How to Create Compelling and Credible Brand Differentiation
Not long ago, I took a trip to Miami.
I spent a day in Wynwood, Miami’s creative and artistic district, a bit like East London, Berlin Mitte, or Williamsburg in Brooklyn.
My wife and I simultaneously noticed a café on a street corner.
The sign “BAKERY” on the storefront, in that “we’re a brand that’s confidently self-assured” way, caught our attention. The aura of uniqueness and authenticity practically pulled us in. Though we were full just after lunch, we had to get both coffee and cake to buy some time to properly explore this intriguing place.
Both customers and staff exuded a natural coolness.
A young waiter had such an iconic look that I was tempted to street-cast him even without having a project in mind.
The place is called: ZAK THE BAKER. And when they say bakery, they mean a bakery—with the actual bakery located right in the center of the café.
This passionate bread-making process, visible to all customers, is both an experience in itself and a powerful stamp of quality.
ZAK THE BAKER is an example of the deep, substantial approach one must take when creating a strong and unique brand.
When I work on creating brand differentiation, I follow a simple yet demanding approach that I call making the brand unique from the inside out.
It’s about abandoning the superficial approach to branding and thinking much more integratively and transformatively as a brand.
A new logo, a website update, and a couple of marketing campaigns are nowhere near enough to create a brand that stands out with high recognition and appeal.
Instead, you must integrate all components of the company’s value chain and ecosystem, making each a part of the brand’s differentiation: Product, customer service, production, distribution, leadership, organization, culture, and responsibility.
Just as ZAK THE BAKER has done by giving bread production the starring role in their branding—an impressive demonstration of an extraordinarily passionate and quality-driven bakery.
Building a unique identity isn’t just about looking special; it’s about doing something special.
You are what you do—this applies to both people and brands.
Here are some questions to consider if you want your brand to stand out in a deeply integrative way:
- What unique and cohesive actions can we start implementing across the value chain that create value for customers while distinctly setting us apart from competitors?
- What are our signature actions and stories that can make customers believe we are a unique and desirable brand?
- What is our unique mission that ties everything together and continually inspires us to create differentiation in an integrative way?
In the answers to these questions, you’ll find the solution to becoming unique from the inside out and creating the kind of compelling brand differentiation that can serve as the foundation for accelerating business growth.
