Heirloom

Thanks to @andrewtindall, Chief Growth Officer at System1, for namedropping Rob in his recent article for @thedrummag, “Dull but distinctive? Recognizable rubbish will not grow your brand.”

Rob’s point, which Andrew is echoing here, should be obvious: When we talk about brands differentiating, the goal isn’t for customers to describe those brands as different. The goal is that they describe them differently than they describe competitors.

Obvious, right? But believe it or not, some academic papers cited in arguments against the importance/effectiveness of differentiation did exactly that—they asked people “Would you call this brand different?” It’s a weird question, and shouldn’t be the basis of a case against differentiation.

Read Andrew’s article for more, and check out Rob’s original article in WARC (paywall), “What does Byron Sharp’s research really tell us about differentiation?”