Marketing Decoded

Just finished a fascinating book written entirely on the subject of differentiation and how most products with which we are familiar and regular consumers have become vastly undifferentiated.  What, undifferentiated?!  Think about it.  Next time you stand in front of a row of power bars or running shoes or even your next laptop purchase:  are one brand, one product really that different from the next?  Or have you become an expert in the powerbar-running shoe-laptop category by now and THAT is why you can perceive differentiation?

It’s a powerful point that Youngme Moon puts forward in her new book, Different:  Escaping the Competitive Herd. Moon shows us that product proliferation in a category does not beget product diversification but in fact, just the opposite.  Consumers, we greedy monsters, want our favourite products do deliver more of what our competitors’ products offer too.  We want it all in our favourite product.  And so manufacturers oblige.  Instead of playing to their strengths and giving us more of what they’re good at, manufacturers give us more of what everybody else is offering.

Moon’s antidote for reversal is for companies to become stripped down, simple, naked.  Do just one thing and do it well.  Don’t offer oceans.  Be Google (when it started) not Yahoo.  Ninteno Wii.  JetBlue.  By offering customers less, companies can become more successful by standing out, if it’s done strategically.