The Constraint was the strategy
Part of the ongoing Culture & Signal series
What a club night in Liverpool taught me about the most powerful strategy in business
After my first season in Ibiza in 2006 I was lucky enough to get a job working at a club I had been going to for years. Garlands, already an institution in Liverpool and Ibiza for creating the best parties, gave me the opportunity to work taking flyers and posters around the north west. It was the best school for learning what would become some of the main principles I have gone on to use today.
Garlands was always known for having the best resident DJs. But more than that, they made the clubber the centre of the whole experience. From the moment you walked up Eberle Street you were greeted by a tribe of club kids who hit you with stickers, lucky dips, treats and banter only a Scouser could come up with.
Once inside, the entertainers instantly made you part of the experience. Crazy giveaways, washing lines full of granny's clothing you could wear, the most random games and interactions. Everyone who had managed to get in past the strict door had the same mindset. It created something no headline DJ could.
Liverpool has always been a great city for music. But some bigger promoters owned all the power when it came to booking talent. At the time that looked like a constraint. It was actually what made Garlands totally unique and untouchable for many years. It forced a different way of thinking. Not basing everything on headliners. And it meant that week in, week out, over 25 years, people came back. Not for one DJ they liked. For the whole atmosphere and experience.
History is full of examples where the constraint turned out to be the strategy. David versus Goliath. The Battle of Agincourt. The English outnumbered, outpowered, no chance on paper. But the terrain, the longbow, the mud. What looked like weakness became the deciding factor.
Garlands had no chance in the Liverpool booking market on paper either.
In Eating the Big Fish, Adam Morgan names this the challenger's advantage. Identify the one thing your competitor cannot or will not do, and over-commit on it completely.
For Garlands it was putting the clubber at the heart of the experience while every other promoter focused on headline acts. They couldn't copy it. Their whole model was built on the opposite.
So what is your brand's constraint? The thing that looks like a weakness on paper but, if you committed to it completely, could become the one thing your competitors cannot touch.
As Rory Sutherland says, the opposite of a good idea can still be a good idea.
Culture & Signal is an ongoing exploration into how brands grow from inside communities, how ritual creates meaning, and why signal only lasts when participation stays real.