Here’s an article I wanted to share from Gellan Watt. He’s a Global Brand Strategist, and Award-Winning Marketing Agency Founder and Entrepreneur. After reading his inspiring article you can check his website here.
In this, my first column for E&l, I’m delighted to join the show in an issue focusing heavily on women in business – and I’ve got a great real life example of a start-up, and the brain behind it, that more than lives up to the title of this article. With a twist.
Over the years, I’ve worked with hundreds of start-ups. Launching and selling a few of my own. It’s been my life’s work creative and telling brand’s stories and finding which levers to press to help them grow. With an increasing flow of start-ups each year, breaking through, standing out and getting to any kind of traction or commercially viable scale is harder than ever.
One of my favourite quotes on this subject comes from the BRILLIANT economist, Kjell Nordstrom, who believes we now live in a surplus society. “The ‘surplus society’ has a surplus of similar companies, employing similar with people, similar educational backgrounds, working in similar jobs, coming up with similar ideas, producing similar things, with similar prices and similar quality.” And he is right. Me too products. Doing me too things. It’s only products and brands that stand-out by doing something truly outstanding that stand a chance.
From the very beginning there are some key factors to bake-in to any start-up.
Beyond scalability, one of the most important is ‘difference’. Difference isn’t just about the brand or the stories you tell. Certainly, it’s not the way you look – colours, identity etc. They all count. But real difference is something tangible. Something that adds value to what you do. Differentiating your products, services, pricing, purpose.
Difference should be a constant driver for the whole business. Being me-too is the short cut to failure. And simply being cheaper, while it gives a short term advantage, is typically an unsustainable race to the bottom. Difference, though, has an important bedfellow… one that really drives success. ‘Better’. If you tick both you could have something exciting on your hands. And the principle isn’t just limited to start-ups really.
Opportunity exists for smart brands – both new and existing, those that take a risk and find new ways to improve and differentiate ー maybe not to the point they can claim absolute revolutionary status at the peak of innovation. Not everything can be utterly new. Sometimes differentiation itself can simply come just from doing things better. Brands often get caught out trying to push the brand, product or service into places that they just can’t go to differentiate.
It’s a game of subtleties at times. Sometimes it’s the small things that can make the biggest difference. Knowing your customer better. Pushing the limits of expectation, or even regulation. Stretching and repackaging services. Finding new ways for customers to pay or consume your products. Or simply to delight them.
Let’s take a look at a real-world example of something totally different. For a moment. Let’s forget apps. Tech start-ups. VR. Al. Machine learning. Variable date. And all things high tech.
Inkpact. The brainchild of Charlotte Pearce. 26. Named in the Forbes 30 under 30.
Maserati 100 and Young Entrepreneurs of the Year list in 2016. And advocate voice for women in tech. Charlotte saw an opportunity to help brands delight their customers. With good old fashioned hand-written communications.
Hand-written direct mail and messages to their customers, at the touch of a button – written by one of her network of over 250 scribes across the UK. Brands like Unilever, Mr and Mrs Smith and Moet Hennessy leapt on these services – creating a multimillion pounds business. Not only does improve a brand’s communications and truly delight their customers driving loyalty, retention and advocacy – Charlotte created jobs across the county enabling people to work flexibly. People, who may otherwise not be able work. It’s socially conscious too. Simple.
Different. Better. And… bloody brilliant. Hats off.
I have a saying. Never be ordinary. I mean ‘don’t be me-too’. There’s enough people and brands being ordinary already. No one ever paid more, got excited about or fell in love with anything because it was a ‘bit like something else’.
I’m not saying for one second don’t disrupt or innovate. Where there is space or opportunity – make new. Dare to differ. But invent. Find the new. Or as with Charlotte’s case, reimagine the old.
One last thing to remember. Different isn’t always better. But better is always different.
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