No need to focus on the bad poetry of a mission statement…

Every successful business begins with a story. Yet this critical narrative can get lost or sidelined on the path to maturity because organizations instead put too much energy into endlessly polishing their mission statement.

These statements are often generic assessments of aspirational perfumery and over-reach that does little to inform the organization’s decisions and strategies. Jet Blue famously declares their mission is to Inspire Humanity in the air and on the ground. Just how inspirational is it to be confronted with upcharges for the basics of carry-ons, seats and even pillows. Adidas hopefully states their mission is to be the best sports brand in the world. Which could easily be swapped out for furniture, fast food or fertilizer. Does this really help the organization make better strategic decisions? Not likely.

In devoting so much time and energy here, the organization is inadvertently robbed of a significant guidepost to help inform business decisions and successfully keep the organization dialed in the right direction — even through generational leadership changes. Origin stories propagate deep truths about what the business is on earth to accomplish.

Where you started charts the course for where you are going

Founder narratives explain how the company came into existence and hence are a treasure of information about the people involved and their journey to discovery.

• There’s often an ‘aha’ moment
• There are interesting characters in the storyline
• A setting to visualize
• A problem that needs solving
• And a moment of realization

Humans are hard-wired to respond to stories, especially ones featuring real people making real decisions with real stakes involved. The key ingredient in these narratives is an epiphany that caused the founder to redirect their life and pursue a higher purpose or goal.

This often gets buried as companies devote energy to mission statements they believe will better inform and guide the organization’s path over time.

Humanizing your company’s strategic direction

Your origin story is about a person or persons on a journey with an idea about how to change the world. Often there’s an experience or event along the way that serves as inspiration for starting the business. In many instances, it’s this experience that informs the shape of the brand that follows.

Air Protein and the future of food

Consider the story of former Emergent client Air Protein and how its founder decided to build the first carbon transformation-based alternative proteins company.

“More and more people are starting to consider the harsh reality of our food system as a global contributor to greenhouses gases (GHG) and climate change,” explains MIT physicist Dr. Lisa Dyson. “Our agricultural system produces more GHG than all of the fuel-burning sources of transportation combined. When you mix that with the finite limitations of available land and water resources for farms, ranches and fisheries, you know it’s going to be nearly impossible at some point to feed a rapidly growing global population.”

Dyson’s moonshot is a fascinating recipe of uniquely combining carbon dioxide, oxygen and nitrogen with water and nutrients, then adding common microbes in a fermentation process similar to making wine or cheese. The high protein flour outcome of this brewery-like approach is turned into authentic meat analogs by using pressure, temperature and natural flavors. Her sustainable “Air Protein Farm” operates more like a yogurt making facility than meat processor.

How did the future of food become her calling? What brought her to this transformational decision to start the Air Protein journey?

Climate change serves as a call to arms

Dr. Dyson came to New Orleans to help resolve the horrible devastation wrought by Hurricane Katrina that claimed more than 1,800 lives and left $125 billion in property damage, much of it in New Orleans when the levies were overcome. Her experience there served as a Road to Damascus moment as she labored to help restore a city overcome by a natural disaster that many assigned to the accelerating menace of hostile weather patterns borne from climate change. Dyson vowed to make solving the rampant build-up of greenhouse gases (GHG) an avocation, which led to the genesis of a new company formed three years later.

“My experience in New Orleans was life-changing. I decided it was my calling to study how to sustainably feed people in the midst of climate change. During the years following, it became clear to me that our food system is a major culprit in this unfolding crisis. The world’s population is expected to reach 10 billion by 2050, how to feed everyone affordably is the big question we intend to answer,” she said.

Her story forms the foundation of why her company exists, its purpose and meaning, it’s goals and strategic direction. There is more energy and useful grist for navigating decisions in her genesis narrative than other messaging constructs.

Common among these stories is a need, a problem, an unresolved conflict and a person or persons who decide to do something about it.

• Howard Shultz’s experiences in Milan drinking up Italian coffee culture served as a guide for bringing the world a better cup of coffee.

• Jobs and Wozniak’s inspiration to democratize computers for ordinary people and become an enabler of communication and creativity that built the world’s most valuable company.

• Simple Mills, one of the most sustainability-forward food brands in the nation, began when its founder Katlin Smith saw deficits in her own diet and found relief in consuming whole foods. Her baked goods informed background led to realization the entire industry was lacking the kind of products that were good for you as well as good tasting. Today Simple Mills is one of the most successful bootstrap adventures in food brand building, informed by a unique belief system its founder installed on day one.

Emotion borne of conflict, need and inspiration

There are endless examples of how founders came to a place in their lives where business creation became the instrument to resolve a profound need. These stories are compelling because there is embedded emotion and deeper meaning that carries more persuasive horsepower than any technology leap or process innovation.

As we’ve conveyed here many times, the path to influence is paved with beliefs and values that invite consumers to join a movement as ambassadors — far more effective than the recitation of product feature/benefit details.

No need to focus on the competition

When you are preoccupied with competitors, there is temptation to define your organization in comparison. In doing so your brand is commodified and uniqueness diluted in the frame of working to be “better than” another business. This encourages comparisons which leads to price competition, plus any advantage claimed will be difficult to defend over time.

It’s a stronger strategic proposition to focus on your own story and reason for being that helps inject the brand with ownable uniqueness and differentiation. Moreover, the human experience in these stories is much more compelling and engaging than more transactional assessments like identifying whitespace opportunities to exploit. There’s no emotional equity there.

Can the origin narrative evolve?

Yes. Microsoft was at one time about putting a computer on every desk and in every home. That goal has been realized, and now their narrative has shifted to empowering individuals and organizations to achieve more. In sum these stories help anchor the business in a reason for being that has more going for it than technology achievements. Well-executed, they are memorable, repeatable and become part of the brand’s fabric and belief system, to be passed on by employees and stakeholders.

If this discussion has you thinking about your origin story, and how best to tell it, use the link below to open a conversation with a team of experts who can help you craft the most powerful approach to your company narrative.

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People yearn for belief and assurance…

Is it any surprise the most powerful force influencing consumer choice is the desire to avoid making a bad decision? The threat of disappointment lurks in every corner on the path to purchase. So great is our need to elude the risk of unhappiness, we will stubbornly hang on to anything we believe to be true, while potentially missing the opportunities of new product or category exploration.

• Yet herein lies an enormous opportunity for brands to step into the midst of this condition with tools that work to resolve consumers’ express need for certainty in an uncertain world.

Yes, you can help people overcome their perceptions of risking a bad decision.

Yes, you can earn consumer trust and confidence.

Yes, you can solve this intractable barrier on the path to purchase.

Yes, you can create a real relationship with users that evolves into fandom.

Why are people so distrustful and risk averse?

In our hyper-digital media-saturated world, we have entered the era of glass brand houses where anything that can be known, will be known almost instantly. Thus, people are exposed to a revolving rogues’ gallery of living, real world case studies in deceit, manipulation, lies by omission, under-delivering, overt selfishness or failures to protect the integrity of promises made. Too many times we witness the extension of claims conveyed that either can’t or won’t be served and instead appear as a form of marketing spin or at the minimum, outright failures of honesty and integrity. People witness too many brand perp walks that fuel distrust, enable anxiety and cement our static cling to the tried and true.

The end result is a more cynical mental state that slathers on a deep coating of skepticism factored into risk assessments of literally everything we consume and do. Fearless people, those most likely to step into the abyss of uncertainty and take the risks of new product and service trial, represent a small proportion of any addressable market – roughly 14% on average. For a business to be successful, you simply must leap way beyond the fearless minority of early adopters.

Dawn of the age of advocacy

Every day, you have an opportunity to earn trust and belief. By the way trust is a prerequisite to secure a lasting, genuine brand-to-consumer relationship. Yet people are subjected to outcome claims and assertions by brands, mounted too often inside self-promotion of product features and benefits. Therefore, the brand’s commercial self-interests is the primary message and leaves the consumer to think the brand cannot be an objective, reliable guide.

You can step into the warmth of belief and trust by carefully examining all points of consumer interaction, while working to field flags and symbols of purpose, mission and beliefs that convey there’s a genuine heart and soul informing your brand’s business behavior and ethics.

Consumers want to believe they are always your top priority – that their happiness and wellbeing is paramount to your brand. When the business presents itself as customer-first, and actively operates in their best interests, then and only then have you opened the door to gaining trust.

Brand communication and action on the road to credibility

Having instilled customer centricity as an anchoring principle of brand ethos, advocacy is your most important strategy towards cultivating risk-abating comfort and confidence. What do consumers actually want from trusted brand communication?

Credibility – consider the mediums of trusted communication

Validation – invoking the imprimatur of respected sources

Verification – deploying believable voices

Advocacy can help you narrow the chasm between what brands proclaim and what consumers will accept as true.

The source of advocacy

There are outside voices we pay attention to and believe. …Those with unique knowledge and credentials that qualify them as respected experts. Especially people who elect to study and evaluate the merits of products and businesses and whose objectivity and reputations precede them. Thus, we grant these voices a mantel of independent assessment that we’ll accept.

Important to note, advocacy at its heart is about independent observation, and is not the province of paid influencers who have commercial biases attached to their endorsement.

Whom do we trust?

1. Outside third-party subject matter experts, scientists and authorities
2. “Medium is the message” – credible channels such as social community activation and earned media reporting
3. Activating word of mouth – the most credible form of communication available
4. Employees – the most overlooked cohort for advocacy support

Active and optimized brand social communities are recognized when the majority of content is supplied by community members who share their experiences, rather than the usual ample dosing of brand self-promotion content. We accept the evaluations and testimonials of IRL users before we will believe the brand’s claims of performance.

Advocacy in action

We represented the largest cheese company in the Italian sector at a time when adulteration, mislabeling and misrepresented products had been growing like a cancer in the category. We were tasked with working to help put an end to food fraud in Italian cheese. As our client was market share leader, we needed to bring the voices of the entire industry to bear in support of eradicating adulteration, otherwise the effort risked being seen as self-serving.

We met with industry and government organizations and leaders to advocate for change. Their presence was intended verify and validate the scope of the problem and reinforce why consumers deserved to know the cheese they were buying was genuine and made correctly according to the Federal standard of identity.

When we launched this effort in the media, these voices were essential to confirm the conditions impacting Italian cheese and the call to “out” the practice of making fake products in order to hit a lower price point. The project turned into a referendum on truth and best practices in cheese making. It would not have been successful without advocacy from all sectors of the business.

Advocacy in brand communication

We worked closely with the CEO of Jamba Juice Company on an enterprise level strategy to re-stage the business from a smoothie chain to a healthy lifestyle brand. This was happening at a time when consumers were increasingly scrutinizing Jamba beverages based on sugar content against the desired concept of healthier choice.

Thus began an initiative to address product formulation and new product innovation in an effort to reframe consumer perceptions of Jamba’s menu board and its role as part of a healthy lifestyle. To help confirm, verify, validate and educate consumers about these key initiatives we formed the Jamba Healthy Living Council, recruiting some of the most well-known and respected names in the world of registered dietitians and nutrition expertise.

We asked Council members to advise the company on healthier recipes while also verifying the efficacy of the changes Jamba was making to its existing products. Their voices were essential to helping the world see and believe that real changes were being made by America’s number one smoothie restaurant brand. It was the Council’s affirmation and validation of these developments that built credibility under the brand’s healthy lifestyle strategy.

• Brands are faced with risk-averse consumers who seek belief from the right sources when uncertainty is present. Which is everywhere by the way. Advocacy offers a path to reliable, credible truth that works to authentically confirm what we want people, retail customers, consumers, employees and other category players to believe.

Belief leads to trust while trust leads to acceptance and repeat purchase. If this sparks a conversation on your end about the potential role of advocacy strategies in your business, use the link below to start an informal conversation with an experienced team of advocacy strategy experts.

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New direction on the evolving role of brand marketing

For the last 50 years CPG and retail brand building has been focused on chasing awareness. The theory that top-of-funnel recognition will lead to consideration, and if the brand is persuasive while spiraling further down the funnel, a consumer purchase will occur. Leave it to the impact of evolving culture and the presence of existential, environmental threats to shift behaviors and push the funnel off its pedestal. A distinctive new path to brand building has emerged and we will unpack it here. The good news: we are entering a period of unprecedented brand engagement, but the rules to success are decidedly different.

Remarkably the century old thinking that underpins the funnel was first developed in 1896 by E. St. Elmo Lewis, owner of a Philadelphia-based ad agency, who published the first theory on “consumer path to purchase” he called AIDA – short for Awareness, Interest, Desire and Action. By 1924 this concept had morphed into what we now refer to as the Purchase Funnel. Yes, there have been a few modifications along the way to accommodate digital and social media channels, but the basic view of awareness as the golden goal has traveled with the adjustments, until now.

The funnel is dead, long live the funnel…

The fundamental weaknesses of the funnel model have been exposed, as follows:

• It is grounded in transactional thinking that positions consumers as walking wallets
• It fails to address the dynamics of how real brand relationships are built
• Assumes that consumers will behave in a linear fashion on the road to purchase

It’s fair to say that the focus of brand marketing work and investment has leaned heavily on top of funnel activity, frustrated somewhat by the demise of mass media, the splintering of consumer attention across channels and their uncanny newfound ability to avoid it all. Of note, tactical sophistication here in digital media eyeball aggregation isn’t helped by inherent strategic weakness.

Here’s the truth as we now know it. Consumers – especially Gen Z and Millennials – no longer operate in linear fashion. For one, the purchase isn’t the end game, rather it is the starting point. Consumption is now an infinite loop of inspiration, exploration, community participation and advocacy.

• Old brand world: defined by conventional advertising, digital or analog
• New brand world: defined by content, events, experiences and fandom

What are you risking if you continue to be an awareness chaser?

Declining relevance: your brand and business are seen as exploitive, possibly manipulative and transactional.

Lacking authenticity: your brand expresses promotional hype over user help in a world now longing for trust and deeper meaning from the brands consumers care about.

Incidentally, this is why Emergent exists. We focus on new strategic approaches that are grounded in culture and the latest consumer insight. Today, when consumers buy a product, they are actually buying your story and not a stock keeping unit (sku).

Edelman Trust Barometer sheds light on the shift

Edelman’s latest trust report revealed a remarkable change in behavior that has significant implications to sound brand building strategy. People have a strong cognitive bias for post-purchase rationalization. In fact, we also know that 95% of the time, consumers are driven by their efforts to avoid making a bad decision, or to experience disappointment.

Edelman’s research confirms where the action is: 50% of consumers now conduct the vast majority of their brand research AFTER purchase and not before. What’s more, 78% are looking for credible proof and validation that they made the right decision. Turns out post purchase is when people are most open to brand engagement.

You might be wondering what’s behind this change…

1. The systematic dilution of trust and belief based in part on the absence of any prevailing brand value system, higher purpose or real, obvious evidence of same.
2. The precipitous rise of vulnerability, uneasiness over a perceived lack of personal control authored by political, social and environmental stresses. 
3. Too many brands think all they have to do is invoke the word trust in their marketing and they are automatically, well, trusted. Not so. Trust is earned not acquired. Always deeds more than words.

Right below the surface people look for safety and security in the midst of accelerating experiences sponsored by uncontrollable events around them. This manifests as a desire for deeper meaning, purpose and trust – now at an all-time premium. Call it heightened expectations for visible, demonstrable, easy-to-see brand values and a courageous point of view.

So how does it work now?

Consumer pre-purchase research leans into the influence of brand social communities where they uncover member reviews, experiences and hopefully advocacy. Thus, the strongest predictor of a thriving social strategy is the rate at which members connect with each other vs. the brand’s self-promoting posts. It just makes sense – people believe and respect the voices of their peers before they accept assertions claimed by brands.

Brand marketing is now about cultural influence

The great news – consumers in a post-purchase focused world are primed for engagement. No need to wrestle them to the ground with look-at-me overreach. Here’s directional advice on best practices.

1. Trust creation: you should be conveying and demonstrating your brand purpose, mission and identity beyond the product on offer. Brand actions, reinforced through communication and education, helps you earn trust. 
2. You’re working to confirm: competence, ethics, values and relevance to your consumer based on their identity and aspirations, which you endeavor to help enable.
3. You deploy: credible and trusted voices in the form of “people like me” (via User Generated Content), scientists and academic experts, brand tech experts and employees.

It’s exciting to know that following purchase 79% of consumers engage in branded content, will participate in brand activities and want to connect on your social platforms. Your brand marketing should be operating to help feed and encourage this behavior. Trusted brands are repurchased, they secure loyalty and encourage evangelism.

If you’re interested in exploring the implications and strategies of a post-funnel marketing environment, use the link below to ask questions. Discussion and exploration can be enlightening, and we would be honored to talk informally with you about this exciting topic.

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Why is it evaporating in CPG and retail brand building?

Your customers want to be part of a brand world and ecosystem you construct through conscious cultivation of your brand’s deeper meaning, higher purpose, convictions and expressed values. Never before have CPG and retail brands had this extraordinary opportunity to build such close and endearing user relationships because our culture — and consumer behavior with it — has permanently changed. Yet far too many organizations struggle with this, or ignore it, because they have inadvertently lost, diluted or forgotten their own soul. Yes, brands indeed have a soul.

• In the absence of a clearly wrought and codified “brand constitution,” too many compromises amidst the battles of year-to-year commerce and the inevitable maturation of category rules and conventions, work to chip away at this essential brand foundation.

In the go-go 80’s and early 90’s prior to arrival of the Internet and the power transfer from corporations to consumers, much of the dialogue in brand building had a distinct military flavor to it, with brands seeking to dominate their categories, erect barriers to entry and defend their territory through command-and-control tactics. Vestiges of this thinking still remain, despite the evidence that consumer-to-brand relationship creation has transformed. In this milieu, too often the disciplines of soul nurturing are circumvented by surface level attempts to bolt on shiny imagery and applied marketing lipstick that glosses over a baked in priority for commerce metrics and transactional behaviors over consumer-relevant strategic thinking.

Building, codifying, prioritizing and delivering on the levers of brand soul are indeed vital and essential to sustainable growth in the modern consumer-powered era. People are far more interested in and attracted to your “why” (values, purpose, beliefs) than either what you do or how you do it — no matter how enamored you may be of your superior product mouse trap.

How a brand’s soul gets buried

As virtually every business category grows and matures, an implicit set of rules and boundaries begin to arise, informed by consumer and retail customer expectations, competitive actions, regulatory requirements and industry standards of conduct. These conditions tend to push all category participants towards the middle resulting in comparable product offerings, features, benefits and pricing. Over time this includes growing similarity in business practices, supply chain standards and even manufacturing processes.

The not-to-be-taken-lightly threat that incubates in this environment is the ceaseless, endless and rust-advancing march of commoditization. The condition that compels category players to emphasize scale over other considerations as they pursue efficiency gains, enforce retail leverage and bolster thinning margins.

Commoditization has already taken root in cell phones, computers, hotels, airlines, cars and many food and beverage categories – and in doing so, opportunities for innovative, soul-inspired disruptors are unleashed to move in and gain marketplace traction.

In sum, over time…

1. Meaningful differentiation can dissipate
2. Marketing leverage based on budget tonnage in spending eventually starts to post diminishing returns
3. Brand soul and purpose recedes into the background amidst commoditization pressures
4. Increasing similarity rules the day among category participants
5. Businesses begin to focus on price promotion to achieve volume goals

Whole Foods was once a champion of purpose and meaning, its business model informed by advancing the organic movement, education around same and the firm belief foods produced this way ultimately contribute to the improved health, wellbeing and happiness of people and the environment. Since its acquisition by Amazon the belief system has receded, and in its place traditional supermarket merchandising mechanisms like PRIME promotions are driving the brand story.

Meaning and values were at one time the insulation and inoculation for Whole Foods’ higher pricing and the value proposition underneath it. Now the banner faces more competition and pricing pressures because the belief system is no longer the tip of the brand spear. Further the adoption of organic brands and sections within mainstream supermarkets serves to commodify the uniqueness of Whole Foods’ differentiation and so the advantages of its original specialness atrophies.

• Soul is the engine that drives brand separation and elevation with consumers who actively pursue and are attracted to deeper meaning and values-leaning strategies.

Symbols can tell the tale

Consumers are remarkably adept at reading the room. We immediately understand the cues, signals, icons and images that explain what and who we’re dealing with, where we are, how to behave and what to expect from a brand.

• What signals is your brand transmitting?
• Are you sending the right message?
• Do your values come through in the symbolism you generously (or not) display through every point of consumer contact?

Brands informed by their soul are always focused on fulfilling consumer need, dreams, expectations, desires and growth. They are also unafraid to express views on societal issues that consumers care about such as sustainability, environmental responsibility and the wellbeing of disadvantaged people.

Soul signals and consumer-centricity

Brand soul and higher purpose tends to fall from a deep understanding and preoccupation with supporting consumers on their life journey. This manifests from genuine care and consideration for their welfare and personal growth while also helping people realize their hopes and dreams.

It is in those dreams and aspirations that we find an emotional anchor for storytelling that moves people to embrace and join your brand ecosystem. Every human, every day wishes for progress and improvement. Are you actively helping them on their journey to grow?

From:

Unhealthy to healthy

Good to great

Weak to strong

Lonely to popular

Confused to wise

Invisible to recognized

Novice to expert

Poor to secure

Plain to fashionable

Make no mistake, to be human is to be emotional. However, brands without a soul-led code of conduct tend to talk endlessly about themselves and product features rather than enablement and celebration of consumer passions. In doing so the brand story is likely to be fact-dense and analytical, despite the reems of research confirming people won’t burn the mental calories to decipher that kind of messaging. People simply are just not fact-based, analytical decision-making machines.

How do you know if you’re succeeding? When consumers can state with clarity what your brand stands for, its meaning and purpose.

A powerful tool at your disposal: surprise and delight

Do the unexpected. In his book Unreasonable Hospitality, restaurateur and author Will Guidara tells the tale of a table of New York City visitors who were overheard saying they were disappointed that the following day they were leaving the city without ever having sampled a hot dog from one of the many carts that line the streets of Manhattan.

Mind you his restaurant, Eleven Madison Park, is one of the finest, most elite culinary palaces in New York. His team sprang into action sending a runner to track down hot dogs at a cart. They were ferried back to the kitchen where the chef arranged an artful hot dog presentation. The diners were blown away that the restaurant would do this without a word ever being spoken to staff about their hot dog curiosity. It was the restaurant’s soulful belief in unreasonable hospitality that brought the surprise to life.

Have you ever been to Harrod’s department store in London? If so, have you shopped in their over-the-top food hall? Harrod’s isn’t a supermarket mind you but thy indeed sell fresh and packaged foods. Their fresh fish displays are legendary for their artistry and creative arrangement of fresh fish choices.

Of course, any grocery store with vision and applied talent could do the same thing, with the goal of making their store talked about and Instagram worthy. Yet nothing of the sort happens past the layers of crushed ice surrounding rows of whatever fish is on feature.

Surprise and delight are a choice. It is a strategy. It recognizes the very human preference for artistry and empathy.  Stores and brands with a clearly curated and developed soul are more likely to find this path and exploit it than those that don’t and who are more comfortable staying within the category accepted norms of behavior.

• When you’re willing to be a disruptive player you have a chance to alter the paradigm of what consumers think you are about and engineer a new and more engaging perception of your brand.

If this article has you thinking about how this could be brought to life in your business, it’s important to note you will need outside experts to help you work through the right mix of tools and messages. Use the link below to start a conversation with our team of brand soul experts.

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Bold moves can overcome limited uniqueness…

Let’s face it, in the vast majority of CPG categories — despite efforts by some brands to push forms of differentiation — for the most part they are cloaked with sameness and similarity. It is just hard to find fertile territory for defensible, sustainable and obvious-to-everyone uniqueness. You may start out as a unicorn, until competing brands reverse engineer your leap, then differences in story and concept start to recede.

That doesn’t mean you should give up on constantly pushing the strategic envelope towards radical differentiation. The benefits of creating a “category of one” are remarkable and profitable. Brand standouts spend less on marketing because of their natural magnetism, allure and the elevated distinctive value they possess. It just doesn’t require constant drumbeating to out shout adjacent competitors. You don’t need to, and you aren’t focused on them to begin with.

Let’s be real: it’s likely over time that what made you famous will be commoditized. Jamba Juice invented the smoothie business. Over time smoothies were commoditized by similar competing products/brands and the emergence of RTD (ready to drink) versions in every corner of grocery and foodservice retail. Jamba started down a strategic path to differentiate itself by transforming into a healthy lifestyle brand. We know the details as we were part of the effort.

But that takes time, added investment — and less patient investors pushed back on doing anything that stepped beyond the core concept, forcing Jamba back into its commoditized cup. Which reminds me of Marlon Brando’s famous line from On The Waterfront, “I coulda had class. I coulda been a contender. I coulda been somebody” – ah yes too many brands find themselves eventually in a wistful trap, at times of their own doing. (Assuming they recognize the lost opportunity).

Leaning into over-reach

But don’t despair, there’s another pathway available if you have the courage and fortitude to pursue it. Here it is – do something generic with such bravery and power it appears to others that you are the only game in town. Whatever that focus might be, you creatively own it, manifest it, and lean into it without reservation, hesitance or limitation.

In Will Guidara’s eye-opening book “Unreasonable Hospitality” he recounts the journey for his restaurant Eleven Madison Park to being named the best restaurant in the world. Not by pushing the envelope of complicated, artistic tweezer food excellence – a frankly similar strategy advanced by nearly every top-echelon restaurant and celebrity chef on the voyage to four stars-dom. No, they bent the rule and devoted themselves to ridiculous, unreasonable, over-the-top, crazy levels of hospitality and guest service. In doing so Eleven Madison became a category of one in a uber-class of similarly great kitchens all helmed by talented culinary commanders.

First Alert, the smoke alarm brand, invented the residential smoke detector and in doing so saved countless lives. An engineering driven company, it beat everyone else by being first with the most. Over time however, the transfer of marketplace power to large format retailers like Walmart and Home Depot, the business was commoditized and sold on price – technology appearing to most consumers as the same between brands. However, another tech innovation at First Alert opened the door to rethinking the brand and business.

First Alert once again stepped up to invent the residential carbon monoxide alarm, addressing an insidious household hazard and source of deadly blood poisoning from an invisible, odorless  gas released by malfunctioning furnaces, stoves, water heaters and fireplaces. The event created an opportunity to pivot, and First Alert embarked on a journey to home safety brand focused on the health, safety and wellbeing of families. The mission- oriented platform enabled a new brand voice in parallel with unusual collaboration partners that reached way beyond “stop, drop and roll.” It was a magical era for the company and its growth until ownership changes forced it backwards into the old engineering mindset and price driven player in commodity categories. Heavy sigh. We know the details because again we were engaged in building the strategic shift while it lasted over a nine-year period.

Outerwear brands embracing sustainability isn’t unique. Messaging around protecting planet earth is everywhere in the category. Strategically there’s not much separation in this business based on these beliefs and the tech in garments. But Patagonia has emerged as a category of one despite this condition by its sheer tenacity and willingness to over-reach, over-extend itself on the path to sustainable behaviors and policies.

If its broke, they fix it. Yes Patagonia, in their effort to reduce its impact on resource consumption and emissions, encourages users to avoid purchasing new garments by offering free and unlimited repairs on any of their products. Some might say, are you crazy? Like a fox we say. The continued efforts by Patagonia to break rules and stretch itself beyond ‘normal and expected’ is testament to a form of strategic brilliance. It is and they are unique in a business where other types of real differentiation are hard to own.

The requirement here is boldness and courage; to take your belief system and push it to ‘unreasonable’ edges. On the path you can expect to face decision making that will be hard, strange at times and difficult. You do it because as a business you actually, really, truly mean what you say and claim to be important. The call to action happens when the ethos holds the decision-making keys to the kingdom and you just over-commit.

Do something inspiring

If you’re looking for a consistent thread in these examples, it’s in executive leadership that is both visionary and courageous. That means leaders who hold the belief system close and see the advantages hidden in the tea leaves to push beyond the norms of expected and reasonable brand behaviors.

The Super Bowl is coming soon. While it may be distant memory for many, or not a memory at all for most, Apple introduced its Macintosh computer with one of the boldest and most ambitious TV commercials ever made. It was expensive to produce and air. It was an over-commit of the highest order employing a strategy counterintuitive to tech category behaviors. The marketing budget was invested in a swing for the fence that didn’t mention a single product feature or benefit. It was wholly a cinematic and emotional statement of ‘now you can change the world.’

Kapow in 60 seconds. It was a gutsy move to be sure and a manifestation in 1984 of new thinking about brand purpose and meaning that cast Apple as a category of one. The belief system held sway and the courage shown there was palpable. Jobs made it so, enabled by his creative partner Lee Clow from ad agency Chiat Day. Eventually Microsoft did their turn on the ‘graphical user interface’ innovation with Windows, but it never pushed Apple off its course. Even with some tech equivalence in there, Apple remains a separate, unique and distinct brand with a huge base of advocates and ambassadors.

• Make no mistake, employees are part of the solution here. When you over commit, they need to join you as a population of insider, storytelling evangelists.

The roadmap to adventure

This all starts with your brand’s higher purpose, deeper meaning and belief system. If you don’t really have a fix on that then none of this really works because there’s nothing powerful enough to over-commit to.

• What are you on the planet to accomplish beyond balance sheet imperatives? How are you working to improve people’s lives? Whatever your higher purpose might be that draws consumers in, you should know that people want to be a part of something greater than themselves.

Once you have refined your brand “why” it’s fair to ask what can you do to stretch and over-deliver on that promise? If the answers you come up with bring some discomfort, that’s a good thing. When courage is required, you know you’re on the right path.

Our point: differentiation isn’t always found only in the product and category you created. It can be brought to life going above and beyond to deliver on your purpose. This can get you to ownable differentiation, just remember you can’t take your foot off the gas. If you do, commoditization’s rustiness will begin to take root. In the immortal words of rock band Journey’s legendary lead singer Steve Perry, “Don’t Stop Believin.”

If this story inspires you to explore brand courage and boldness, and you’d like to discuss the potential framework with experienced hands, use the link below to start an informal conversation to discuss your journey to uniqueness.

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