Distinctiveness: It's Hidden Power
Learn how it cuts through the noise of BETTER and DIFFERENTIATION
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It’s an age-old question that sends many CX Pros into a spiral of doubt.
Doubt as in: Are we differentiated enough? Does it matter? Should we focus on better - faster, easier, and less? How can we stand out?
Most Experts say
… you need to be ‘different’ or, you need to be ‘better’.
Different says ‘Look at me, buy me, I’m unique’
Better says “I’m faster, easier, simpler, cheaper, longer lasting” or a host of other words to explain ‘better’.
Both are traps.
Below, I tell you why. I also guide you through a framework I use to help my clients answer these questions.
I take you through why There’s no right answer but there are 2 wrong answers - these are gold
Use what’s below to move toward growth and an appreciation that your customers will have given you two prized possessions: their attention and their engagement.
Do This Instead
Be Distinctive.
Research shows it has a higher impact on consumer salience, and is proven to win market share.
It’s easier to achieve, and something you can do just by re-framing your existing assets - your experiences, your branding and your marketing.
Let’s Get Started..
..by making a list of the brands that stand out for you.
I’ll bet it isn’t that long, even though you have skin in the game as a cx/marketing pro.
When researchers asked this question to a large sample of respondents, the average answer was just over 2 and fewer than 1 per cent mentioned 10 brands or more.
We’d like to think otherwise, but the consumers’ reality is that most don’t see one brand as much different to other competitor brands.
With rare exceptions, in the category they’re shopping in, customers view all brands as near substitutes, irrespective of differentiation or better claims.
Your local independent coffee shop, Starbucks, Costa, and other coffee chains all sell coffee, food and a place to sit. If you just want a coffee and your normal choice isn’t around, usually the other will do.
The truth is that consumers don’t have particularly strong relationships with many brands because they don’t want to collect relationships with every brand.
Customers just aren’t that convinced about ‘different’. They're cynical about such claims. And they won’t lose sleep if most of the brands that end up in their shopping baskets disappear. There’s always a substitute lurking around the corner.
So don’t try to convince consumers that your product or service is different to get them to buy. Your brand awareness, distinctiveness, and salience can do the convincing for you.
The most successful brands are never those who shy away from who they are and what they can offer. So find yourself and be distinctly you.
To ensure consumers keep buying you, you need to stand out so that they can easily and without any confusion identify it.
Consumers will naturally buy the brands they remember and can find when needed.
Don’t get me wrong. Differentiation exists, and some brands capture whole markets because they are differentiated. But it’s rare, usually about the functional differences of a product or service, and works best when your brand is creating a new category rather than incrementally improving in your existing category. And at its worst, it creates confusion and fragmentation - remember the last time you tried buying shampoo or mouthwash and you’ll see what I mean.
But you can create perceived differences through distinctive experiences, your promise, your advertising and your marketing.
So the good news is you don’t need to worry about being product and feature innovative to grow!
Instead, you need to build Mental Availability or Salience, so that when consumers shop in your category they are reminded you exist.
Then you don’t need to claim ‘you should buy us because we are different from other brands’.
The words differentiation and distinctiveness shouldn’t be used interchangeably.
As I’ve said, differentiation is about features of a product or service that differentiate a brand for a consumer.
Chewing gum that keeps its flavour for twice as long.
Volvo for extra safety.
Kleenex for the softest tissues.
So you may be asking Why is this even a discussion?
Good question, when you’d think we need both - a unique, superior product and let the market know it with eye-catching, recognisable advertising? Done, dusted.
If only it were so.
Salience or Mental Availability is the degree to which consumers think of your brand when they are in the middle of a purchase decision.
But for an element to be considered distinctive, it must have both salience and distinctiveness.
That means you're meaningful and memorable.
Brand differentiation is different - setting yourself apart from the competition by highlighting key aspects, features, and benefits of your brand and how it adds value to your customers. It means you're unique - but there’s always a but - your uniqueness must be sustainable over the long term, must be immediately recalled by customers without a prompt and must have a uniqueness that is meaningful to customers. Without this, it's not enough to drive brand choice.
On the other hand, Brand distinctiveness takes that up a notch. To be standing out with impact (using brand assets such as brand name, logos, colours, messaging, etc.) so that buyers can easily identify, recall, and buy the brand.
Distinctiveness is about your marketing, your experiences, your brand promise, brand fun, your brand purpose, your logos, your music, and your slogans. (Think of the yellow M from McDonalds). The idea is to max a consumer’s association with your brand - but not the broad category of the brand you're in or you may be providing benefits to your category competitors as well.
That’s why distinctiveness is easier for you to achieve when you’re lacking clear differences.
Let’s get started.
Are you a Box or Dropbox user? While Box advertises features superior to Dropbox, there’s nothing compellingly different, and any slight advantages of one over the other won’t break established consumer habits.
When you buy batteries do you choose an Energizer, a Duracell, and do you care?
Do you choose BudLight or a Muller Lite, and do you care?
Do you order a taxi from a favourite brand or just the one that’s most available at the moment?
Aren’t all car rental companies the same? Pricing, car types, the airport locations.
Yet in the early sixties, Avis launched an ad campaign with the slogan “We try harder”. It was created as a way to make it appear distinctively different to its main and bigger competitor, Hertz. The promise was that Avis would go the extra mile and said that even if Hertz was the largest company “When you’re only No. 2”, “Avis can’t afford not to be nice”.
Within a year Avis became profitable for the first time in over a decade. The market-share gap between then and Hertz shrunk. Avis now has sub-slogans like “Avis can’t afford to make you wait” and “Avis can’t afford dirty ashtrays”.
Avis didn’t beat Hertz on ‘better’, whether that be scale, more car choices, innovation, or more locations - it pivoted to a distinction and distinctiveness through a memorable promise.
The ‘Better’ trap
Cheaper. Bigger. Longer lasting. Tastier. Easier. Faster, more responsive, superior, top-rated, guaranteed…just different ways of saying “better”.
The trap of claiming ‘better’ doesn’t distance you from your competition.
In fact, it brings you closer to them.
Why?
Several reasons.
What leader says they don’t want to be reliable, responsive, consistent, easy, and so on?
“Listen, let’s make sure our reliability is shit” or “let’s have less features” is not something you’ll ever hear. That would be plain stupid.
So why do we think the opposite ….“Listen, let’s make sure our reliability is good” or “let’s have an extra feature” is a strategy for better rather than just non-stupid?
To declare ‘better’ isn’t a differentiation strategy, it’s just not as weak as your competitors strategy. And, by asking consumers to constantly compare you to them, it ties you to them.
Try this test. Seach for PC based password managers and you’ll find something like this:
If you keep searching you’ll find each vendor has a slightly different list, each designed to show their features as better in comparison, with most prices almost identical or very cheap. No one is prenium in price.
Its called clustering, and it’s a slippery slope that can quickly descend into commodisation and repeated price discounting.
Better is short term. Anyone can claim better through discounting or an extra feature, but ultimately it creates a costly loop of pushing for more and more but with increasingly lower returns on improvements.
And more importantly? Your consumer probably doesn’t care, can’t be bothered to analyse every comparison, is confused by the choices, and will probably default to price or a recommendation.
The ‘Differentiation’ trap
When Byron Sharp published his book How Brands Grow in 2010, he kickoff a rethink. Before 2010, differentiation was high on every marketer’s list, but after it was no longer so obvious. From Byron Sharp & Jenny Romaniuk, How Brands Grow:
“Rather than striving for meaningful, perceived differentiation, seek meaningless distinctiveness. Branding lasts, differentiation doesn’t”.
A differentiating strategy based on price is not sustainable (unless your cost base is geared to permanently lower industry costs, like low cost airlines). Otherwise, offering the lowest price as your advantage is not sustainable. Making price the main reason to choose you is a fool's game - we can all mark down a price.
Differentiation just for its own sake doesn’t lead to more and better customers. The differentiation has to meet customers needs.
Real product differentiation is expensive. It usually entails creating a new category (and therefore new demand). Think Apple, Uber, or Airbnb. Apple have created and met a niche market (they have 17% of the smartphone market) but 70% of the market profits. through differentiation. Yet, now, even Apple are suffering the consequences of a differentiation race with the question what’s left for them to innovate on?
The ‘Distinctiveness’ solution
Not only is it difficult, but it’s no longer enough to differentiate your brand from others; you must create a brand that is instantly recognisable and memorable.
Whilst differentiation is not not the right strategy, distinctiveness is a much better place to focus your precious time and marketing.
Being a distinctive brand is far more achievable than being a differentiated or better brand and for staying that way forever. Your distinctiveness can be anything authentic - a point of view, an exceptional experience, a community, you personally, your promise and more - and it keeps your customers around while you iron out the details.
Brand distinctiveness is rooted in neuroscience.
First, it helps consumers recognise your brand quickly and easily, even when they’re not actively looking for it.
This increases brand recall and recognition, in turn leading to higher brand salience. This process is crucial in building memory structures, the mental associations that consumers form about a brand. Over time, these memory structures positively influence consumers’ brand perceptions and purchase decisions.
Second, distinctive branding can help protect your brand from competitors. Distinctive brand assets are difficult for competitors to copy without risk of legal action or consumer backlash.
Finally, distinctive branding can trigger emotional responses, the key drivers of decision-making. Neuroscientific research shows our brains are wired to respond to emotionally stimulating content. Distinctive branding that evoke emotions can create stronger connections with your consumers, influencing their preferences and purchase decisions.
In essence, brand distinctiveness leverages the brain’s visual processing, memory recall, resistance to change, and emotional responses to create a memorable and protective brand identity.
Brands like Hello Fresh succeed not (only) because they offer good products but because they also present themselves distinctively - Hello Fresh with its emphasis on lifestyle and humour - and so stand out as a new category, and shift demand to them.
Think Heinz (it has to be…).
Or the visually unmistakable Oatly brand and their most distinctive asset (and what they have been most publicised for) is their tone of voice. But this is heavily supported by their distinctive messaging and bold typographic style. This is used consistently across everything they do from advertising to packaging. In any given situation, whether you’re shopping in the category of milk alternatives or not, Oatly is a top-of-mind brand.
The Power of Distinct
Distinctiveness creates a brand identity driving salience and resonating easily and more deeply with consumers.
Using distinctive assets makes it easy for customers to identify and recall your brand, improving their buying behaviour.
It makes it easy for customers and your target audience to associate your core messages with your brand.
Brand distinctiveness helps reduce the time for your audience to research the right product and minimises their choices (consumers hate many choices).
Rather than focusing on ‘different’ and ‘better’ propositions, your distinctive qualities help consumers to identify, recall, and choose your brand above everyone else. And most consumers don’t pay attention to better
It triggers brand associations. That clears the path to purchase at a time when there are so many brands to choose from.
If you think about it, all brands are different. But what can make your brand truly stand out is how it makes you distinct enough to cut through the noise and enable your consumers and customers to recognise and identify you.
A study found that for Apple, one of the world’s most unique brands, 77 per cent of users did not perceive it to be different at all - despite Apple having a completely different operating system.
This supports the thinking that we don’t need to convince consumers we’re different to get them to buy. Rather, brand awareness, distinctiveness, and salience are what can make us meaningfully different.
Examples of Distinctiveness
1. Avis: In the 1960s, Avis launched the “We try harder” campaign to set themselves apart from from Hertz, the market leader. The promise to go the extra mile made Avis distinct, quickly leading to profitability and reducing the market-share gap between them.
2. Apple: Despite being a unique brand with a different operating system, 77 per cent of users don’t perceive it as different. They see distinctiveness, rather than differentiation, and that drives their choice. Apple’s minimalist design, integrated ecosystem, and shopping and packaging creates distinctive experiences.
3. Lush: Competing with giants like Sephora and Etsy, Lush uses natural ingredients, quirky product names, and a unique in-store experience to create a cult following. The brand’s emphasis on social and corporate responsibility further enhances its distinctiveness.
4. Whole Foods: Whole Foods combines traditional CPG marketing with storytelling and digital experiences to promote a healthy lifestyle. Its consistent green branding and focus on local, intimate store experiences make it stand out in its very crowded grocery sector.
5. Trader Joe’s: With its curated product selection, friendly staff, and unique private labels, Trader Joe’s creates a memorable shopping experience. The Hawaiian-shirt-clad employees and nautical theme add to its distinctiveness.
6. Nike: Their powerful storytelling, focus on athletes, and inspirational messaging create strong emotional connections with customers. The brand’s consistent use of the swoosh logo and “Just Do It” slogan further enhances its distinctiveness. It doesn’t even need to use it’s Nike name in ads.
Who has a glass bottle, uniquely shaped, that prompts us to think of a gush of happiness and a smile as it’s opened?
Customers aren’t that convinced by brands being different.
They will naturally buy the brands they remember. In some cases, that’s differentiation. In most, that’s distinctiveness.
Strategies for Distinctiveness
Brand Mental Availability is key. Mental Availability is all about leveraging your brand assets (including experiences) to put your brand at the forefront of the consumer’s mind without having to lift the tiniest bit of mental muscle - so when they come to buy they don’t think twice about coming to you.
So, what should be your criteria?
Distinctive brand assets. Think imagery, logo, and fonts. Are these core brand assets distinctive enough to stand out against competitors?
Associations. Are there clear links between your brand and the consumer’s needs that trigger purchase?
Consistency. Does your brand consistently present itself in the same way whenever it features?
Cognitive ease. Are your brand assets and story used in a way that’s easy to understand, across any channel?
New Categories: Sometimes, distinct requires meeting a new demand that your competitors are blind to. Same category, and the same product but with a twist.
Example: Dove shifted an industry from surface-level beauty to a focus on wellness and internal health.
Utility to Lifestyle: Can you become an integral part of your customers' lifestyles rather than just providing utility?
Example: Yeti positions its products within the context of adventurous, nature-loving lifestyles, creating a strong emotional connection with customers.
Change Focus: Instead of showcasing how ‘better’ you are, reveal to customers how your brand makes them different.
Example: Airbnb shows users how their travel experiences can be unique and personal, versus traditional hospitality brands that emphasise other qualities.
Change Reality: Smart brands reframe consumers' understanding of reality. Can you challenge norms with a new way of thinking to position yourself distinctively?
Example: Viome redefined the home testing kit market by framing gut health in a completely new light.
My Workshop process
1. Brainstorm using the five facets of experience
Think: what could you offer that helps customers explore, learn and make sense of their world?
Feel: what do you want your customers to feel when they interact with you?
Do: what could you help your customers do that makes your brand more valuable or important to their lives?
Sense: what sensory experiences will bring your brand to life, and delight customers?
Connect: what sense of belonging/community can customers get from you?
2. Prioritise based on feasibility and expected business benefit
Too many ideas on the table means leaders start disagreeing and we can quickly lose momentum.
To get a consensus, hold a prioritisation workshop. Use a scoring system based on expected impact and feasibility (typically a combination of costs and organisational readiness).
Those with low business benefits and low feasibility scores - delete them.
3. Frame ideas based on their roles
Try a pyramid framework, with each layer representing a role:
Top: Category-defining experiences – create a meaningful experience that delivers on brand promises and is distinct from competitors
Middle: Transformational experiences – add customer value and drive business growth
Base: Trust-building experiences – help the business keep pace with industry standards and address existing customer pain points
The power of such a simple framework is that it communicates how experiences can play different roles, while strategically building on each other. It can help your teams see the big picture and how each experience or workstream contributes.
Conclusion
As consumers increasingly seek unique and meaningful experiences, focusing on being distinctive rather than better/differentiated is a relatively easy path to standing out. Creating distinctive experiences, shifting to lifestyle, changing your focus onto the consumer, or redefining their reality - all build strong emotional connections.
When you follow everyone else, apply the same best practices or use pre-baked solutions from vendors and influencers, you give away your power to be distinct.
When everything looks the same, no one stands out.
If you want Distinctiveness, here’s a link to my post on Medium that covers the same topic - with a slightly different twist.
If reading this opened your mind to some different thinking, I’m happy - this is what UnthinkingCX is all about.
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