Versant Blog Center

Sharing the "Blue Ocean"

There's been a lot of conversation here lately about the book "Blue Ocean Strategy" by authors Renee Mauborgne and W. Chan Kim. The basic premise of the book is to tell the reader how to achieve a business goal of staying out of the "red ocean" – the bloody, competitive, dog-eat-dog world of competing for the same business with the same business strategies as everyone else, and moving to the "blue ocean," a marketplace virtually free of competition. The idea is to create a product or service that is so unique and to do business so differently that you have virtually no competition.

At Versant, that's been the vision for several years now, as we've expanded from a traditional ad agency, selling what everyone else in the industry is selling, to a specialist in strategic advertising, interactive marketing, business-to-consumer, business-to-business and business-to-employee branding, that is focused to achieving measurable results based on a foundation of research. And as we've done this for ourselves, we've been able to help our clients do it as well.

I've been in marketing and advertising for more than 20 years, and in my experience, this is a sea change in the depth and breadth of business support offered to clients by marketing agencies. It has become the new core of our business, with traditional marketing tactics almost an addendum to that. For my healthcare clients who face an increasingly competitive and constantly changing landscape because of managed care, Medicare limits, Pay-for-Performance and changing-by-the-minute technology, it's crucial that we help them achieve their own "blue ocean strategy." And when we succeed, the impact on their business, and ours, is profound.

Book to Read: Lucky or Smart?

Just finished Lucky or Smart? Secrets to an Entrepreneurial Life by Bo Peabody, founder of 1990s personal publishing site Tripod.  Was Tripod the precursor to blogging?  While Mr. Peabody doesn't address that question, he has many great tales about founding, running and eventually selling Tripod to Lycos, as well as one great commentary on our BlackBerry business culture.

Inc. Magazine also ran an article based on Lucky or Smart? in its January issue.