What we learn from the examination of various historical disasters is that effective planning is crucial to success. Failures in planning, like the underestimation of the opposition and the task in hand, often underpin disaster. ‘Wargaming’ has been one response that business has made to the risk or underestimating adversaries.
Jon Chandler 
17 Feb, 2009
War Games: The ‘Brand Wars’ Approach
The History of Wargames
War games have long been played within the military as either abstract/paper exercises or as mock field events/manoeuvres. More recently, War games have been applied in the business environment to identify and explore emerging opportunities and threats. Wargaming can allow organizations to predict the ‘games’ that competitors might play and develop strategies and responses to these scenarios.
War Games in Market Research
Business war games typically involve running workshop sessions with internal client teams, with these including outside agencies as appropriate. Beyond this, the principles of war games can also be applied in a market research setting. In the market research situation the objectives remain the same, but the participants change. Consumers in a market place (in this case Doctors) play out future strategies and scenarios. There are a number of benefits that this brings with it:
- Health care professionals are in a better position to make independent assessments of competing parties (they have no vested interests in the success of one side).
- Health care professionals can make a more ‘customer focused’ assessment
of competing parties; they have ‘insider knowledge’. This insider knowledge
can be either;
- Directed towards current scenarios or
- Directed towards possible future situations, through the use of approaches aimed at developing a more future oriented mind set.
The ‘Brand Wars’ methodology is one of a variety of wargame approaches. ‘Brand Wars’ methodologies can work on a number of key principles:
- At an overall level respondents [particularly professional] can readily take up and work with the principles of a contest between opposing forces. Most significantly, if presented in an open and straightforward fashion the process can be stimulating and enjoyable: people enjoy playing games, professional people enjoy playing intellectual games.
- In principle Brand Wars need to focus at a number of different levels;
- Assessment ‘on paper’ of the relative strengths and weaknesses of opposing sides
- Testing these out in some kind of simulated campaigning (how robust are strengths in practice, how vulnerable are weaknesses really)
- Identifying where these are each more or less relevant and therefore what market segments do they relate to.
Brand Wars
What would a Brand Wars session look like? A typical Brand Wars Session would involve a number of elements:
1. Introduction to Brand Wars and Briefing
From the outset the goals of the ‘Brand wars’ process have to be made transparent to all participants... trying to understand how the launch of a new product is likely to play out in the real world.
The ‘Brand Wars’ session would then commence with participants being briefed on the profiles of the two offerings: the two ‘combatants’.
2. Brand Combatant Review/Assessment
Teams of Doctors are asked to conduct a review or assessment of both of the combatants, including:
- Assessment of the strengths and weaknesses of each side
- Value and virtue of each side
- Key offensive resources + an account & rating of these
- Key defensive resources + an account & rating of these
- Key support resources
These team based assessments are then pooled and shared within the group.
3. Campaign Planning
The two teams are then allocated one of the two brands and asked to develop an overall plan of campaign to be undertaken over three stages. These can include:
- An offensive strategy; key attacking resources & when & where these will be deployed
- A defensive strategy; key defence resources & when & where these will be deployed
- Anticipated opponent strategies and how to deal with these
4. Operational Campaigning
The two teams ‘War Game’ their ‘Battle plans’ through 3 phase gaming process (replicating launch plus 3 years) with moderator adjudicating as ‘umpire’. This includes:
- Response to opponents tactics and strategies
- Development of strategies and responses over time
5. Review of Different ‘Fields of Battle’
Finally the two teams are brought back into a single group and presented with a number of specific ‘fields of battle’ in the form of specific patient types or patient situations. For each of these the group will determine:
- How far either of the two brands have the potential to capture each
- Elements in each brand that are particularly relevant to these different patients or situations
- What are the issues that will determine the outcomes of combats over specific patients or situations
And finally:
- Re-drawing the map; what territories will or can each brand own in the future
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