The Crucial Art of Effective Differentiation

In his book David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits and the Art of Battling Giants, Malcolm Gladwell tells the story of the Redwood City girls’ basketball team, coached by Silicon Valley software exec Vivek Ranadivé. The team was far from the top in their league, but even so, Ranadivé was puzzled by the unspoken status quo in how games unfolded: 

“Occasionally teams played a full-court press—that is, they contested their opponent’s attempt to advance the ball up the court. But they did it for only a few minutes at a time. It was as if there were a kind of conspiracy in the basketball world about the way the game ought to be played, Ranadivé thought, and that conspiracy had the effect of widening the gap between good teams and weak teams. Good teams, after all, had players who were tall and could dribble and shoot well; they could crisply execute their carefully prepared plays in their opponent’s end. 

Why, then, did weak teams play in a way that made it easy for good teams to do the very things that they were so good at?”

Instead of trying to get his team to be slightly better at what the great teams could do, Ranadivé decided to have them play constant full-court press in a way that capitalized on scoring deadlines and psychological tactics. This meant that they “rarely had to take low-percentage, long-range shots that required skill and practice.”

As Gladwell summarizes it, “The whole Redwood City philosophy was based on a willingness to try harder than anyone else.” And it brought them a series of unexpected victories, proving that a different strategy — one that took weakness, limitations, and differentiable assets into consideration — could be a powerful winning tool.

The business applications of this anecdote point to the power of market differentiation and the adoption of a genuinely powerful, unique, ownable position in one’s market landscape.

At Only Co., we believe that Peter Drucker’s definition of marketing is the best one out there: marketing is everything you do from the customer’s point of view, and the best strategy for winning in business is the result of powerful, differentiated positioning. Your customer must know why choosing you over their other options is the best decision for their hard earned cash. 

Strong differentiation isn't just good marketing — it's good business.

Here are two additional truths about differentiation to get you thinking about the unique ways you can win:

1. Positioning isn’t just about saying something new or fresh; it has to be a message that’s crucially connected to the customer’s desires and needs.

As businesses, we can easily be the worst judges of our own reputations. What we think or say is markedly unique about us could well be something that our customers perceive as “same drink, slightly different flavor.”

If you’re going to say you’re different, you have to actually be different. You have to trash the status quo and create an all-new category of excellence that customers can vibe with. And you have to make sure that your claims to fame can be backed up by your customers’ experience.

How your audience responds to your marketing will reflect the true perception of your brand, and enable you to adjust any misconceptions with deliberate marketing action.