How To Differentiate Your Brand From Competitors: Branding Strategy By Marty Neumeier

“When everybody zigs, zag,” says Marty Neumeier, author and speaker who writes on the topics of brand, design, innovation, and creativity.

The pace of change in the business world is growing; the number of brands is multiplying — and customers, not companies, decide which brand will live and which die. An abundance of similar products and clone services makes consumers look for any differences that distinguish the best companies from the rest.

Marty determines that marketplace clutter takes 5 forms:
PRODUCT clutter. Too many products and services.
FEATURE clutter. Too many features in each product.
ADVERTISING clutter. Too many media messages.
MESSAGE clutter. Too many elements per message.
MEDIA clutter. Too many competing channels.

The human brain has found how to deal with the overload — he just blocks it.

The solution: be different.

In our time, buyers do not want a product to be sold to them, they want to buy it themselves. In the market for monotonous offers, people are looking not so much for unique features or product benefits as for group membership. “What will change in my life if I buy this?”— they ask.

Marty offers to design and build ZAG by answering 17 questions, which he calls the checkpoint. Each checkpoint faces one of 4 key elements: difference, focus, trend, and communications. Check them out in the carousel