Story of Deer, Cheetah and Lion in Jungle - One can be Cheetah with long term Digital Strategy

Once upon a time, there were Cheetah, Deer and Lion in a jungle. Deer was a fast runner (60 kmph), Lion was faster (70 kmph) but Cheetah was the fastest (100 kmph). Whenever Cheetah wanted to hunt Deer, there was competition from Lion. Cheeta started healthy diets to run faster. But competition was still on. Then Cheetah got a n idea and started feeding Deer instead and gave all support to make them healthy. As Deer became fitter, it started running faster and reached 80 kmph speed. Thereon Cheetah lived happily forever.  

Why did Cheetah do something so counter intuitive? Assess the new competition landscape and you will have the answer. 

This story is inspired by a tale told by my Prof Saral M at IIM, Ahmadabad. If a company can change the consumer behavior, it can create a new blue field. In the era of quality driven market, Zara changed consumer behavior and leaned them towards a fashion statement - Anything 3 months old is out of fashion. This created a new market for  Zara whose lead time from R&D to retail was in weeks in comparison to other big players whose lead times were in months. 

Today this story is relevant for many industries such as Agriculture, Healthcare from the digital footprint perspective. As consumerism is increasing day by day, people are starting to seek information and take self-decision. But there are industries where companies are not so active in internet. There is no structured content. In Agri, farmers are still dependent on wisdom of retailers while taking a purchase decision. A company which has a long term digital strategy (including social marketing, content marketing, Medias, SEO) has potential to change consumer's behavior and create a space for itself. 

COVID 19 may have pushed many companies to adopt social marketing since it is the easiest one but a haphazard implementations is just a stop-gap solution and not a strategic & long term one.