Brands obsessed with standing out as unique risk losing their focus on customer needs. De-positioning offers a better way to shape strategy, argues Todd Irwin
In a cramped boardroom in Silicon Valley, I watched a startup founder frantically scribble features on a whiteboard, each one designed to make his product “different” from the competition. Sound familiar? For 30 years, I’ve sat in similar rooms with everyone from Fortune 500 company CEOs to scrappy entrepreneurs, all chasing the same elusive goal: standing out in an increasingly crowded marketplace.
But here’s what I’ve learned from working with some of the world’s biggest brands and most ambitious startups: differentiation – the marketing world’s holy grail – is broken. And the brands winning today are doing something far more powerful.
The differentiation delusion
Walk into any MBA classroom or marketing conference and you’ll hear the same mantra repeated like gospel: “To win, a brand must define what makes it unique.” This principle has shaped decades of strategy, spawned countless frameworks, and burned through billions in marketing spend. Yet in today’s hyper-competitive markets, uniqueness isn’t just ineffective – it’s become a liability.
The numbers tell a stark story. Every category is insanely saturated. Every perceived white space gets claimed and monetized within months. Every ‘innovative’ feature gets copied by competitors within a quarter. In our current reality, focusing on standing out isn’t a sustainable advantage, it’s an invitation to be replicated.
But the real problem with differentiation runs deeper than market saturation. It has two fatal flaws that most strategists overlook. First, differentiation is fundamentally about you, not the customer. Second, it assumes consumers are paying close attention to what makes you unique. They aren’t.
The psychology of how people really choose
The EBM (Engel-Blackwell-Miniard) model of consumer behavior, a foundational theory in consumer psychology, reveals something profound about how buying decisions actually work. The process begins with problem recognition, not brand recognition. People experience a need, search for solutions, then evaluate alternatives. Nowhere in this scientifically backed model is differentiation the driving force.
The customer isn’t asking, “Which brand is most unique?” They’re asking, “Who can help me right now?”
This insight aligns with Byron Sharp’s groundbreaking research in How Brands Grow. His data demonstrates that buyers don’t gravitate toward brands because they’re different – they choose brands that are mentally available at the moment of choice. Familiarity, not uniqueness, drives sales. Distinctiveness only matters if it helps people remember you when they’re deciding.
These findings point to a seismic shift in how we should think about strategy. Brands built on difference might win short-term sprints through novelty, but long-term loyalty comes from solving recurring problems better than anyone else. Strategy built on relevance will always outpace strategy built on difference.
The birth of de-positioning
This realization didn’t come from textbooks or case studies – it emerged from the trenches. A decade ago, I was deep in a brand strategy project for a Fortune 500 company, working alongside one of the world’s largest business consultancies. We’d fallen into the typical agency routine: chasing differentiation and purpose-driven messaging. Then the lead consultant shut it down.
“Hold on a sec,” he said. “The strategy isn’t about being different. It’s about solving customer pain points. You brand agencies always derail our work with this soft strategy, differentiation tangent. Whether it’s a hungry person needing food or a business needing a resource partner, the brand message must always focus on the problem you solve for the customer.”
That moment changed everything. I watched how much better the work turned out when we focused on pain points instead of uniqueness. The consultancy had handed us the most effective positioning strategy on a silver platter. Our job was to execute it with clarity and coherence – not fluff it up with creative differentiation.
After three decades in boardrooms, war rooms and whiteboard sessions, one truth kept revealing itself: the brands that consistently outperformed didn’t just define what made them different. They defined what made their competitors unnecessary.
That insight became the foundation of what is called de-positioning. It’s a strategic approach that doesn’t try to win the comparison game – rather, it removes the comparison entirely. As renowned marketer Scott Galloway puts it: “De-positioning is without a doubt the ‘gangster move’ in brand strategy.”
This isn’t about direct attacks or negative campaigns. It’s about strategic subtraction – removing competitors from customers’ consideration sets by solving problems so effectively that alternatives become obviously inferior.
The six principles that change everything
Through pattern recognition across hundreds of successful brands, six interdependent principles of de-positioning can be identified.
1. Champion the customer The most successful brands shift their center of gravity away from the company and toward the customer’s unmet needs. This isn’t customer-centricity as a buzzword – it’s customer-centricity as a strategic discipline that informs every business decision.
2. Be a hero pain-solver Winning brands identify one massive problem that competitors either overlook or underdeliver against, then solve it better than anyone else. This isn’t about unique selling propositions – it’s about becoming indispensable by addressing what I call the “hero pain point.”
3. Know competitors’ weaknesses De-positioning leverages contrast, using competitors’ perceived strengths against them. The goal isn’t to attack, but to illuminate a better alternative that makes the competition’s approach look antiquated or incomplete.
4. Own one big idea In our noise-saturated world, cognitive science tells us that singularity wins. Brands trying to own multiple ideas fall victim to interference theory: the more concepts you attempt to own, the fewer people will remember. Mental shortcuts require simplicity.
5. Cohere or die Strategy dies in the gaps between promise and delivery. If your message doesn’t match the experience – if your product contradicts your promise – trust evaporates. Coherence across every touchpoint and your complete organization isn’t optional, it’s existential.
6. Integration wins Lack of it kills. De-positioning isn’t a campaign or communication strategy – it’s a brand operating system that must be embedded across product development, sales, marketing, customer support and leadership. Without total integration, even brilliant ideas collapse under the weight of execution gaps.
These principles work in concert. Miss one, and the others weaken. Apply all six systematically, and you don’t just compete – you remove competitors from the equation. As I often tell clients, “You either de-position or get de-positioned. The choice is yours.”
The mathematical precision of hard strategy
What separates successful de-positioning from wishful thinking is its systematic nature. I’ve distilled the six principles into the De-Positioning Equation.
(Champion the customer + Solve the hero pain point) × (Competitors’ weaknesses ÷ One big idea) × (Coherence + Integration) = Competitive advantage
This isn’t theoretical. It’s a practical framework that ensures every strategic decision reinforces your competitive position. Champion the customer by understanding their needs better than they understand them themselves. Solve their hero pain point – the one massive problem that competitors overlook or underdeliver against. Expose competitors’ weaknesses – not through attack but through superior solutions. Own one big idea so completely that it becomes synonymous with your brand.
The equation’s power lies in its multipliers: coherence and integration. Coherence ensures that every message, interaction and experience expresses unified brand values. Integration demands that this strategy permeates every level of your organization, from product development to customer service.
How Apple de-positions their competition
Apple’s success gets analyzed endlessly, usually through the lens of design aesthetics or marketing creativity. But viewed through a brand strategy
lens, Apple’s true genius lies in its mastery of de-positioning.
When Apple entered the smartphone market in 2007, they weren’t the first, cheapest or most powerful. But they solved the most frustrating problem in the market: complexity. The iPhone redefined the smartphone not as a gadget, but as an intuitive lifestyle tool. This wasn’t branding – it was strategic reframing that made competitors like BlackBerry and Nokia suddenly obsolete.
Apple’s approach illustrates a crucial de-positioning principle: solve last, not first. They let competitors rush into new categories, identify the friction points, then enter with solutions so customer-centric and well-integrated that everything else looks antiquated. This wait-and-see strategy has worked across multiple product launches, from the Apple Watch to Apple Pay.
Today, Apple’s privacy-first positioning follows the same playbook. It’s not just a marketing campaign – it’s a systematic approach embedded in hardware encryption, the App Tracking Transparency feature, and countless other product decisions that reinforce Apple’s core thesis while making competitors appear careless with user data.
De-positioning across industries
The power of de-positioning extends far beyond technology companies. Consider how Netflix annihilated Blockbuster by laser-focusing on convenience – the hero pain point that Blockbuster’s brick-and-mortar model couldn’t solve. Netflix didn’t need to badmouth Blockbuster. They let their superior solution do the talking. From mail-order DVDs to streaming then original content, each move systematically solved customer problems better than anyone else.
Or take Zoom’s pandemic-era dominance. While competitors like WebEx and Skype offered feature-heavy, enterprise-first products, Zoom focused obsessively on simplicity and reliability. When everyone went online overnight, Zoom’s user-centric design made alternatives feel clunky and overcomplicated. The result: Zoom captured 72% of the global market while its competitors fought for scraps.
These examples share a common thread: success came not from shouting louder, but from building the brand as an operating system that guided how the entire company solved problems.
Cautionary tales: when coherence breaks down
The importance of coherence becomes crystal clear when examining brands that lost their way. Yahoo’s decline offers a stark lesson in what happens when strategic vision becomes scattered. Once commanding 38% of the internet search market, Yahoo pursued conflicting strategies – competing with Google in search, expanding into media, acquiring startups without integration. This fragmentation left customers asking, “What does this brand actually do for me?”
While Yahoo scattered its focus, Google built a cohesive ecosystem around organizing the world’s information. The contrast was devastating. By 2016, Yahoo sold to Verizon for $4.8 billion – a fraction of its peak $125 billion valuation.
Similar cautionary tales abound. Gap’s 2010 logo fiasco demonstrated how change without strategic purpose can alienate loyal customers while creating opportunities for competitors. Pepsi’s tone-deaf ‘Live for Now’ campaign not only sparked backlash, but allowed Dr Pepper to position itself as more authentic – ultimately ending Pepsi’s decades-long reign as America’s number two soda.
These failures share a common thread: they prioritized differentiation over coherence, creativity over customer focus. People are skeptical – even one inconsistent touchpoint can shatter brand trust.
De-position or get de-positioned
The writing is on the wall. Performance marketing’s race to the bottom is finally being recognized for what it is – a short-term tactic that erodes long-term brand value. Business leaders who once chased quick wins are asking, “How do we get brand back?” because they’ve learned that people don’t just buy products – they buy into brands.
Every brand leader faces a fundamental choice: continue playing the differentiation game that’s become impossible to win, or embrace the principles of de-positioning that can remove competition from the equation entirely. The companies that choose wisely will survive the coming shake-up and define the new rules of competitive advantage.
The best brands in the world have already made this choice – some, like Apple, a long time ago. They’re not trying to be different – they’re making their competitors irrelevant by solving customer problems with such clarity, coherence and integration that comparison becomes unnecessary.
The question isn’t whether your industry will be transformed by de-positioning principles. The question is whether you’ll lead that transformation, or become its casualty.
