Campaigning is a competitive endeavor that takes place in an arena of challengers and leaders attacking and defending their respective market share. As a leader I will engage in campaigns to defend or expand my market share. As a challenger I am continually battling other challengers and the market leader for market share. Whether campaigning for a new customer, opening a new market, establishing a new territory, or defending a franchise product line, the interplay of challengers and leaders attacking and defending each others market share will always be present.

Chris Bassford is a professor of strategy at the National War College, in Washington D.C. Chris was a major contributor to the development of the USMC warfighting doctrine including MCDP 1-2, Campaigning, one of the more useful references we use at vSente for our campaigning methodology. Chris is an expert on Carl von Clausewitz and wrote a book a short time back with co-authors Tiha von Ghyczy and Bolko von Oetinger (both of the Boston Consulting Group) titled Clausewitz on Strategy.

In the book Chris explors the relationship of attack and defense. The ability to hold and reconcile two opposing notions in your head at the same time is a necessary competency for an effective campaign strategist. The ability to clearly sense the differences and similarities between attack and defense, when to employ the attack and when to establish a defense, and most importantly when they become one in the same is the hallmark of a great strategist. This from Chris's book:

Whenever two concepts form a true logical antithesis, in other words, one is the complement of the other, the one is essentially implied in the other. However, if the limitations of our mind do not allow us to consider both at once, and to find the totality of one by mere antithesis in the totality of the other, in any case, nevertheless, strong light is shed by one that is adequate to illuminate many parts of the other.

Hence in addressing the attack, we sall most often have the same subjects before us as when considering the defense.