Different: Escaping the Competitive Herd

This can be a dangerous inflection point in the life cycle of a category: when the proportion of comparative differentiators to non-differentiators starts to shift direction. Now, the category is composed of a shrinking number of devotees who are focused on differences that seem almost idiosyncratic, along with a growing number of customers who are

In some strange respects, then, the companies that I am about to present to you can be thought of this way—as palliatives that owe their existence to the disease.

This is why, if you’re looking for a compromise solution, then yes—take a poll, conduct some research, survey the people. But if you’re looking for a unique solution, the last thing you should do is ask for a vote.

This is what reverse brands do: They take away what we expect, but then give us what we don’t. They say no where others say yes, but they also say yes where others say no. The result is a value proposition that feels almost “inside-out” to us.

And so the reverse brand tries to concoct an unlikely brew, consisting of something less, but something more, too. It looks to create a symbiosis of elements that we’ve been trained to believe don’t belong together. The idea is to be an oxymoron, and an agreeable one at that.

A posted declaration such as “I couldn’t live without my caffeine and my Converse All-Stars,” is seldom as offhand as it appears. Indeed, when it comes to the performance art known as social networking, it can sometimes feel as if there’s nothing but marketing going on—people playing publicist, working for themselves.

The minute we choose to measure something, we are essentially choosing to aspire to it. A metric, in other words, creates a pointer in a particular direction. And once the pointer is created, it is only a matter of time before competitors herd in the direction of that pointer.

Negative trade-offs are not only a marker of excellence, they are a marker of differentiation. This is as true for products and brands as it is for brain surgeons.

Reverse brands create a kind of tilt in the surface—of progress, of evolution, of expectation. They draw us down a divergent path by applying pressure in exactly the place where we least anticipate it.