Oh hey, how’s it going.
I’m just getting one of my daughter’s old bikes ready to find a new home and I was thinking about how the last time I sold one of her bikes went down.
I pull into the Trader Joe’s parking lot where the buyer wanted to meet and, we have the exact same truck and exact same bike rack.
I get out. He gets out.
We’re seriously doppelgängers.
Head to toe—pretty much the same shorts, shirt, shoes, hat. Even our mannerisms were similar.
But it keeps going.
Our kids are dressed the same. Act pretty much the same. Pretty much the same age.
We were like cookie cutout families.
And we laughed as we both recognized it.
And it got me thinking about this weird thing we all do as humans.
We all want to feel unique.
But zoom out a little and you start to see just how much the people around us, the things we’re into, and the culture we’re part of shape the choices we make.
Brands deal with the exact same thing.
Every brand thinks it’s unique.
And from inside a company, you can see all the little nuances that feel unique. But zoom out, even just a little, and it gets harder to see those differences.
Because brands are influenced by the same things we are as people.
They watch what everyone else is doing. They notice what seems to be working. They follow trends. They borrow ideas.
And then they try to “make them their own”.
But in reality, they don’t really wander too far from what everyone around them is doing.
And before you know it, you’ve got the branding equivalent of two nearly identical dads standing in a Trader Joe’s parking lot.
Which is kind of funny when it’s two dads.
It’s a heck of a lot less funny when you’ve spent a shitload of money trying to build a distinctive brand.
And I guess that brings me to this question for you to ponder: does your brand actually look different from the outside, or does it just feel different from the inside?
And then I’d ask you to think about what you’re leaving on the table by looking pretty much the same as everyone else that you compete against?
Alright, I’ve gotta get back to it. Let’s make some more room for more bikes in this workshop!
We’ll see you out there.
Robb