Corporate Espionage Well... let's call it "Creative" Espionage.

Economic and industrial espionage has a long history. Father Francois Xavier d'Entrecolles, who visited Jingdezhen, China in 1712 and later used this visit to reveal the manufacturing methods of Chinese porcelain to Europe, is sometimes considered to have conducted an early case of industrial espionage.[16] (Wikipedia)

“Good artists copy, great artists steal.” -Picasso 

“Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal” - TS Eliot

 “A good composer does not imitate; he steals.” - Igor Stravinsky

Oftentimes, there’s benefit to being inspired by others' work. That brings us to espionage. Specifically, researching your competitors to be inspired to try something new or even be pushed to improve your own work. 

Here are some great ways to commit creative espionage.  

Subscribe to Your Competitors

The easiest way to keep an eye on what your competitors are doing is simply to subscribe to them. Subscribing to everything (Email, SMS, Push Notifications) will assist you with seeing what type of communication they’re engaging in with their consumers. See what products they’re launching. See the frequency of offers, what discounts are provided, what subject lines are being used. 

How do I handle it? 

For Email: I subscribe to the top 3-5 competitors of a brand with whom I am working via a specific email address that I use only for research. At the end of each month, I use the search feature in Gmail to review all the emails that were sent out for that month. This assists with determining how to approach upcoming months.

For SMS: I have notifications turned off for all messages from unknown numbers. At the end of the month, I search through those messages and review what was sent out. 

Review Social Ads:

After all the flack Meta (then Facebook) received during the elections, they decided to add a feature to all Facebook pages. “Page Transparency”. (How to find this below) This allows you to view all the active advertisements a page is running. Review the ads and see what creative is being used, what headlines, what offers. All of this can help to inspire you to create ads that will help you outperform your competition. 

How to Locate Page Transparency

Additionally, if you would like to simply search all ads, you can utilize the Ad Library. This will allow you to search for ads via specific keywords. 

https://www.facebook.com/ads/library

It’s not just Facebook. TikTok has recently launched an Ad Library too. You can see top ads in the United States along with a search feature:

https://ads.tiktok.com/business/creativecenter/inspiration/topads

Shopify Store Audit

Not all brands showcase what products are their top sellers. In most cases, brands will try and showcase recent product launches or those products with too much inventory. A great and simple way to see what products a brand is selling best is with a little hack. Add the following to the end of any Shopify store URL, and it will provide you with a list of top selling items. 

/collections/all-products?sort_by=best-selling 

For example, say you wanted to research GymShark’s website, you would type in the following:

https://www.gymshark.com/collections/all-products/?sort_by=best-selling

Additionally, with certain chrome plugins you can review which apps are being used by Shopify websites. With extensions like “Shopify App Detector” you simply visit a competitor's site, and the extension will show you what apps are currently being utilized.

Now go and grow. 

J

Recommended Apps:

 

As mentioned above Shopify App Detector is a great plugin for Chrome users to be able to see what apps are currently running on your competitors Shopify store.

Learn More