As a brand competing to be better than others and fighting for your space in the market, there’s one thing that always goes unnoticed. The intention.

Yes, the Red ocean strategy is very effective when a brand is competing in an existing market, it shows how a brand is better than the alternatives. When I think of it from a strategic point of view, the only question that arises is that Does it give you Credibility? Sustainable audience? I’ve said and thought this before, as a brand credibility becomes your priority to grow and customers follow. Red Ocean definitely can build credibility but it’s often hard to earn because customers already have alternatives set up and thus higher expectations.

In 2026, consumers, especially Generation Z aren’t just comparing brands and products anymore. They’re comparing values and experiences that they believe in. The question every brand is asking is “How do we become better than everyone else?”. My opinion is to ask “What makes the competition irrelevant?”

This is where the blue ocean strategy steps in. Instead of competing in the same saturated market place, create a new demand. Reveal a need that the consumers never realized had a better solution and how the brand makes it convenient for them to own. This strategy, be it in marketing or in innovation, gives the creators and the consumers a large scale to provide and accept respectively. It helps the brand expand by attracting consumers who weren’t a part of that category in the first place and get the best deliverables out of it while sustaining to the brand value. The strongest brands aren’t successful because they’re better, but because they created their own definition of “better” and consumers felt that story. Sometimes, this means solving a problem no one else is solving, giving people what has been ignored by everyone else or even changing customer value in the first place.

As a consumer, I rarely make any of my purchasing decisions based on how Brand A is better than Brand B but on what value the brand holds, its story and how authentic it feels to me. A brand may have the best marketing and strategy but if it does not relate to the consumers on a personal level, numbers are affected in the end. This is what I mean by intention, not the intention to sell or compete but one to solve, stand for something and to create meaning beyond the product. Strategy determines how the brands compete. Intention earns trust, builds brand relevance and determines why consumers choose to stay.

For years, the Victoria's Secret Fantasy Bra was almost a reward for the models who helped build the brand. Adriana Lima, Candice Swanepoel, Gisele Bündchen were women who had earned their place in VS history. So when the brand brought back the Fantasy Bra after eight years, why give its most expensive one yet to Kylie Jenner, someone who had never even walked its runway?

I think the answer is simple: Victoria's Secret wasn't just looking for a model. It was looking for an audience. In an interview with Vogue, Victoria's Secret's chief creative officer Adam Selman called Kylie a "cultural powerhouse." Someone who offered something beyond traditional runway recognition and had access to multiple consumer markets. Adding Jacob & Co. to the equation, the luxury jeweler created a record-breaking $50 million Fantasy Bra featuring 4,410 natural diamonds and a 75.54-carat yellow diamond. Suddenly, this wasn't just a lingerie show. It was a crossover between three powerful brands, each bringing its own identity, credibility, and audience.

From a business perspective, Victoria's Secret could potentially reach Kylie's beauty and lifestyle audience, Jacob & Co.'s luxury consumers, and its own existing customers through a single runway moment. It's a clever example of co-branding and audience expansion, with the potential to generate significant earned media without relying solely on conventional advertising.

But why not Adriana, Barbara, Candice, or the Hadid sisters?

My take is that choosing an established Angel would have celebrated the brand's history. Choosing Kylie challenged it. And that unexpected decision created an entirely different conversation. People weren't just discussing the return of the Fantasy Bra, they were debating who deserved to wear it.That doesn't mean controversy was necessarily the intention. But I do think Victoria's Secret understood that a surprise can introduce it to new audiences.

Of course, attention isn't the same as sales. Without post-show conversion or customer acquisition data, we can't know how commercially successful this decision actually was. Still, I find the shift fascinating. Victoria's Secret once used its runway to turn models into global celebrities. Now, it seems to be using global celebrities to make its runway culturally relevant again.

We've all been there. Wanting to be good at everything. The smartest person in the room, the most creative, the most successful, the one who somehow has everything figured out.

But at what point does wanting everything stop us from becoming something?

I came across an interesting concept in my strategic management class called "stuck in the middle."

In business, companies generally choose how they want to compete. Walmart focuses on keeping costs low with a broad target audience , while Nordstrom focuses on offering a more unique, premium experience. They aren’t trying to be everything to everyone. They understand what makes them valuable and gives them a competitive advantage in the long run.

Then there's the “best-cost strategy”, where a company tries to offer both quality (differentiation) and affordability (lower costs). If done well, this can be incredibly successful. But when a company can't deliver either effectively, it risks becoming stuck in the middle.

And I couldn't help but think about how similar this is to our lives.

We're constantly encouraged to do more. Learn five skills, pursue three careers, have multiple side hustles, build a personal brand, and somehow still find time to become the best version of ourselves.

Psychologically, I think a lot of this comes from comparison and the fear of missing out. We see someone succeeding at something and suddenly feel like we should be doing it too.

But being involved in four different worlds doesn't necessarily mean you're growing in all four. Sometimes, you're just dividing your attention four ways.

There's nothing wrong with having multiple interests. In fact, combining different skills can become your biggest strength. But there's a difference between strategically building on what you're good at and constantly starting something new because you're afraid of being left behind. It restricts you from mastering a skill or an interest to your maximum capacity if you keep quitting at an early stage.

Maybe the goal shouldn't be to master everything at once. Maybe it should be to become genuinely good at one thing, build confidence in it, and then expand.

Because just like businesses, we have limited resources. Ours happen to be time, energy, attention, and patience.

And if we try to give everything an equal share, what are we really giving our best to?

A trend is getting attention? I believe that doesn’t always mean it deserves a production order. Let me start with Google, TikTok and various social media trends. People look at a product, talk about it and some may even buy it. Does that mean the product guarantees a long term success? No, it does not.

Businesses often misconceive actual consumer demand and the consumer demand that a data sheet tries to feed it. In this generation consumer purchase attention and demand changes overnight. Talking about a product often means the consumer has barely made it to the early stages of the funner and that barely gives the brand a loyal sustainable customer in the long run.

What happens when a data sheet doesn’t match the actual demand? It creates a gap between the planned supply and the actual demand. This causes inventory accumulation, markdowns, holding costs increase, profit margins shrink and the working capital still is tied up. These fluctuations in demands may lead to an inefficient production schedule by the company.

What we fail to understand sometimes is that this forecasting error does not just mean entering a wrong number in the spreadsheet, it can change the companies’s profit percentage completely. According to The State of Fashion 2025 McKinsey and The Business of Fashion, the estimated sales value of excess fashion inventory in 2023 was $70-140B.

Lets take Zara’s example here. Instead of relying fully on seasonal forecasts, it uses smaller initial product runs, customer feedback and fast replenishment cycles to respond to actual demand. They don't predict what the consumers would want months before launching but they keep a flexible supply chain to quickly adapt to those changes. According to Inditex’s (Zara’s parent company) 2025 annual report, they reported a gross margin on 58.3% while emphasizing adapting its product offerings to consumer preferences.

Forecasting as important as it is, may not help in terms of accuracy alone, especially with such high fluctuating demands. The real problem begins when businesses become so committed to their intended production strategy that they leave little room for an emergent strategy when consumer preferences change.

In this situation, I believe investing in a supply chain unit might be an asset. In the end not knowing what the consumers want tomorrow may be okay, but not knowing how to respond to those demands may create a competitive disadvantage.