What is this all about?:

Military strategies are for wars and martial arts techniques are for fighting - right?
Well, don’t we fight our little wars and conflicts daily? At work, at home, in the shop, in the street, with kids or parents, you name it. Sometimes even putting a kid to bed turns into a sizeable conflict!
And don’t we waste tons of nerves and energy in these little fights?
Shouldn’t the ideas from the strategies and techniques be applicable to our daily conflicts? And make it easier to win and live?

Well, I think - "yes"! And I am trying to put together here a sizable amount of examples to show this. Below I present these examples together with the underlying ideas taken from military or martial arts. Sometimes their application looks like plain psychology, sometimes as office politics, and sometimes just as little tricks that you can use. And, you bet, at times it is not that pretty, but hey, who said that warfare is pretty?

As with martial arts, you can use it just to fend off attacks or to hurt people. Some ideas are aikido/judo like – soft. Some are hard. You can be gentle or play it rather ugly – it depends on you - hope not - but sometimes the circumstances dictate that too.

If you live in a violent area – it is a good idea to take some form of karate-like training, right?
By the same measure “if you live in a world of conflicts – it is a good idea to learn some techniques to handle them”.
Or you may go on and fight them “head on”.

I would be happy to hear your comments or examples – just go ahead and add a comment anywhere – I will re-post it if necessary.

Sun Tzu said: "..to fight and conquer in all your battles is not supreme excellence; supreme excellence consists in breaking the enemy's resistance without fighting."

On the right there are links to previous posts - strategy definitions and examples of use.

Friday, June 1, 2007

Office Depot - use of "offer a brick to win a gem"

Office Depot provides another excellent example of "offer a brick to win a gem" strategy.
Office Depot advertise that you can "buy and try" any (almost) product for two weeks.
If you do not like it - just return it - no questions asked.
People come there 'cause they know that they will not end up with something that doesn't suit them perfectly. If not they can just return and take another brand or design.

Analysis:
Well it's pretty obvious - they offer the "buy and try" = "the brick" to attract customers and sales = "the gem".

See definition of the "offer a brick to win a gem" strategy and other examples of it's use here.

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