The secret to standing out

YouTube and MySpace had no sooner attracted millions of visitors when imitations of the sites sprouted like mushrooms. And, if your website was wildly successful, and perhaps it is, imitators would adopt your format.

Or are you on the imitators' bandwagon? Has your brand started to disappear from the consumer's radar screen because there's no perceivable difference between your site, your ads, your newsletter, and those of your nearest competitor?

Check it out: remove your logo and company name from your on- and offline material, and do the same to your competitor's. Be prepared for an unpleasant shock. The terrifying truth may be that you can't tell the difference between your brand's stuff and the other guy's. The material aggregates as one bland image.

Don't despair. I'm here to help, and I have a couple of hints. As my dad always used to say, if you want to get ahead of the leader, don't follow his tracks in the snow. So let's forge a new path to take your brand in a new direction.

A good place to seek inspiration is in newly-emerging markets, say India, China or Japan. When I recently visited India, I was struck by the fact most Indian companies are based on entirely different values and visions. We're so conditioned to the values we've come to expect that brand values themselves now contribute to brand uniformity and predictability.

The Hinduja Group, one of the most powerful companies in India, is one brand whose values and visions have come to my attention. Like many powerful companies in India, it is family owned. And this fact introduces a wholly different environment to that experienced by other corporations. The values they're based on, reflecting those of the families behind the businesses, are fundamental to this surprisingly different atmosphere, and they offer something we can learn from.

Two of Hinduja's guiding principles, as the Group refers to its company values, are 'work to give' and 'advance fearlessly'. These principles have been the drivers of major ventures within the Group, including Hinduja Group hospital, university and school development. These are principles which arm every staff member in the Group's companies with a mandate to work with initiative.

Check out your own vision statement. Is it your own brand speaking? Or could it belong to any brand? Are you labouring under a standard vision that does nothing more than fill a frame in a reception area? Or is it a motivating set of statements that powerfully influence your work, and build your brand every day? Does your vision statement make your brand stand out? If not, there's your first action: revitalise your vision statement.

Once you've addressed the vision, the fundamental expression of your company, cut your marketing budget in half. Okay, you're going to hate me for this, but here's the rationale. Let's consider Japan.

I recently visited a rather unusual company in Tokyo. Triumph is one of the world's leading lingerie and underwear companies. A family-owned German company, trying to secure a foothold in probably the most competitive market in the world, Triumph had no choice but to be different. Its marketing budget promised limited effectiveness if it were to be used only on conventional marketing. So creativity has become Triumph's survival tool.

Over the past 20 years, Triumph Japan has released a new bra twice a year. Each of these releases has been launched with a creative event.

One year, for example, the company invited Japanese women to deliver their used bras to their local Triumph stores in order to receive a free new bra. The invitation led to a ritual: close to one million bras were gathered and destroyed at a Shrine in the centre of Tokyo, an event that made headlines across the world. On another occasion, Triumph released a bra which could be converted into an environmentally-friendly shopping bag. Then there was the winter they released a bra which had pads filled with a gel that could be heated in a microwave - part of a campaign to help people stay warm in an eco-friendly way.

Now, perhaps such approaches might not work in your market, but they took Japan by storm. Now Triumph is one of two market leaders in Japan and the company still restricts its marketing budget to encourage the creativity that has secured its leading position.

Last but not least, make your product or service stand out. The Toblerone chocolate bar would never have been invented today if Wal-Mart had had a say in it. The triangular shape doesn't fit shelves, stacking systems and the space management programs used by large retailers. Here again is one of the causes of brand-blandness: retailers pressure brands to adopt uniform shapes and sizes because it makes life easier. Brands, and the products and services they represent, need to fight back and resist this pressure.

Less than one per cent of today's packaging design really stands out. In this respect, cost saving is not the way forward. In fact, time after time I've been surprised to learn that spending big on packaging (sometimes double the cost of delivering the product or service itself) often pays back handsomely. Why? Because packaging can be key to helping a brand stand out.

Your product or service quickly becomes the medium for the packaging. Is your packaging driven by retailer specifications, or have you adopted the Toblerone approach? It's no wonder Toblerone still is around. And, guess what. The brand maintains and builds consumer loyalty despite an almost non-existing marketing budget.

Let's face reality. Bigger marketing budgets aren't your answer. I bet you if you asked the chief marketing officers of Coca-Cola, Disney or Ford, they would claim their marketing budgets are too small. The reality is that there's always someone with a fatter wallet than you. So don't justify your lack of market share by claiming budget limitations. You have an ability, a mandate even, to truly have your brand stand out in a world of bland brands.