I just saw a new Burger King commercial that piqued my interest.  Now, often times you will notice that companies such as McDonald’s and Burger King or Coke and Pepsi compete on how their products taste.  You will hear them quote the most recent survey saying that 9 out of 10 consumers preferred the taste of their product over their competitors.  Or you will hear them compete on price and try to win out in the price war (which by the way no one ever really wins).

Well, as a consumer it doesn’t take long to catch on that both of them are making the exact same claims and that oddly enough most of their survey data sounds the same as well.  So after years of competing on taste Burger King came up with a clever turn.

They are competing on size.

Now, don’t get me wrong, they are not the first to think of this.  Hardee’s has done this on many occasions.  What I found clever was the way they did it.  They had 2 guys trying to figure out where to go for lunch.  One suggests Burger King and the other balks at the idea and suggests McDonald’s instead claiming, “I have these tiny hands.”  The implication of manliness being tied to the size of the burger one eats is quite obvious.

Now, the key thing here is what Burger King did, knowing that in reality that the competition on taste is old and most consumers are tired of the claims.  Burger King created a new category.

Now, I’m sure most of us don’t have the marketing budget of Burger King or McDonald’s so how does this translate into our businesses?  There are “stale mate” competitions in most industries.  So, one can either keep attempting to win out in an endless p***ing contest, or one can create an entirely new category to compete in and blow the competition away.