The Pirate Inside

In 1999, the former advertising planning director Adam Morgan, brought out ‘Eat the Big Fish’. In it, he laid out a detailed road map for ‘Challenger Brands’: brands wanting to take on the leaders by replacing big budgets with big ideas and ingenuity.

The clarity of his thinking and his knack for catchy terminology (‘Lighthouse Identity’ is now an often-repeated marketing term) ensured that the book became an influential marketing text and that his consultancy went on to work with a host of diverse companies and brands.

‘The Pirate Inside’ builds and expands on the Challenger philosophy, going back a stage to look closely at the cultural roots of organisations that successfully foster Challenger brands. The basic question he poses to marketers is ‘Do you want to be a pirate, or do you want to be in the navy?’.

After ‘Pirates of the Caribbean’ this should be a no-brainer…

Pirates are bold, independent and visionaries who invent their own codes of behaviour and seem to have a very good time. The Navy people are timid reactionaries, hiding their lack of bravery behind convention. For example, here are the six ‘Excuses for being in the Navy’:
But my consumer doesn’t seem to want anything new in the category
But I don’t have a large advertising budget
But I’m in packaged goods – I don’t have many opportunities for brand communication
But my category doesn’t reward brand building
But that leaves me very exposed
But I’m not a single brand company with a charismatic founder at the helm. I am in a big multi-brand company with a conservative culture and I am just another marketing director or manager.
I’m sure that we have all caught ourselves thinking, or heard others saying, some of the above in the past and in cold print, they don’t look pretty (‘But’ isn’t a very piratical word either….), however don’t consign yourself to the navy just yet, because Adam Morgan has heard plenty of such excuses in the time between his two books and isn’t impressed by any of them.

This book tackles each excuse in turn, detailing the kinds of behaviours that individuals and teams must adopt in order to successfully ‘jump ship’ (sorry, couldn’t help myself). Like, ETBF, his greatest skill here is the way he collects and codifies insights, steering a course away (now I really am sorry) from becoming a process-heavy plod by vigorously refraining the original Pirate metaphor and by using loads of quotations and examples from the ‘real world’.

The book stresses how easy it is to adopt the clothes of a Pirate from acquiring a veneer of distinctiveness through advertising, but how few grasp that the real energy comes from attitudinal and cultural change from within an organisation and a brand. One of the most vivid examples of establishing identity at a very deep level comes from Scott Lutz the brand leader for 8th Continent (a brand of Soy milk within General Mills). His starting point was ‘Binding’ his brand team together by the collective wearing of dog tags on a leather thong.

‘After a while (due to the darkening of the leather from body oils) it was easy to see who was hardcore about what we were doing on The Continent and who wasn’t’

This may seem extreme. Indeed, ‘I am wry and cynical’ should be the seventh excuse for being in the Navy. It does, however, underline Morgan’s point about how a strong, coherent and motivating vision for the team is needed before you start moving on to consider consumers. This makes ‘Pirate Inside’ much more challenging to adopt as a philosophy, because it insists on permanent, structural change (forging an identity rather than conjuring an image).

It is a call to arms for marketers to start leading their brands and companies by getting out from under the shadow of what he calls ‘Behemoth Inc’. My favourite ‘real world’ example of this comes from Hovis, showing a brand manager challenging the business’ preconception that the category was all about price and going on to think in a truly integrated way about communications (the packaging is the breakthrough communication vehicle). Final score: Pirates 32% growth – Navy 0.

Before it all seems too far from personal experience it’s worth pointing out that the book is structured around a progression of practical strategies for developing ideas (‘Pushing’), defining brands (‘Wrapping’) using the metaphor of countries (their cultures, customs, citizens) and building teams. There is even a whole section for Pirates who want to work and survive within the Navy as a sub-culture. As he observes, with enough ‘Pirates inside’, a big Navy company has the potential to turn in to a BSC (Big Smart Company).

I think that the fact that some of the case studies are pretty familiar (some are well-worn) shows that the vision as set out in this book still presents a very high bar for many businesses to jump. On the other hand, who doesn’t yearn for the life of a Pirate, even if it comes attached with some risks?