Our insight-hungry team recently attended a webinar that challenged the traditional thinking around a brand’s search for differentiation.

The webinar titled Ritson: ‘Differentiation is not about uniqueness’ used content from Mark Ritson’s MiniMBA in Marketing and Business.

Here’s what we learned;

Uniqueness isn’t the goal

Ritson rejects the idea that difference is about uniqueness. Which is, after all, nigh impossible to achieve.

Instead, he says that marketers should think in terms of ‘relative difference’. This is about having more attributes or associations with a particular thing than other brands in the category.

One way we interpret this is to look at Red Bull. As an energy drink, it’s not that unique. But its deeply ingrained cultural links to the extreme sports world make it very different.

Are you even aiming for the right thing?

Ritson denounced the useless debate about whether it’s differentiation or distinction that brands should aim for to stand out in the market. He explains it like this:

1. Distinction is about making your brand easily identified by customers.
2. Differentiation is about ensuring your brand is relatively different from alternatives.

When to be different and when to be distinctive

The webinar explained how differentiation and distinction play vital roles at different stages in a brand’s development. With the use of Kantar data, Ritson showed that when it comes to brand pre-growth, differentiation is more important. The stronger the relative perceived differentiation to start, the stronger the growth. But distinctiveness matters more when the brand has undergone some initial growth.

Essentially, healthy brands need both. But it’s a question of what you invest in, and when.

To help you navigate the big differentiation debate, Ritson kindly offered up the following tips;

• Say fewer things. Don’t have 25 attributes decaying across your messages.
• Say these few things more often
• Say them with more investment in media. If you invest in saying a couple of things more than your competitors, you will get relative differentiation.
• Say them with 60% of your budget (long brand budget)
• Say it with better creativity
• Say it with more than just advertising. Use other touchpoints.
• Say them for longer (years, maybe decades)
• Say them with distinctiveness

Insight like this, in the right hands, can be a powerful thing. With our proven Refinement process, we distil, refine and use the power of creativity to help brands grow. Get in touch today to find out how.