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Copycat Categories

Every once in a while we come across a copycat category. These are industries where every company in the category seems to duplicate the strategy of their competitors, all of them. Hyper-homogeneity. See if you can guess the category in question. The companies are cloaked to protect their identity.

Here is a category with ten major competitors. They all compete for the publics' share of attention and business every week of the year, week in and week out. And every week, they all buy into the same television programs. Half o the spots running on network TV are purchased on 15% of the programs. Any one of these shows carries six times as many commercials in the category than the average program.

Upfront and impersonal

Most of these spots re bought upfront, even though they will probably have to be moved around later in the year to accommodate marketing realities. For this privilege, each company pays top dollar for heir commercial time and they do it willingly. They do this because of the marquee value, because they have always done it and no one will risk doing anything different. Executives at the networks say that each competing company buys at about the same time, buys the same stuff, at the same price. No one gets a great deal, because there is a fear that executives at these companies will someday change jobs and walk across the street to a competitor. That being the case, networks fear disclosure of a favored deal, so the industry buys at parity, which in this case is higher than most advertisers.

Cookie cutting

Over the course of a year, these ten competitors air nearly 100,000 commercials, with half going to the broadcast networks. The big three networks pick up roughly two out of every three spots. About a quarter go to FOX and there is very little variation in the patterns of spending between the ten siblings. Once in a while, one or two of the younger ones will stray, as the young are apt to do, but they invariably slide back into the mold. Two-thirds of the money goes to prime time, no one strays by more than ten percent. Ten percent of all TV money goes to cable. No one varies by more than half. When it comes to spot television, they all buy the same markets, a lot in the big two or three and then a bit less and less down the line, until they reach about half the country. It's like cutting cookies.

My wish list

I keep a wish list. Sometimes I wish I would hit the MegaMillion Jackpot, just so I could spend the money differently, to get a different result. I'm sure I could do better. However, I realize that I'd have to win over $250 million just to be among the top 100 advertisers in this country, so what's the use. How much clout could I have. Then I remember, that newspapers have classified sections for a reason. People know where to go when they are shopping for a house or apartment or car. Everyone who is selling these things advertises there. It's okay to be in the expected place. In fact, it's desirable. Of course, pricing is a bit lower in the classified section of your daily paper, than in the category program of your weekly television show.