of the more by playmakers everywhere—the elements, if formalized but still murky best practices for building brands and managing reputations. you will, of strategy and the infl uence industries. Based on more than a decade of fi eld tri- als and observation in the high technology industry, two years of literature review, and pilot programs with Fortune 500 companies, it gives a fresh foundation and lexi- con for the emerging discipline I call playmaking. It is the fi rst structured system for managing competitors, developing relationships, and creating and mobilizing coali- tions. It is the fi rst practical tool for understanding and executing strategy and positioning in the marketplace. It is a basis for the game plans and playbooks that organizations employ to defend their ground and advance their position. The Playmaker’s Standard is more a discovery of something that has always been S than an invention of something that should be. R

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But it is both because to give it meaning and measure I have, by necessity, en- hanced what I have discovered. It takes the mystery out of the cultish fascinations for word-of-mouth, buzz, and spin and the guesswork out of the more formalized but still murky best practices for building brands and managing reputations. It helps managers of all stripes understand and inﬂ uence the intangibles of their marketplaces. Whether for a chief executive or an executive chef, it is a tool that helps leaders and their teams take charge of marketplace discussions rather than observe from the sidelines or be used as pawns by rivals. It allows participants to collaborate with open arms or compete with bare knuckles as their tastes and circumstances dictate.

The Playmaker’s Standard

The Standard comprises three reference systems, (1) The Playmaker’s Table, a taxonomy of carefully classifi ed and unique strategies, (2) The Playmaker’s Process, a methodology for running and calling plays for improved competitive advantage, and (3) Factors at Play, a source list of variables that infl uence playmakers and the play action* of their marketplaces. While there is much that can be written about the factors or variables that impact playmaking, and equally as much about the method or process by which plays are best run, this book focuses on the fi rst of these three subsystems, The Playmaker’s Table.

THE PLAYMAKER’S TABLE†

This fi rst system is a breakthrough taxonomy of infl uence strategy, an easily inter- preted and richly detailed classifi cation of ”play types” and their respective defi ni- tions, best uses, and countermeasures. Unlike any previous attempts to describe and organize strategy, including Mi- chael Porter’s seminal work Competitive Strategy, Sun Tzu’s Art of War, or the ancient 36 Strategies, The Playmaker’s Table is the fi rst framework to reveal how stratagems— plays—interact in multiple dimensions. From left to right, it explains the relationships of each play to the others and how each operates, from a subtle form of playmaking

* I use the term play action in reference to the presence and movement of plays as they are called and run (i.e., identiﬁ ed and applied) by players in a bounded marketplace. † This table, and all other images in this section, may be viewed at www.plays2run.com.

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called Detach to an outright brawl called Attack. From top to bottom, it orders play types by the degree of complexity. The higher in the stack, the easier they are to ex- ecute. These classiﬁ cations and their play types are exhaustively described in sub- sequent chapters through supporting illustrations, tables and tips, and case-based essays.

THE PLAYMAKER’S PROCESS

This second subsystem is a ﬁ ve-step methodology that helps playmakers sequence and pattern their play action moves (see graphic below). It guides playmakers as they parley and propel their agenda—from the glimmer of an idea to the glamour of a marketplace phenomenon, from a competitor’s attack to a competitor’s defeat. The Playmaker’s Process takes the practitioner from the conception of a differentiated idea to the identiﬁ cation of a play sequence to the commencement of play action to countermeasures and back. By necessity, The Playmaker’s Process encourages users to check their positions in a continuous circle of steps because a marketplace can S R

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change on a playmaker . . . and playmaking can change a marketplace. (For more de- tail, see The Playmaker’s Process, p. 275.)

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FACTORS AT PLAY

This third and fi nal piece of The Playmaker’s Standard is a quick-reference resource that lists many, though not all, of the fundamental variables that infl uence a marketplace and help playmakers fi ne-tune their diagnoses and battle plans (see graphic below). It is a kind of fan to the fog that typically enshrouds strategy and infl uence, and when fl ipped on, it clarifi es a playmaker’s marketplace. (For more information on Factors at Play, see the expanded section on page 294.)

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PLAY ACTION MAPSTM

To help a player see the bigger picture, plays can be plotted along a timeline (see graphic below) or superimposed onto The Playmaker’s Table to illuminate the pat- terns, sequences, trends, and tendencies of marketplace play action—of both the moves that have been made and those that might be made. This alerts executives, marketers, salespeople, lobbyists, and advertising and PR managers, among others, to the plays that might be coming and those that should perhaps be run to stay on- strategy and in control of marketplace discussions and movements. (To get other detailed Play Action Maps, see the Appendix, p. 309.)

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The Case for Playmaking

Today, the keenest challenge facing most organizations is not the management of tangibles, like production, fi nance, inventory, and shipping, but the mastery of intangibles, like brand, reputation, credibility, and trust. These are the pivot points on which an organization’s success or failure turns but of which they have the least insight and poorest control. Every organization competes in a marketplace—from nations to community centers, from Fortune 500 companies to small businesses, from governments to nongov- ernmental organizations, from publicly traded companies to not-for-profi ts, from your team to your whole industry. All of them. Some compete as collaborators, some as smash-mouth competitors. Most operate between the extremes. But every organization, without exception, strives to carve out its niche, each playing a continuous cat- and-mouse game to position itself and its allies and de-position its opponents for competitive advantage. It is a necessary skill and mind-set for playing in an ever- changing and ever-challenging marketplace. Particularly now. With the new requirements for fi nancial transparency, the wide availability of information over the Net, the speed of communications through e-mail and blogs, the increased effi ciency of supply chains, the empowerment of the single consumer, and the enabling of citizen journalists, the game has shifted from the physical and know- able (like manufacturing) to the amorphous and enigmatic (like service). How does an organization survive in such a full-throttle, wide-open environment? How does an organization master it? How do leaders, managers, and workers thrive in this world of increased effi ciencies, empowered individuals, and seemingly infi nite nuance? One thing’s for sure: Some get it. And some don’t. Apple Computer gets it. For years, its cool brand has enjoyed unwavering loyalty. Republicans get it too. Over two decades, GOP candidates have garnered support from traditionally Democratic working class voters. But not General Motors. For all its trying, GM hasn’t retained the loyalty of its base, like Apple, and it hasn’t expanded it, like the GOP. Will these things change? Sure. But looking at the preceding eras, there’s little doubt as to who has been the hunter and who has been hunted. There are general ideas of why these things are and some guidelines to suggest the answers. But what playmakers lack are the systems of the established disciplines, S fi elds, and sciences, and the insights they provide. The following table lists just a few. R

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SYSTEMS OF SCIENCE, INDUSTRY, AND THE ARTS

Game theorists have payoffs and decision trees, from the Prisoners’ Dilemma to the Nash Equilibrium.

Biologists have 1.4+ million documented species of plants, animals, and microorganisms, from the ancient sequoia tree to the extinct woolly mammoth to the E. coli bacterium.

Chemists have 117 discrete elements—and counting—from the inert to the radioactive, from the natural to the man-made.

Programmers have code generators and languages, from C++ to JavaScript to Visual Basic and more.

Accountants have GAAPs (Generally Accepted Accounting Principles) to properly track and classify the movements, debts, and accruals of cash, securities, and other ﬁ nancial instruments.

Linguists have transformational grammar to pull apart and categorize words and their various constructions.

Musicians and composers have the music notation system and melodic scale to transcribe nearly any kind of sound, in any key, at any pitch and tempo.

Still, the discipline I presume to call playmaking has, so far, defi ed organizational gravity. Is it because playmaking is fundamentally more art than science? I think not. There’s too much evidence to suggest that discrete strategies of infl uence exist and that they can be organized. Playmaking exists. One just has to know where to look to reveal its substance. So where does one look? In politics, it’s what White House strategist Karl Rove has done so consistently to advance an agenda and win elections. In business, it’s what Pepsi did to thwart Coke, and vice versa. In pop culture, it’s what Oprah Winfrey has done to build her brand and audience. Playmaking is the new and necessary skill for anyone who advocates for an idea, touches an organization’s brand, infl uences its reputation, or is in any way involved in the development of policy, message, communication to stakeholders, or the management of media. As it stands today, we have only a general picture of how the strategies of play-

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makers wax and wane and of the tangle of plots and subplots that increase their mo- mentum or unravel their success. John Kerry’s 2004 presidential bid failed against good odds. Wal-Mart’s goodwill missions to recover its diminishing luster have been a bust. Jet Blue is a hot young airline in an otherwise distressed air travel industry. But why? There is virtually no reliable system to help dissect these sentiments and sensi- bilities or to make sense of how they are managed (or mismanaged) with repeatable, measurable, and sustainable success (or failure). There is neither a system that is suffi - ciently detailed nor a vocabulary that reasonably describes the processes by which the chatter of a marketplace, the morale of an employee base, or the whims of a cus- tomer are infl uenced. Of course there is no lack of trying to wrestle down these dense subjects. Eco- nomics was once just as slippery. So were biology, chemistry, software programming, and accounting. And this is the point. Fields of interest and relevance, when studied well enough and long enough, can reveal their inner workings. When they do, systems can then be developed that map their component parts and tendencies and el- evate that fi eld onto a higher plane of practice. It has happened in every major fi eld of study and even in areas of fanciful interest—from physics, geology, and meteorol- ogy to manufacturing, operations, and fi nance to warfare, games, music, color, food, and wine. At some earlier stage, each of these areas defi ed analysis but over time succumbed to new frameworks that triggered new understanding and the revelation of underlying structures. Playmaking as a discipline can be next, and if we can better explain it and teach it, we can advance it. Is this a good thing, to advance the skills of brand managers, reputation special- ists, political campaigners, bloggers, and various other unlicensed spin doctors? Do we need more of this? I believe the answer is emphatically yes. We might not need more brands and more campaigns, but we surely need them to be more smartly and appropriately applied. To date, I have identifi ed twenty-fi ve differentiated play types in eight higher- order subclasses and three overarching classes that describe a universe of strategic moves and countermoves. This process is not born from the physical sciences, so overlaps exist that, by default, refl ect the gray lines of the social sciences. So like any such system, it is a work in process: New plays may emerge, some may be spun off, others may be absorbed. In any case, I hope it spurs interest and even provokes debate across industries and academia to solidify the elements of the discipline I call S playmaking and the virgin framework I call The Playmaker’s Standard. R

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The Case for a Standard

Players of any well-developed marketplace understand intuitively the value of intangible assets—from an executive who is fi ghting off reckless activists to a teenager whose choice of wireless devices may determine her acceptance into a peer group. But we have only begun to understand how these assets can be strategically managed in the media swirl of a marketplace. When a brand is thought to be far more important than a company’s tangible assets (as it is in the cases of eBay and Coca-Cola), the defense and development of that brand must be managed with precision and certain knowledge, not by intuition. Today, however, intangible assets are managed largely on instinct and with erratic success, typically by professionals in management, strategy, marketing, sales, public affairs, advertising, and public relations. Contrasted to their counterparts in fi nance, engineering, or manufacturing, as examples, these marketplace persuaders have only a loose foundation for interpreting and practicing their crafts. And yet it is the marketers, salespeople, development offi cers, lobbyists, advertising and public relations executives whom most leaders entrust with such delicate and strategic assets as brand, reputation, credibility, and trust. Playmaking in general and The Playmaker’s Standard in particular give these practitioners the resources they need to establish and uphold that trust and to more effectively craft their programs and carry out their duties. The building blocks of The Playmaker’s Standard are twenty-fi ve unique play types. They are named for their function and, in some cases adopted from arenas where they are traditionally rooted. The play type Red Herring, for example, owes its name to an early hunting term, where salted and smoked kippers (herrings) were once used in the training of hunting dogs. Fragrant reddish-brown fi sh were dragged across a hound’s path in a deliberate effort to throw it off its intended tracking scent. Rival hunters also employed this tactic to gain advantage over a competitor. The metaphor grew from there and lives today as a lively rhetorical strategy. More self- explanatory plays, like the Bait or Filter, are nominated from everyday meanings. Some plays are inherently fl irtatious and exploratory while others are more commit- ted and engaging. This work is the product of a thirteen-year development process, tested and prac- ticed with managers and executives of both start-up and blue-chip high-technology companies and presented for the critical review of academics and experts in biology, communication, forensic debate, game theory, management, marketing, political

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science, psychiatry, rhetoric, and strategy. In its earliest form, when my public relations and research ﬁ rm Applied Communications was representing technology companies, the competitive philosophy inherent in playmaking helped software giant Oracle Corp. build competitive advantage against one of history’s most dominating players, Microsoft. For newcomer Informatica, an early entrant in the superheated decision support software category, it created a winnable debate using smart, simple data marts to topple unwieldy data warehouses. It helped shield BEA, a leader in the application server space, against the thunderous marketing attacks of IBM. And for HP, it helped win the divisive proxy war to buy Compaq.

Where Playmaking Got Its Start

The inspiration for The Playmaker’s Standard came in the early 1990s in the form of what resembled for me an apprenticeship to a gifted strategist, Joseph Jennings. A disciple of the tech marketing guru Regis McKenna and a student himself of political campaigning, Jennings blended his marketing and communication acumen to run brilliant and pointedly powerful ”plays” for his clients in the unsuspecting technology-fi rst-marketing-second segments of semiconductors and information technology. Jennings’s own style was purely competitive and left little room for collaborative strategies; nevertheless, this approach in an environment of self-absorbed geeks and vapid press agentry, though at fi rst alarming, proved ultimately refreshing and infec- tious. For me, it stuck, and later became the adopted charter for my own fi rm. To most of Applied’s early clients, the notion of positioning and de-positioning, as Jennings would call it, was provocative and not easily infused in engineering- minded Silicon Valley executives. That changed, however, with Oracle, the offensive- minded maker of database and business software. From 1994 to 2002, my fi rm’s philosophy of competitive communications found power users in the talented executives of Oracle and its billionaire CEO Larry Ellison. It was then that the hunch of a standard set of plays was formed and it was precisely on the morning of September 4, 1995, that it crystallized—when Ellison bluntly proclaimed at a Paris technology conference, “The PC is a ridiculous device!” It was vintage Larry, as they say, provok- ing and maneuvering to position Microsoft-based personal computers as overpriced, overengineered paperweights. “The [PC] is so complicated and expensive,” he con- tinued to mock. “What the world really wants is to plug into a wall to get electronic power and [also] plug in to get data.” S In fact, Ellison could afford to do no less. His database software was predicted to R

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lose market share to low-end PC-based solutions, to Microsoft’s SQL Server software in particular, so unless he poked holes in his rival’s approach, his big-business custom- ers would likely move en masse to Bill Gates & Company. My team had not advised Ellison to say this. Few consultants in the tech business successfully advised Ellison to say or do anything. This embarrassing fact not with- standing, we ran to our war room, a whiteboard-covered back corner of our Burlin- game, California, offi ces, and we started plotting. We knew that the fl amboyant CEO had baited an entire industry and was challenging its highest leader, Bill Gates, to a duel. We all struggled to describe what had happened in any precise way, and that seemed odd because Ellison’s move seemed so pure, like a chess master castling his king or a poker shark moving all in. But we could offer only rough impressions of the provocative taunt and its implications. So I asked over and over, “What did Larry Ellison just do? He just called the world’s richest man and his computers ’ridiculous’! What was that? What exactly do you call that?” Thus began for my team and Oracle a two-year campaign to establish a new class of computing, Network Computing, and its offspring, network computers or ”NCs.” Through a sequence of effective but still amorphous maneuvers, nicknamed plays in Joe Jennings’s honor, Oracle exposed the shortcomings of Windows PCs and proved that even Microsoft is mortal. Just as important, it climbed into the ring and held its own against a company of superior brand, reputation, and overall marketplace power. Following Ellison’s lead, the Oracle marketing machine quietly fanned the fi re of Ellison’s insult, using third parties to draw out Microsoft loyalists, better known to Or- acle as ”PC bigots.” Once aroused, the Windows apologists took to the news media, declaring Ellison a fool and Oracle a has-been. To its credit and at our urging, Oracle waited and watched, letting the upset over Ellison’s quip swell. Traditional approaches would have sought immediately to tamp down or cut off the criticisms. But we wanted more tension and ridicule, not less of it. We wanted a debate because we believed that the argument implicit in Ellison’s Paris bow shot was winnable. And if by chance it wasn’t, we knew that Oracle could build a huge new base of supporters and cus- tomers where none had previously existed. The NC versus PC campaign, in other words, amounted to the calling of a technology industry election that invited voters to look at the issue and, ultimately, forced them to cast their vote for the future of computing. As we hoped, the bigots went too far in their defense of Microsoft because, by any measure, PCs of that day were in fact too expensive and complicated. They for-

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got that Ellison’s argument made sense. As much as Ellison had offended Microsoft and its millions of users, the blind defense of the so-called Wintel monopoly grated others. So with our manufactured witch hunt under way, it required little effort by Oracle to draw out more rational calls for sanity. Some argued hard in Oracle’s defense, Well, of course PCs are ridiculous. . . . Others took lighter swings, sheepishly writing, Maybe Larry is right. . . . Either way, this moment was the digital-age equivalent of the lone boy observing that the emperor—Bill Gates in this case—had no clothes. As many remember, the debate grew furious and quickly escalated from an industry skirmish to a big-business referendum. And as we expected, it did increase the ire of many toward Oracle. But, in the end, it created an expansive stage on which El- lison could credibly challenge Gates’s Windows-based PCs and a backdrop against which Oracle could be showcased as a player with enormous strategic sway. As playmaking is intended to do, the Oracle campaign simultaneously slowed its opponent and advanced its own position, helping shift thought leadership from Red- mond to Redwood Shores and, most important, to a vision of computing that cen- tered not on operating systems and software applications but on the power and potential of the Internet. The result was a steady showering of major national media coverage, all focused on new provocative debates—Fat Servers versus Thin Clients, Larry versus Bill, Network Computers versus Personal Computers—that put Oracle in the driver’s seat and Microsoft scrambling for a new ride. The campaign was a catalyst to Oracle’s new position of leadership in the information technology market, a tripling of its stock price, and a decisive edge for Oracle over Microsoft in the white-hot en- terprise software market. The popular counter that Ellison never sold an NC is largely true. He hardly made good on his promise of a ﬁ ve-hundred-dollar Oracle NC, so it’s reasonable to con- clude that the CEO’s ploy was an off-strategy blunder. Right? Not right. While the Oracle NC was in many respects a dying quail, it was also, in the parlance of playmaking, a Call Out, an attacking play that sparked a winnable debate: that PCs had lost their way and that network-based computing could do better. No premise was more important to Oracle, because its database software was the reigning standard for big-business computing. To get his industry to understand this, Ellison didn’t mind picking a ﬁ ght or even looking a little foolish, so for his efforts and determination he was, in this round of high-tech history, the victor in the argument and the prevailing playmaker. Oracle’s NC campaign was conspicuously different from typical marketing and PR S programs. It generated more than mere buzz and the requisite publicity. Instead, it R

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controlled the attention and conversation of an entire marketplace, relying on fric- tion, not fi t, to drive that dialog. Its central strategy was to fi rst invite disagreement and, second, to use the resulting dissension to fuel a winnable debate. It bore an au- thentic quality, drawing interest for its salience, not its stunts, and so it presented itself as a more natural competition rather than an overmanaged event. This experience, in particular, fueled my suspicion that strategy and positioning are more than a mishmash of principles, best practices, laws, and rules. The work had relied somehow on recurring and recognizable rules, not loose terms of art. Ellison and his team had teased, waited, sandbagged, and then pounced, only to do it again in a sophisticated circular cycle of catch-and-release hunting. But as clever as Ellison and his executives were, these moves didn’t seem unique or special. Ironically, they looked more like standard off-the-shelf marketing techniques that had been expertly refi ned to suit instinct, context, and setting. Without the benefi t of The Playmaker’s Standard, without the benefi t of knowing a class from a subclass, of understanding the relationship of play types to factors, of knowing a freezing play from an attacking play, Oracle fomented and dominated one of tech history’s most important debates. Our fi rst attempts to describe these marketplace moves were anemic compared to the beefed-up plays in this book. But they were nonetheless the earliest deliberate efforts to explore the uncharted territory of playmaking and diagram the elusive play types that comprise it. Like so many Silicon Valley start-up stories, the Oracle NC campaign is where The Playmaker’s Standard got its start. Of course, the moment and the setting don’t mark the birth of professional strategy or positioning. These are ageless and time-honored, naturally. But it might mark the beginning of the slow ground-up effort to systemati- cally clarify the discipline of playmaking.

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