No matter how innovative your product or service is, or how niche of an industry your business operates in, it’s excruciating to find differentiation these days … and it’s a never-ending chase. The acceleration of a perpetually changing future has made it all that much more critical to sharpen the most important tool you have for standing out from your competitors: your brand.

Before digging deeper into how a brand is built, it’s crucial to first understand what we mean when we say “brand.” While many people (even some in our industry) conflate brand with advertising or the products they sell, those are only pieces of what you do that make up the larger idea of who you are. Put simply, a brand is the most compelling articulation of your business strategy—a clarification of what you stand for, and the basis of your relationship with customers. Note the word “compelling.” It has to be true, relevant and differentiated.

From bland to brand

Using the Silicon Valley startup landscape as an example, you can see the effects of using product as a brand (PaaB™). Technology is not a differentiator anymore; it’s an equalizer. Although tech-driven, business-model innovation is great, it has to come with the development of brand. Think about how many times you’ve heard a business described as “the Uber of X” or “the Warby Parker of Y.” Just as quickly as those household names upended industries, they were engulfed in a sea of copycats all sporting minimal, templatized UX; clean, muted design; and a familiarly witty, human tone. When ideas are only new for a moment and products are easily imitated, “disruption” becomes more of a category than a way of standing out.

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What do you stand for?

To avoid fights on features and performance comparisons, it’s up to brands to create a more authentic connection with customers, building relationships and loyalty over time. That’s what I call a “better human experience.”  It’s a pursuit to create value for all stakeholders—employees, customers, investors, clients. But how do you commit to standing for something in an ever-changing landscape? It starts with conviction—fighting the urge to follow every trend or to say something broad enough to appeal to everyone, and instead find what’s true to you and relevant to your audiences. Identifying that sweet spot is what makes the connection between a brand and a customer resemble any other human relationship. For the same reasons love isn’t eroded by a single argument, customers stick by brands that stay true to the values that attracted them in the first place.

The difference is in the experience, not the product or service

Many years ago, I had a client who used to tell me “differentiation is not important; it’s all about consistency.” I used to push back relentlessly. Over time, the idea has grown on me, because discipline in execution is underrated. When so many products and services are equal or almost identical, it comes down to creating a unique and consistent brand experience across the entire journey, being intentional about what moments have the power to create impact, and pushing that positioning forward to create a positive feeling and emotion. What your customers remember about the experience and what they feel during an interaction are what I call “moments of impact,” or MOIs. (I know, but I’m a consultant—acronyms are inevitable!)

So yes, this might be rare to say, but you have to consider how you want them to feel, not just what product you’re selling to them.

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The work never stops

The cycle is never ending. You create desire for your product, and then encourage love and hope for commitment, and just as they’re getting too used to your brand and have the urge to try something new, you have to create desire again to keep them engaged.

For brand enthusiasts like us, chasing that trust while knowing its fleeting nature is why we do this work. We find that sweet spot, then challenge ourselves and our brands every day to find new, relevant ways of building, telling and strengthening the story.