The Distinctiveness Choice

How to Stop Floating in Sameness

October 8, 2024

Marcus Foley

Marcus Foley is the Co-Founder of Tommy, a creative agency that works with the world's leading sport, entertainment and consumer brands, including Netflix, TikTok, Nike, Adobe, Burberry, Rimmel London and Youtube. Marcus’ agency has been developing a framework for measuring brand distinctiveness based on the first academic behavioural and cognitive neuroscience studies investigating the link between distinctiveness and memory.

We are diving into that dead-end moment when our attention drifts, our conscience heaves and it suddenly becomes obvious that, despite all our data prowess and creative might, we’re merely floating aimlessly in a sea of sameness.

Mass distraction, manipulation, and the homogeneity of what we’re fed alter the brain. With the chunder, churn, and conformity of marketing playbooks omnipresent across categories, there is little hope of people remembering brands when they all look and sound the same. 

In any category, you see so much replication at play, which is a big problem for brand recall. Sameness doesn’t make an ever-lasting impression, a one-of-a-kind, first-of-it’s-kind impression that deviates us from the norm and wrestles our attention away from the grasp of our scrolling thumbs – those callus-hardened thumbs trained to swipe up and down our mobiles at the speed of light, caring little for what’s in front or remembering little of what has passed. 

When it comes to addressing the issue of sameness brands do have a choice; a way of soaring above this sea of sameness and standing out in an oversaturated world. 

The Distinctiveness Choice

Distinctiveness is a powerful weapon for growth, gives brands a competitive advantage, helps them avoid wastage of their media budgets, and ultimately, drives memorability and brand recall. Because at the end of the day, if your audience can’t remember you, then nothing else matters. 

When you look at the brands delivering tremendous growth across their categories like Liquid Death, e.l.f, Trip, JACQUEMUS, their uniqueness, and individuality is underpinned by a commitment to distinctiveness in their marketing, with unique brand worlds, rule breaking positioning and entertaining beats of content that reward interaction. 

But, how do you measure brand distinctiveness? How can brands know how they are doing on the distinctiveness scale?

The Distinctiveness Framework

The Distinctiveness Framework is the only framework of its kind for measuring distinctiveness. It has its foundations in the first academic behavioural and cognitive neuroscience studies investigating the impact of distinctiveness on memory with EEG.

According to The Distinctiveness Framework, there are four sources of distinctiveness:  

  1. Different: This involves a focus on communication differentiation and recognisability within the brand category. E.g. Liquid Death.
  2. New: This involves differentiation through new tech and/or media innovation. Think back on the launch of ChatGPT in November 2022. The new tech took over the world’s attention.
  3. Emotion: This involves generating emotional depth and connection through communication. Take the recent British Airways campaign reminding audiences of the reason they travel: Business, Leisure or Margharita by the pool as a way to think about emotional connection.
  4. Relevant: This involves looking at cultural relevance to develop communication that appeals to a specific audience at a specific time. Look at all the brands riding the Moo Deng bandwagon. It is an attempt to stand out using the current virality of the baby pygmy hippo.  

By measuring how they are doing on these four points, brands can gain new insights, identify any strategic and creative gaps in their marketing efforts, and understand many of the contextual complexities that could be undermining them in their categories.

Building up Distinctiveness

Most brands don’t do too well on the distinctiveness front and need to build up their distinctiveness. There are 5 strategies to do this:

1. DISTINCT DIGITAL BRAND WORLDS

There are two parts to building a distinct digital brand world. First, the conceptual elements must be defined, including category positioning, personality, TOV, as well as what the brand stands for. Second, a brand must focus on the execution, such as the motion, active energy, pace and design that is needed to maintain brand consistency across platforms. Brand worlds that change all the time and are not cohesive are hard to remember.

2. THE RULE OF LORE

The establishment of Lore is crucial for distinctiveness. This is the foundation of your story and how you show up in the world. You see many wishy-washy attempts at story, and yet your story can be whatever you want it to be. Lore is your opportunity to set the foundations of your brand world through myth creation, backstory and narrative direction. 

But, what exactly is what I call the rule of Lore? Basically it means it’s your world so it’s your rules. Everything in your world is possible, nothing is finite. Like a great screenplay, create a brand world where every story, every potential juxtaposition and every piece of content is an embodiment of this world. Tie it together tightly and let it springboard you into distinctiveness.  

So many of the brands I see indexing really high in the distinctiveness scale have a powerful story. Think ENGINE GIN or 19 Crimes wine.

3. EMOTIONAL INTENT

To stand out, brands should invest more in building bonds and affinities through emotion.

One of the masters of building an emotional connection, was the film director, Alfred Hitchcock who famously said ”There is no terror in the bang, only the anticipation of it.” He created two scripts, one that covered actors lines and SFX, and a second he called the green script, which covered the emotion he wanted audiences to feel. 

We can all take a lesson from Hitchcock and plan to build an emotional connection with consumers to drive memorability.

4. SMILE IN THE MIND

A great way of increasing engagement and memory is by thinking about the subconscious drivers of behaviour and response. The idea of a smile in the mind is that the audience gets to complete the narrative. It is a value exchange where you give them 75% and make them complete the other 25%. 

Take the recent Wilkinson Swords ad as an example: “A razor with quite a good blade is like an acrobat with quite a good grip.” Once you complete the picture, that is the smile in the mind, it feels better if you have brought something to it. 

When you look at your content, ask yourself if you are inviting the audience to bring something to the idea to drive memorability.

5. KNOW YOURSELF AND DO IT ON PURPOSE

It’s important to own who you are, what you stand for and how you portray yourself. Think of great wrestlers. You know what you’re going to get with their characters. The powerhouses are either prime protagonists or ultimate protectors, you either love them or hate them, there is no in-between. If you’re in-between, audiences will fail to connect and remember you.

By developing strong personas and compelling narratives, brand stories can cut through the noise of all those tepid, wishy-washy attempts at storytelling we are seeing all around us.

It’s time to hone in on distinctiveness before drifting out too far in the sea of sameness. Stay the same or stand out – the choice is yours.

Key insights

  • A lot of content looks and sounds the same, morphing brands together to be forgotten and ignored.
  • The more distinctive a brand is, the more powerfully it will be recalled by audiences.
  • To be remembered in today’s crowded market, brands need to become distinctive through powerful storytelling and unique world building.