The assumption that "freedom" is necessary for players in competitive market conditions might be misleading. With a counter-intuitive way of thinking, it can be argued that "freedom" in ossified markets with big players might not be preferred by iconic brands.
For example, we know that tobacco product advertising bans, which started in the 1970s and gradually expanded in scope, worked in favor of brands that had already become iconic in the market before the bans. Restricting the communication that a new player entering the market needs to enter with the consumer in terms of awareness, visibility, and image certainly provides advantages to players who have already taken their place in the consumer's mind and ossified in the market, both in terms of protection from competition and getting rid of million-dollar advertising budgets.
But things are not even like in the 70s, 80s, or even 90s. In the new world where acting like you are advertising is almost shameful, there are various ways to overcome competition constraints. Following the enactment of comprehensive alcohol advertising bans in Turkey in 2011, the biggest players in the market continued to lose blood regularly. Because what was banned was only advertising, and there were methods of building an image, talking about the product, and spreading its story by word of mouth without advertising. Those who saw and evaluated this opportunity won, while those who could not see it lost.
In the intervening years, users' expectations from brands have differentiated so much that it can be said that we have come to a point that we can call "cause economy" today. Clothing brands talk about recycled product collections on TV. Sports shoe brands commit to producing only from recycled plastic in the next few years. No one talks about their product being better, cheaper, or more beautiful than others anymore. The truth is, the quality and price difference between different products has closed so much that stomping on these issues has started not to yield results. Playing to developing social sensitivities and identifying the brand with these sensitivity areas stands before us all as a new and big challenge.
Burger King & McDonald’s Partnership
The 1-day Burger King & McDonald’s partnership, whose bombardment we are exposed to on social media today, seems to be a product of this effort. The main idea is this; McDonald’s will donate the amount of every Big Mac it sells for 1 day to associations fighting childhood cancer. Burger King will not sell Whoppers in its restaurants on the same day to support this. The issue is quite meaningful for McDonald’s. It gives the subliminal message to the consumer who buys its brand over a subject with social sensitivity that what they are buying is more than a burger, so to speak, they are also buying "goodness". A move highly compatible with the general trend.
So what does Burger King do? By not selling Whoppers, it helps increase the sales of its competitor who creates a social benefit. It helps the one who helps, the one who does the helping. The mediation established here is so complex that I am very curious about how this will be perceived by the consumer. I hope a research result will be published at the end of the campaign so that we can have an idea about the capacity of such a mediation to be perceived by the consumer.
Just 4 years ago, in 2015, Burger King proposed a similar cooperation to McDonald’s, but the proposal was rejected. The realization of this cooperation within 4 years can be evaluated as one of the ways for the 2 iconic players of the burger market to cope with the pressure coming from outside the category. No matter how big you are in your market, you may have no choice but to cooperate in the face of competition coming from outside (or inside) the category and showing harmony with social trends. Both carbonated drinks and the fast-food market have been under the pressure of the "healthy eating" trend for a long time. Therefore, it seems logical for the big players of the market to come together and act jointly against a total destruction. It is not unlikely that we will see similar passes between Coca-Cola and Pepsi soon.
From Competition Culture to Collaboration Culture
It is possible to see that the culture of competition has left its place to a kind of culture of cooperation not only in shrinking but also in expanding markets. A message from the world of "sports & entertainment", one of the fastest-growing markets in the world, last week put this fact in front of us in the simplest way;
Before the Liverpool — Arsenal match to be played, the Arsenal manager said that they were rivals with Liverpool only 1 day of the week, and partners for the remaining 6 days. A mind-opening professional approach for the sports market coming from a traditionally high-level competition culture.
It can be said that this approach will create a strong leverage effect in markets where there is no resource shortage. So can this approach be taken as it is and applied to other markets where sports are played? I think the answer to this question is no. It is not possible to apply this formula to markets where scarce resource management is carried out. The English Premier League can send 5-6 teams every year to the Champions League, one of the sports arenas with the highest returns in the world. Turkey has only 1 ticket a year to this arena, which constitutes a large part of club revenues. The scarcer the resources, the fiercer the competition over them. If you cannot grow the domestic market by providing input from player sales like Portugal or player training like Belgium and live dependently on external resources, then there is no choice but to suppress your competitors in the harshest way possible. This means that a highly favorable area like sports is directly closed to the possibilities of rising trends such as "cause economy" and "cooperation amidst competition".
As can be seen, the field of marketing is far from being a copy-paste field as we often witness. Taking something just because it is a trend and applying it in the same way without evaluating many factors such as society, individual, market, competition together will not lead us to the right business results. However, evaluating different markets and developments in these markets by thinking within the context and questioning their adaptability will create endless benefits in reaching our own unique solutions.
