I had a great meeting today with a company that is looking for a Cincinnati, Ohio marketing firm / agency.  They operate in the IT consulting space and are faced with a cluttered market of "Me Too's".  As we talked about brand development, marketing strategy, and host of other issues, I asked them:

How unique do you want to be?

It's an important question because as many small and medium sized businesses develop marketing programs to compete against the big guys, most of them that I see choose to, at best, say the same things as differently as they can.  Of course this rarely results in a strong competitive differentiation. 

  • Are you willing to be different, not just in your marketing, but from the inside out?
  • Are you willing to change your company entirely?  Product, service, culture, deliverables, customer experience and then your marketing?
  • Are you willing to be confident enough in what you're great at to cross off all of those other 'services' from your list of capabilities and focus on your top 3?
  • Are you willing to hire people that stand out?
  • Are you willing to fire your ad agency for not pushing you to be different?

Saying yes to any of these questions requires you to be willing to take the risk of being the Purple Cow.  To quit playing the game your competitors play and to change it entirely.  You'll face scrutiny.  You'll attract attention and naysayers.

And people will remember you.

Apple did it.
So did Google.
And MySpace, 37 Signals, Mint.com, Marc Cuban, Boon, Chipotle, Slide and Obama.

How unique do you want to be?

Are you willing to change something, or everything to get there?