"The essence of strategy is choosing what not to do." Michael Porter wrote that thirty years ago in HBR. Most marketers nod when they hear it. Very few act on it.
Here's why it matters right now. The modern marketing landscape has never been more accessible — you can build a product, create your own ads, sell through your own site or a dozen marketplaces, and have AI handle much of the execution. We observe what seems to be a conditioned response by marketers—do more. More channels, more features, more markets. More is more. Growth is more.
We want to push back on that. What we consistently find is that the firms who grow most effectively are the ones who deliberately limit themselves.
Most brands fall into what we call the Trap of the 7. Given limited resources — and every firm has limited resources, including behemoths like Amazon and Google — companies end up spreading investment across a long list of attributes: price, quality, service, experience, design, security. The goal, consciously or not, becomes getting everything up to a 7 out of 10. Competent across the board. Not great at anything.
Here's the problem. Not all attributes matter equally to all customers. Some customers want a 10 on service and will happily accept a 4 on price. A 7 on price and a 7 on service doesn't give them what they actually want. You've spent the resources and still lost the sale.
There's a harder truth underneath this. Think of your behavior as a consumer. You likely drive past 7's. You scroll right by them. Think of a brand that's fine — reliable, inoffensive, solid. You probably just thought of one. Now think about the last time you chose it over something else because you had to have it. That's the trap.
Meanwhile, some competitor has figured out the exact combination a specific customer segment wants. A slightly expensive energy drink — a 4 on price — but a 10 on clean ingredients and protein. It finds its people and it wins with them. Their 4 on price isn't a weakness. It's a trade-off they made on purpose.
The question isn't how to get everything to a 7. It's: where do we want to be a 10, and what can we accept as a 5?
The resistance we hear most often sounds like this: "But on average, customers want a 7 on this attribute." Maybe. But averages mask the segments that will actually drive your growth. Competing for the average is a race to the middle — and someone will always be willing to run it cheaper than you.
Why not just be 10's on everything? Nothing is. A firm that prioritizes quality of materials cannot compete as well on price. A firm that develops a technically complex product cannot readily claim simplicity.
So what do we do? We focus. We choose what not to do. We ask: how can we be a better choice for some customers than the competition? What are we uniquely good at that we can push further? Who are the customers most likely to value exactly that? Those answers drive everything — R&D, targeting, messaging, pricing, distribution.
We give the same advice to our students. Don't spend your time at Kellogg turning your 5's into 7's. You'll burn time getting to average when you could be turning an 8 into a 10.
The same is true for your brand.