In a marketplace of me-too offerings, people don’t seek features and benefits so much as tribal identity.

Radical differentiation, on the other hand, is about finding a whole new market space you can own and defend, thereby delivering profits over years instead of months.

It’s not what YOU say it is—it’s what THEY say it is. The best you can do is influence it. If a brand is a customer’s gut feeling, then what’s the definition of branding? Briefly, it’s a company’s effort to build lasting value by delighting customers.

To demonstrate how the 17-step process works, I’ve included examples from an exercise we use in our branding workshops.

the advertising industry is fighting back with even more intrusiveness. This is the first reason for advertising’s death spiral.

Companies need to think like artists when they’re looking for new market space, because new market space, or “white space,” is the secret to zagging.

Customers today don’t like to be sold—they like to buy, and they tend to buy in tribes. Better advice for companies is to focus their communications not on a USP but on a UBT—a Unique Buying Tribe—that has a natural affinity for the company’s products or services.

Today, the intellectual capital barrier is showing cracks. Yesterday’s patents are losing their value as companies leapfrog each other in a constant race to innovate. Not only that, using intellectual property as a barrier can sometimes hurt companies rather than help them, since it can slow the growth of the business ecosystems

The Real Competition Is Clutter