In a World of Me-Too Thinking, Are You Different?
Long ago when social media was new a company we know had the opportunity to write a weekly guest blog. They opted to “first wait and see what the competition does.” That attitude puzzled me at first. Now I see that gearing corporate strategy to follow versus lead is the rule.
In her recent book, Different, Harvard Business School professor Youngme Moon points to an epidemic of me-too thinking infecting brand value, often with mortal impact.
“In category after category,” writes Moon, “companies have gotten so locked into a particular cadence of competition that they appear to have lost sight of their mandate — which is to create meaningful grooves of separation from one another. Consequently, the harder they compete, the less differentiated they become. Products are no longer competing against each other; they are collapsing into each other in the minds of anyone who consumes them.”
In this bizarre world, companies race to keep up with each other on features and functionality, but rarely leap forward feet first into the unique. Differentiation is dead. “Marketing strategy” is reduced to an oxymoron. In the end, herd thinkers compete only on margin and tip into a death spiral as deep-pocketed competitors undercut prices to and below the bone.
Look at any market niche — cell phones, TVs, OSS and BSS software — and you find a profusion of once unique but now commoditized products and services that perform identically. Each is a stationary target for the first company that smacks them aside with a product idea that makes customers’ brains sizzle.
Such “idea brands” up-end the limits and assumptions of market categories. They’re not built around a suite of well-rounded products and services that perform satisfactorily in a hundred areas. The company may only do one thing — but they do it exceptionally well.
Howzat? Consider that every Saturday, ordinarily mild-mannered men by the thousands magically transform into The Terminator. . .just by donning black leathers and jumping on their hogs. Harley-Davidson owns the stand-out brand that converts accountants and school teachers into bad-ass mothers. A favorite t-shirt slogan with this crowd reads: “We don’t care what they’re doing in Japan.” That’s the magic of drop-dead, to-hell-with-the-competition idea branding.
How can you tell if you’re that kind of company?
Read Youngme Moon’s book cover-to-cover, twice.
Walk into the front office and ask any employee to recite in 25 words or less what makes your company stand out.
Ask yourself: If we disappeared tomorrow, would anybody miss us?
Now that social media is all the rage and its competitors are elbows deep in the stuff, that once too timid company is blogging and tweeting furiously. There’s a tiresome sameness to such assembly line-style content, and it’s hard to distinguish one me-too outfit from another.
Take one aside and ask face-to-face what sets them apart. If being completely candid they’ll reply, “We really don’t know.”
Later, dudes. It’s Tuesday morning, the roads are clear of dentists on Harleys, and transformation awaits me astride my kick-ass, suicide shift, brakes-are-really-just-a-suggestion 1946 Indian Chief.
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