By: Todd Irwin
Everyone in branding talks about the need to stand out. We obsess over what makes the brand unique, different, disruptive. The assumption is that if we can define our distinction clearly enough, customers will care. But what if that assumption is wrong?
For decades, brand strategy has revolved around differentiation. Find your unique space or selling proposition. Define your “why.” Stand out. This has been the rallying cry for agencies, consultants, and marketers chasing the elusive white space on the map.
But what happens when the map is full?
Today, categories are crowded, markets move at hyperspeed, and every so-called whitespace is either irrelevant or fleeting. The speed of imitation makes standing out nearly impossible—and often irrelevant. Customers are no longer impressed by a brand’s uniqueness. They’re focused on something far more practical: who solves their problem best. In markets where white space disappears overnight and competitors copy faster than you can launch, differentiation has become an outcome—not a strategy. So what comes first instead?
To answer that, it helps to revisit where all this began. In the 1980s, marketing pioneers Al Ries and Jack Trout gave us the language of positioning—urging brands to claim distinct mental real estate in the customer’s mind. Back then, it worked. The media landscape was simpler, the pace of competition was slower, and most categories had only a handful of players. Not only were there fewer brands to contend with—there were fewer products. Fewer SKUs. Fewer subcategories. You could walk into a store and see three televisions, not thirty-seven. Standing out was more achievable because there was simply less to compete with. The rise of the “unique selling proposition” turned clarity into a competitive weapon—and for a time, it was enough.
But the landscape has changed. Permanence is gone. Attention spans are shorter. Categories move too fast. White space is filled before the ink dries on your brand architecture. And in an age of infinite information and zero patience, customers aren’t giving your brand time to explain what makes it different. They’re only asking: What’s in it for me, right now?
Classic positioning is often brand-first: “What makes us unique?” But the most strategic brands today ask a different question: “What customer problem are we solving—and how do we make it crystal clear that no one else solves it as well?”
Classic positioning is often brand-first: “What makes us unique?” But the most strategic brands today ask a different question: “What customer problem are we solving—and how do we make it crystal clear that no one else solves it as well?”
This approach is called de-positioning—and it may be the most powerful (and overlooked) brand strategy in the game. De-positioning doesn’t rely on messaging tricks or surface-level storytelling. It reorients your brand around a customer pain point—the one thing they need fixed more than anything else—and builds your business into the most rational, useful, and trustworthy solution. When that happens, differentiation doesn’t need to be manufactured. It happens organically. It becomes the byproduct of relevance.
This isn’t just messaging—it’s strategy. De-positioning reshapes the competitive landscape by aligning your brand around what matters most to your customer. You don’t win by being louder. You win by being the best solution—and by making your competitors feel like a worse one. It doesn’t mean differentiation—or brand purpose—don’t matter. They absolutely do. But they aren’t where you start. Leading with purpose or uniqueness is like decorating the house before pouring the foundation. It can be beautiful, even inspiring—but without a grounding in the customer’s need, it’s just floating wallpaper. Brands earn relevance when they solve something first. Only then does differentiation start to matter.
We’ve already seen this play out in some of the world’s most iconic companies.
Take Apple. Their ongoing commitment to privacy wasn’t just a positioning move—it was a de-positioning master-move. As public concern over data tracking surged, Apple didn’t just highlight a feature. It framed the entire category—Meta, Google, Amazon—as the problem. And it embedded the solution (privacy) into every layer of its ecosystem. The result? One interface change cost Meta $10 billion in ad revenue and made Apple the most trusted brand in tech. That’s not marketing. That’s strategy.
Zoom crushed Skype and WebEx not by being different, but by being better: faster, easier, more reliable. Salesforce de-positioned legacy CRMs like Oracle and Siebel by removing the pain of on-premise software. Volvo didn’t just stand for safety—they made speed, luxury, and performance feel secondary. In each case, the brand didn’t just rise above the competition—it made the competition feel like a compromise.
What these brands have in common isn’t just clarity of purpose. It’s clarity of solution. They focused on the customer’s most urgent pain point—and solved it so clearly, consistently, and completely that other options quietly fell away.
What these brands have in common isn’t just clarity of purpose. It’s clarity of solution. They focused on the customer’s most urgent pain point—and solved it so clearly, consistently, and completely that other options quietly fell away.
And this isn’t just anecdotal. According to Forrester’s Customer Experience Index, companies that prioritize customer experience—by solving real friction—grow revenue 41% faster than their competitors. Gartner found that 77% of B2B buyers describe their last purchase as “very complex or difficult.” In other words: if you’re the brand that removes friction, you don’t just get considered—you get chosen. More often than not, customers don’t choose the most different brand. They choose the one that feels inevitable.
Byron Sharp, whose work in How Brands Grow challenged many traditional brand doctrines, supports this idea. His research shows how brand growth depends less on uniqueness and more on being easy to buy and easy to choose—mental and physical availability. That’s another way of saying: solve the right problem clearly and consistently. Make the decision simple.
And the stakes are only getting higher. Looking ahead, the brands that thrive will be those that engineer brand dependence, not just brand preference. In an AI-powered world, customers will have even more tools to evaluate and switch providers. Loyalty will hinge less on emotional storytelling and more on functional trust. Brands that continually solve problems—intuitively, predictively, and invisibly—will become irreplaceable. Those that don’t? They’ll be filtered out by algorithms long before a human ever considers them.
De-positioning is the only strategy built for this future. It’s not about being different. It’s about being indispensable. It’s not a campaign—it’s a way of thinking, operating, and earning relevance through value, not volume.
De-positioning is the only strategy built for this future. It’s not about being different. It’s about being indispensable. It’s not a campaign—it’s a way of thinking, operating, and earning relevance through value, not volume.
The old models told us to “differentiate or die.” But today, that advice is backward. If you want to stand out, don’t try to be different—try to be better. Find the gap your competitors can’t close. Fill it completely. There’s an old saying: advertising is the price you pay for having a poor product. If you’re solving the right problem better than anyone else, your customers become your media. Word travels. Loyalty builds. And suddenly, the burden of standing out lifts—because the market starts seeking you out. All that’s left is to tell your story with discipline, consistency, and conviction.
Do that, and differentiation won’t be something you chase. It’ll be something your customers feel—without you ever needing to say it.
