“The marketplace is a wind tunnel, and the wind wants everything to be the same.” 

That simple statement by Bruce Philp, branding guru to ING Direct and co-author of The Orange Code, is what makes identifying and landing new prospects so difficult. But being different from your competitors isn’t all that it appears to be.

In the second of three interviews with CZ, Philp debunks the myths of differentiation:

Brand & Strategy: What are the myths of differentiation?

Bruce Philp: I think there is just one dangerous myth: differentiation is rational. That’s fatal thinking.

How so?

There are two reasons–and the first is practical. There is almost no innovation that can be sustainably proprietary anymore. Performance differences are either so slight as to be irrelevant as a basis for choice, or they are impossible to own for long in a world where fewer people make things than sell them.

You can be Apple, and live what is surely the hell of having to beat yourself every time you go to market, or you can be P&G and make a full-time job out of engineering performance claims year after year. Those are successful businesses, there is no doubt, and it would be foolish to argue that it’s impossible to differentiate with innovation.

But, for most companies, innovation is expensive. And it’s often pointless, and very easily emulated by competitors who, maybe even with pride, see themselves as fast-follow marketers bent on commodifying their categories.

And the second reason why it’s fatal to believe differentiation is rational?

It’s more complicated. I think that consumers, regardless of what they may say in focus groups, don’t want the burden of comparison shopping for everything on the basis of rational performance. It’s a lot of work, and it puts too much responsibility on them. They want a proxy for that.

A proxy for what?

Consumers want a reasonable excuse to make a choice that is right for them and not feel vulnerable as a result. Very frequently, this is the job of a brand. People look at what they think a brand stands for, what sense they have of its past conduct in this regard, and the authenticating coherence of its presence in the marketplace. Consumers ask, “Do the values motivating this company align with mine, as they relate to the product I’m about to buy?”

And if the answer is yes?

Then the choice begins there, and not on a spec sheet. It’s not very different than the way we would pick an auto mechanic. I can’t judge whether the guy who’s going to work on my old sports car knows what he’s doing, but I can intuit his love of cars, I can see that his workshop is clean, and that he seems to take pride in his work. I can be reassured by the way he looks me in the eye and firmly shakes my hand.

So differentiation is instinctual.

Yes. The door to trust is opened emotionally and instinctually. Only after that is it about performance.

I think this exposes differentiation for the art it truly is. The best work I’ve seen done in this part of the branding process has always started not with what a product can do, but with who made it and why. Almost unfailingly, that leads you to the basis for sustainable differentiation. This type of differentiation is virtually immune to what competitors might do, or how circumstances might force your hand tactically in the future.

Show me a category where this isn’t true, and I’ll show you a commodity business–now or imminently.

“The genie is out of the bottle,” says Bruce Philp branding guru to ING Direct and co-author of The Orange Code. “Advertising is not branding; it’s just a thing a brand does.” And mostly it’s just showmanship—and the dazzle isn’t enough to cause consumers to become loyal to your brand. 

The big question is: How does advertising fit into your marketing mix? Here, in the first of a series of interviews, Philp digs into the answer:

Brand & Strategy: What do you mean by “disingenuous” advertising?

Bruce Philp: Consumers know that you have chosen to don a costume and mount the stage to try to affect some sort of cognitive event. Advertising is, by its very nature, a contrivance. It’s not our brand’s voice, and everybody knows it.

So how should an organization integrate advertising into its plan?

Advertising has to work authentically within this consensual understanding and respect it. Marketers and advertising people both need to let go of the idea that a purchase decision is an event, and to think of it instead as the end of a process. Then remember what advertising is actually good for in marketing strategy terms.

And what is that?

With so many other ways to influence the consumer’s decision making process, advertising could hardly be said to sell anything–at least not very cost effectively (Snuggies aside). But it’s very good at beginning the dialogue that might lead to a sale (what advertising people rather dryly call “awareness”). Advertising can knock on the door, suggest an emotional promise relevant enough that the consumer might open it, and then be respectful and interesting enough that they’ll leave it open for the next opportunity to influence them.

I think that advertising should be purposed specifically with that in mind.

Any caveats about advertising?

We need to both expect more from advertising, and less: More in the sense that it can and should do better than just amuse people, and less in the sense that it shouldn’t presume to be able to go from zero to closing the sale in 30 seconds (Snuggies, again, aside).

If I were going to knock on your door to sell you a vacuum cleaner, I wouldn’t put on a puppet show in the hope that you’ll like me so much you’ll buy my Electrolux. Nor would I open by throwing the machine at you and screaming that your floors are filthy.

Advertising is a powerful and important tool for marketing. What’s changed in the last few years is that advertising is now a more specialized tool. Keep that in mind, and its inherently disingenuous nature will never be a problem.

Who of us hasn’t heard employees and co-workers murmur, whine, or even holler, “Work sucks!”? 

To rally morale as well as results, consider a Results-Only Work Environment (or ROWE). In this environment, people can do whatever they want, whenever they want, as long as the work gets done. Work isn’t someplace you go to, it is something you do. And it doesn’t have to get accomplished from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Sound too good to be true?

Cali Ressler and Jody Thompson, authors of Why Work Sucks and How to Fix It, successfully led the Corporate Headquarters of Best Buy, a Fortune 100 corporation, through just such a change, which resulted in improved employee satisfaction, increased productivity, lower turnover rates, and greater efficiency.

In the last edition of Brand & Strategy, Ressler and Thompson discussed the benefits of – and the objections to – a Results-Only Work Environment. Click here to read the first interview.

Here Ressler and Thompson share how to face the challenges of adapting to a new work foundation–and why this radical system actually works.

Brand & Strategy: Why deconstruct the old foundation of work?

Ressler and Thompson: The old way doesn’t work.

With ROWE, we’re setting up a new foundation that actually fits with technology advancements and the demands of people’s lives in the 21st Century. The rules, guidelines, and processes in office environments today are relics of the 1950s. We’re holding onto them hard and fast, at the cost of people’s health, families breaking apart, stagnant business results, etc.

And for what? To ensure that people are following the rules and we can keep the paternalistic leadership structure in place.

Time to break it apart and create the new game.

How have organizations with paternalistic leadership responded to your “13 Guideposts for a Results-Only Work Environment”?

Upper management generally freaks out. And rightly so: the Guideposts were created to intentionally provoke this response. The statements are extreme and buck the status quo like nothing management in Corporate America has ever seen.

We like to say that ROWE is the litmus test for leadership in organizations. They’ve been talking until they’re blue in the face about how much they trust employees, want to support their work/life balance, set the right foundation for them to innovate, and on and on. Then when ROWE and the 13 Guideposts come at them, they back down and say they’re “not ready.”

It’s about “walking your talk”–and most leaders aren’t up for the challenge.

Who is up to the challenge?

It takes a strong, courageous, progressive leader to say yes to ROWE and the 13 Guideposts. We’re working with some of them now, and we know there are more out there. And they will be the leaders of the future.

Why doesn’t ROWE work for some organizations?

Anxiety and fear.

During the process of converting to ROWE it is possible for leadership to make the decision to not move forward. They let their anxiety about giving employees autonomy get the best of them, and they call everything off. This is a very poor decision.

Why?

The message to employees is loud and clear: “I don’t trust you.” Once employees know about ROWE and that they’re moving toward this liberation and freedom, you can’t rip the rug out from beneath them without serious consequences.

It can be extremely detrimental to morale, productivity, and ultimately the bottom line for a company.

However, for those teams that commit to the entire ROWE process and fully embrace it, there’s no going back to the old way. Brains are rewired, and it would decrease productivity to return to the old way.

How long does it take for an organization to adapt to ROWE?

The process for this adaptive change is very important. Each step is carefully timed to allow the culture to evolve at the right pace. Going too fast or too slow can have significant ramifications on the work environment and productivity.

So the timeline for this change really depends on the size of the organization.

Organizations of less than 100 employees can go through the ROWE migration process in two months. Organizations of 500 employees can go through the process in about four months. Larger organizations take an approach where they go department by department; it can take between a year and three years for organizations of 1,000 or more to go through the process.

Once teams have gone through the change strategy, it can take anywhere from 6 months to 18 months for individuals to feel like they are “ROWE.”

You talk about “Sludge” – the caustic comments made by coworkers when you walk in late or skip a meeting that reinforce old ideas about how work gets done. How do you eradicate Sludge?

The biggest hurdle to eradicating Sludge is actually fighting the internal Sludge we all have.

Surprisingly, the Sludge that exists among employees – “Can you believe John came in at 10:00 this morning?” or “There goes Nancy to pick up her sick kid – wish I had a kid!” – is the first to leave the environment as we implement the Environmental Sludge Eradication Strategy.

The Sludge that lingers feeds off the internal guilt people have about the way they should be working, where they should be at certain times of the day, and how they should be letting co-workers know where/when they’re working. We call this “should-ing on yourself.”

Why do we hold on to this “should-ing”?

Because of the years and years of work beliefs that have been drilled into us, it’s very uncomfortable to behave in a way that’s counter-culture. To go grocery shopping on a Tuesday morning goes against everything we’ve learned about how work needs to happen. To leave the office at 2:15 p.m. and not tell anyone is scary to most people. To sleep in and intentionally skip rush hour traffic (and not tell anyone) is very odd.

The internal Sludge of “I should be working right now” or “I should tell someone where I am right now” goes away slowly, but it takes time.