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How Do People Plan Espionage On Fmcg Companies
Posted By: jawad.masters on 5/26/2005 10:58 AM (CST) 25 Points
I am doing a information warfare assignment and i want to prepare a plan to carry out espionage on my competitor company, i have generally picked a fmcg company and wanted to know how to carry out espionage in legals ways.

Posted by: david.glover Accepted Answer
5/28/2005 11:17 PM (CST)
Information warfare? Who's setting assignments with titles like that?

Business is NOT warfare (notwithstanding the occasional relevance of Sun Tzu).

Jawad: espionage is, by definition, illegal. So if you want to carry it out...be aware of the possible consequences.

There's a very clear line between ethical, legal collection of information and unethical and/or illegal collection. You need to make sure you understand where that line is.

If "warfare" and "espionage" are being used as metaphors, make sure you understand what the metaphor is meant to stand for.
 
Posted by: E-Marketing* Accepted Answer
5/30/2005 1:41 PM (CST)
I'm curious about the outcome of your assignment. Assuming that you are really doing is legal research as opposed to tapping phones, stealing hard-drives, hacking into networks, and so forth, what are the legal and ethical ways to really understand what your competitor is doing?

- As a supplier, keep in touch with common middle-men and ask them questions about what your competitor is up to.
- Keep close tabs on who is working for them and what their business habits have been - for instance, if they hire a new VP of Sales who likes to have lots of price-cutting sales to make sales... get ready to become a commodity.
- Track them in the media and in blogs. Blogs are especially becoming a place where employees might say a little more than they should. By the same token, be sure to spin that around so that your own employees understand what they should and shouldn't, and can and can't say in blogs.
- What else?

I see one problem with this being that you start to spend so many resources tracking your competition that you end up losing focus on your own business.
 
Posted by: jawad.masters Author Response
5/31/2005 10:31 AM (CST)
Well i know that espionage is illegal, but it has been given another name as competitve intelligence, which organization carry out to findout what their competitors are doing as P&G had. COKE AND PEPSI.. they all carry out business intelligence on each other.

I wanted to know how to plan out strategy, as i have sum up some ideas like FMCG companies follow media, advertising agencies, suppliers distributors they can be resource for getting info about the competitors.

now as one of the friend said about bloggs, it is generally true many employees are enthusitatic and open up their brand plans in parties which help the competitors to get info.

So i guess these ways r not illegal in any respect, as dumpster diving is given legal by supreme court as the garbage is out of the office, it is legal that u can pick it up.

Even u can buy hard disk in auntion which are not usually wiped out properly. so u can get info from there as well.

well i wanted some1 to help in a way to plan a strategy on specific company.
well i hope my knowledge will help you people as well. i wanted to know as strategy planning is made on SWOT basis which is strenght weakness opportunities threats, i want to make a plan in that sort of manner.
thanks everyone
 
Posted by: Mushfique Manzoor Accepted Answer
6/6/2005 3:07 AM (CST)
jawad

you can gather information from a lot of source on a competing company. the easiest way is from Marketing Research firms.

1. you can ask a research company to undertake research activities in which they will collect information about your competitor as well as your company information. usually these information provide you a direction, a hunch of competitors next action.

2. another source is Media Tracking companies. they track the various media expenses your competitors incur and they will sell those data to you. but then again the actuall amount expended by competition is not likely to match the figure provided Media trackers, as competition can always negotiate with vendors on price while the media tracker calculates on the basis of current-market price.

3. you can also use your advertising agency to collect information on your competitor. your agency can always collect information from the agency that handles your competition account. then again the you will not get accurate information, but some trends and indications.

4. if any person who has access to information on his/her company makes a floor-crossing to your company you will get some accurate information, but that accuracy is limited for a certain time, as the company will definitely change its policy/information whatsoever so that you cant take advantage of this floor-crossing.

5. yes, as you have mentioned blogs and other informal discussions, social gathering can be source of information on competition, but then again none can give you 100% accuracy on any information.

i hope you understand, that its almost impossible to get accurate information, like Oleg Penkovsky gave to Kennedy administration during the Cuban Missile Crises.

if you want that kind of accurate information, then you gotta develop your Market Research and Intelligence team in the line of CIA or french DSE. the outcome is your Penkovsky getting caught and your company facing Lawsuits.

btw, the french intelligence agency DSE has recently admitted that they have been doing industrial espionage against US companies for a long time. and US is witch-hunting. so Be Careful before you trade this path.

good luck!!
 
Posted by: fkurilla* Accepted Answer
6/11/2005 8:59 AM (CST)
Often one of the simplest ways to gather current info directly from your competitor is to position yourself or even better one of your most loyal customers as a prospect at the next big tradeshow. If your own customer isn't known to be a die hard loyalist by your competitor but is known to be your customer all the better.

Sales Reps foam at the mouth to for those types of conversions and are often even SPIFFed on them.

If you mark a savy rep you have to worry about misinformation, but a lot of times the temptation and idea of converting one of your competitor's customers is hard to resist.

You'd be surprised how much a competitor's sales rep will talk, even a well trained one.
 
Posted by: carrie77 Moderator Response
6/12/2005 7:56 AM (CST)
Hello all. I am closing this question since it's more than 2 weeks old. We do this to reward the contributions of participants in a timely manner + to give increased visibility to the newer questions.

Thanks for participating!
Carrie (Production Editor)
 


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