Volume 185: Distinctive, Different, Whatever.

Distinctive, Different, Whatever.

tl;dr: Distinctiveness is a subset of differentiation.

After a series of Off Kilter editions focused on the challenges of over-quantification and the importance of qualitative factors as a source of competitive advantage, I figured we might go back to basics this week.

I want to briefly discuss the absurd distinctiveness versus differentiation battle that periodically plays out online. If you’ve spent time on LinkedIn recently, you’ll probably know what I’m talking about, and if you were unfortunate enough to dive down the rabbit hole, you’re probably feeling rather confused by it.

First, however, it’s important to realize that this distinctiveness/differentiation conversation is relatively new. Having spent 20+ years in and around the branding business, I can confidently state that the term distinctiveness has only become somewhat common in the past little while after marketing scientists like Prof Byron Sharp started talking about it. Until that moment, myself and others in the branding business simply used the term differentiation and were done with it.

So, why split hairs now? Frankly, I’d prefer not to, but because the terminology is out there and folks seem pretty confused by it, we need to wrap some definitions around it, especially if we want to have a meaningful business conversation with senior execs and don’t want to come across as the coloring-in department.

Here goes.

Distinctiveness is the practice of uniquely identifying your brand as yours and no one else’s. Distinctiveness is built by consistently using a set of legally protectable brand assets to ensure nobody mistakes your brand for any other, even at a glance. Distinctive assets include names, logos, colors, typefaces, taglines, jingles, characters, packaging, etc. Brand distinctiveness surrounds us: The golden arches uniquely identify McDonald’s, the “notch” uniquely identifies Apple, the bottle shape uniquely identifies Coca-Cola, and magenta distinctively identifies T-Mobile.

Each of the above examples represents a different means of delivering distinctiveness. What is shared is that by using these unique assets consistently over time, they bake into people’s memories so that we can identify which brand we’re looking at at a glance.

The key is not to over-egg it. The best have a very constrained palette of things that make them distinctive. For example, like Sony, you may not need a hugely distinctive logo if you have a distinctive name, and like Home Depot, you may not need such a distinctive name if you create a distinctive logo. The thing to avoid is trying to make every asset distinctive in its own right, ending up with a chaotic mess instead of a cohesive whole, or massively exaggerating any single asset to make it “even more” distinctive, like comically large kidney grilles on a BMW.

So, the easy way to think about distinctiveness is that it does not objectively make the underlying product or value proposition different from the competition; it’s simply how the brand is uniquely identified, at a glance, as itself within a noisy and crowded environment.

From a business point of view, distinctiveness matters for three reasons: First, you don’t want to spend money marketing your brand only to have your customers mistake you for someone else. This is the equivalent of standing in the street and lighting money on fire, and why I’ve been so scathing over the years about the Helvetica In Pastels movement. Second, the more familiar and memorable your brand becomes to people, the more likely we are to buy it because we’re vastly more likely to buy from brands we’ve already heard of than those we have not. Third, because distinctive brand assets are legally protectable via trademarks and sometimes patents, they represent value we can build that competitors cannot copy.

So, if distinctiveness makes you uniquely identifiable as you, then differentiation must be what makes your brand different from competing brands. Differentiation can occur at multiple levels, such as the product layer, the service layer, the experience layer, or the communications layer. It can be objective, measurable, and quantifiable. It can also be subjective, immeasurable, and qualitative—sometimes both simultaneously.

The intent, however, is the same: to make you in-some-way-different from your competition so that choosing you becomes more likely than picking them. For example, a few years ago, selling an EV product differentiated Tesla from competing automotive brands that only had gas engines. For many years, American Express has used service to differentiate its experience from competing credit card offerings, and while water is water, Liquid Death uses communications and packaging to differentiate itself from competing brands emotionally.

Now, while this may seem clear at first glance, where it gets confusing, and why I’d rather not separate the concepts is because it’s entirely possible to be differentiated by your distinctiveness. For example, the liquid inside a Grey Goose bottle tastes pretty much the same as any other vodka, so the big difference is that it’s Grey Goose.

As a result, I like to think of distinctiveness as a subset of differentiation. At one end of the spectrum, your distinctive assets might be how you uniquely identify a highly differentiated offering, while at the other, they might be doing all the heavy lifting in terms of what differentiates you. The key is that it works across a spectrum instead of being a binary choice.

However, the challenge I see is that marketing scientists jumped the “distinctiveness differentiates” shark by stating that distinctiveness matters and differentiation doesn’t. Likely because A. When you ask consumers, most brands in any given category aren’t seen as being all that different from each other, and B. Brand preference exists anyway, and C. Distinctiveness is empirically measurable and correlates with B.

However, I’d say they’re wrong for four reasons. First, I’m not sure the research used to justify the position is methodologically sound. Second, their work is too specific to the dynamics of low-involvement, low product differentiation, CPG/FMCG categories. Third, it applies much more to large, well-established brands than newer, younger ones. Fourth, I think they wanted to sell books and were smart enough to realize that a great way to sell books is to tell everyone that differentiation is irrelevant and that there’s a better way.

However, if you do buy into the Marketing Science position, I’d recommend being careful with this argument when talking to business leaders. For example, your credibility would likely be challenged trying to tell your average CEO intent on differentiation that all they need is a generic me-too product, a few distinct brand assets, and several years' worth of expensive, high-profile advertising campaigns.

Meanwhile, you might gain credibility by discussing the need for distinctive assets as a key component in building your differentiation story…

Anyway, if I boil down much of the criticism of the Marketing Science “differentiation doesn’t matter” position, I’d say that, in general, the following seems to represent a rule of thumb that I’d pretty much agree with:

The smaller and younger your brand is, the more likely you’ll need a differentiated offering to help you cut through, assuming it is relevant and meets needs that aren’t already being met by others. You should still present this brand distinctively, though; while it won’t have much effect in the short term, it will in the long run. As your company grows and your brand becomes better known, distinctiveness will matter more, especially if you operate in a stable category with relatively little disruptive dynamism. However, if you are operating in a more dynamic category (e.g., most tech, which increasingly means everything outside of CPG/FMCG), then differentiation and distinctiveness will likely need to work hand in hand with each other, lest you risk falling catastrophically behind.

Unfortunately, like most binary conversations in the marketing landscape, this isn’t about distinctiveness versus differentiation; it’s about distinctiveness and differentiation working together and, more importantly, how we manage distinctiveness as a subset of differentiation.