If You're Different, You Don't Necessarily Have to Be Better

Last week, the client services team at Echidna headed to The Art of Marketing (#TAOM) Conference in Toronto and listened to a variety of speakers such as Randi Zuckerberg, Scooter Braun and Mitch Joel amongst many others. The Art of Marketing Conference focused on topical issues in marketing today such as; Social Media, Enterprise Loyalty, Brand Marketing and Consumer Behaviour. If you didn’t attend the conference this year, I strongly suggest that you attend next year.

One of my favourite talks from the conference was from Youngme Moon, Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School & Author of “Different”. In Moon’s talk she spoke about how to be successful in a world where conformity reigns and how going head-to-head with your competition actually has the perverse effect on your marketing strategy. During Moon’s talk there was one line that really stood out in my mind and really got me thinking: “If you’re different, you don’t necessarily have to better”.

As human beings we’re striving everyday to be better than someone or something else. In our leisure and at work, we’re always trying to be better. We want to outrun the person on the treadmill next to us at the gym and we want to impress our boss 100 times more than our coworkers. Sure this might make us feel better as human beings, but does this work for marketing? Moon would argue, no.

Consider this, you’re a marketing professional trying to market a new tennis ball brand. Is your tennis ball better than your competitions? It might be, but if you really, really think about it, it’s probably not. So how do you succeed in a competitive marketplace? Perhaps instead of green, your tennis ball is pink or rainbow coloured. It’s not better, but it’s different, which means it has a good chance of being popular in the marketplace.

Now, I’m not saying that you shouldn’t strive to be the best at home, at work or at play. I’m the first advocate to strive to be better. To provide a better product to our clients and provide better customer service on a daily basis, but Moon’s idea of “Different” is really something to think about.

If you could make your product or service better (or more popular) by making it different, what would you do?