Welcome back to 52 Weeks of Marketing Wisdom, where we review and recommend a new book weekly across five themes: Foresight, Customer, Strategy, Creativity & Innovation, plus two extras to complete the 52.
Our program is for busy marketing professionals seeking inspiration and growth through reading.
Rather than a simple review, we've evolved our blog posts to bring a point of view to the work and focus on how it informs what we do at Selbey Labs.
We are shifting gears this week and moving into the world of strategy and to kick us off, one of my all-time favourite books, Blue Ocean Strategy by Renée Mauborgne and W. Chan Kim.
Hope you enjoy it.
Stop Competing. Start Creating: Why Every Business Needs Blue Ocean Strategy
In business, everyone’s fighting for the same thing.
The same customers, the same market share, the same sliver of demand.
It’s a battle, and it’s bloody. That’s why W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne call it a “red ocean.”
Everyone’s fighting to swim to the top, but all they’re doing is churning up the water and bleeding into the pool.
That’s what they call the “red ocean” strategy.
Compete harder, beat the rivals, grab a bit more of the same pie.
But here’s the thing—when you’re fighting tooth and nail over the same customers, no one really wins.
So what do Kim and Mauborgne suggest?
Simple: Stop competing.
Instead of battling it out in the red ocean, find your way into a blue ocean.
What’s a blue ocean?
It’s an entirely new market space, untouched, calm, and open.
A place where the rules aren’t set, where the water’s clear, and where you can create your own demand.
A place where you don’t just try to be better than the competition—you make the competition irrelevant.
That’s what Blue Ocean Strategy is all about.
Why Compete When You Can Create?
Here’s the thing about competing: it’s a zero-sum game.
For every inch you gain, your rival loses, and vice versa.
You’re all fighting over the same customers, the same dollars, the same limited space.
But what if you could expand the market?
What if you could create your own customers?
That’s where Value Innovation comes in, the core of blue ocean strategy.
Kim and Mauborgne say value innovation isn’t about choosing between low cost and differentiation.
It’s about creating something so unique and valuable that you change the game.
It’s not about fighting over a piece of the pie—it’s about baking a new pie altogether.
That’s how brands like Cirque du Soleil, Nintendo, and Southwest Airlines rewrote the rules.
They didn’t just do what everyone else was doing, but a little bit better or cheaper.
They changed the rules entirely.
Cirque du Soleil: Reinventing the Circus
Cirque du Soleil didn’t look at other circuses and say, “How can we have better clowns or more animals?”
They looked at the circus and saw an industry in decline, trapped in the same formula for decades.
So they tossed out the formula.
No animals. No ringmasters. No big top.
Instead, they combined circus arts with theatre, music, and dance.
They created something entirely new: a circus for adults, a sophisticated experience worth paying premium prices for.
In doing so, they stepped into a blue ocean where no one else was swimming.
No competition. No copycats. Just pure, uncontested demand.
Nintendo Wii: Playing a Different Game
When Nintendo launched the Wii, the gaming industry was locked in a technology race.
Microsoft and Sony were pushing for bigger graphics, better processors, more power.
But Nintendo didn’t follow that route.
They didn’t try to beat Sony’s PlayStation or Microsoft’s Xbox.
Instead, they asked a different question: How can we make gaming accessible and fun for everyone?
They launched the Wii with simple graphics, affordable pricing, and motion controls that anyone—parents, grandparents, kids—could enjoy.
It wasn’t a game console just for hardcore gamers.
It was a console for everyone.
And guess what? The Wii became one of the best-selling consoles of all time.
Nintendo didn’t fight for a piece of the gaming pie; they baked their own.
The Four Actions Framework: Rewriting the Rules
So how do you get into a blue ocean?
Kim and Mauborgne created something called the Four Actions Framework.
Four questions to rethink what you’re doing:
Eliminate: What does the industry do that you could completely do without?
Reduce: What factors could you lower well below the industry standard?
Raise: What factors could you push well above the industry standard?
Create: What new elements could you introduce that no one else is offering?
This framework is what separates the innovators from the imitators.
Instead of tweaking what’s already there, you’re rethinking everything from scratch.
Yellow Tail: Making Wine Fun
Take Yellow Tail Wine.
In the U.S., wine was intimidating, sophisticated, high-brow.
Most Americans felt out of place buying it.
But Yellow Tail didn’t try to be a better wine brand in the traditional sense.
They took a different approach.
They eliminated the stuffy labels, the snobbery, and the complicated choices.
They made wine fun, approachable, and easy to drink.
Suddenly, people who’d never thought of themselves as “wine drinkers” were buying Yellow Tail.
Not because it was better than other wines, but because it was different.
They created a blue ocean by bringing wine to a whole new audience.
Stop Competing, Start Creating
The thing about blue ocean strategy is it’s not just about ideas.
It’s about execution.
Kim and Mauborgne talk about Tipping Point Leadership—finding those key areas where a small change can make a big difference.
It’s about using your resources wisely, not spreading yourself thin.
And then there’s Fair Process.
If you want people to buy into a new strategy, involve them.
Make the process transparent.
When employees understand why they’re doing something, they’re far more likely to make it work.
Why Every Marketer Should Read This Book
If you’re in marketing, you know how hard it is to fight in the red ocean.
Your competitors are doing the same thing, chasing the same customers, with the same tactics.
Blue Ocean Strategy challenges you to stop following the crowd.
It’s about rethinking your approach.
Instead of asking, “How can we be better than our competitors?” ask, “How can we be so different that competition doesn’t even matter?”
So read this book.
Because in a crowded world, finding a blue ocean is the closest thing you’ll get to swimming alone.
And that’s where the real opportunities lie.
If you want some help in finding your blue ocean, we'd love to help. Visit us at Selbey Labs.
Blue Ocean Strategy, W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne