This post is the first in a seven-part series on differentiation:
In her book Different – Escaping the Competitive Herd, Harvard Business School marketing professor Youngme Moon argues that “the ability to compete is dependent upon the ability to differentiate from competitors.” However, she goes on to say, “The number of companies who are truly able to achieve competitive separation is depressingly small.” This is because companies tend to define their strengths and weaknesses using the same measurements and standards as their competitors. This leads to homogeneity, not differentiation. When everyone is trying to build on the same strengths and eliminate the same weaknesses, all companies start to look the same.
So how can you create one of the few organizations that become extraordinary? How can you succeed where most organizations fail?
Rethinking Differentiation
Creating meaningful differentiation is the aim of every business. According to Ted Levitt, a former Harvard Business School professor believed that,
The search for meaningful distinction is central to the marketing effort. If marketing is about anything, it is about achieving customer-getting distinction by differentiating what you do and how you operate. All else is derivative of that and only that.
Marketers that want customer-getting distinction need to rethink differentiation with these three tenets:
- First, fitting in and becoming a “me-too” brand will never lead to success. Benchmarking is not the path to greatness. It leads to a sea of sameness.
- Second, trying to fix a weakness is a waste of time and effort.
- Third, if you try to be great at everything, you will end up being great at nothing. If you try to please everyone, you won’t end up pleasing anyone. This is a sure-fire recipe for mediocrity.
Smart brands know that it is good to be different, to stick out, and to be unique. They know it is good to flaunt your weaknesses instead of fixing them. Smart brand understand that it is good to be unbalanced. That a brand’s flaws can hold the keys to what makes it awesome.
Becoming Flawsom
A portmanteau is a French word for a small suitcase. It also describes when parts of multiple words are combined to make a new word. For example, by blending smoke and fog to create smog. Or vlog, from video, web, and log. A portmanteau relates to a singular concept that the combined word describes. A portmanteau differs from a compound word, which does not involve the truncation of parts of the stems of the blended words.
My personal favorite portmanteau for a brand is Velcro. It is a combination of two French words. The “vel” is from velour (fabric) and the “cro” is from crochet (hook). In 2017, the Velcro company made a video of its lawyers imploring the public not to call a hook and loop fastener by its trademarked name of Velcro.
The video by the agency Walk West has generated millions of views. Once a brand name becomes generic, the brand name is in jeopardy of losing its trademark registration.
Our portmanteau for differentiation is FLAWSOM. It is a combination of FLAWS and AWESOME—the simple idea that your flaws hold the key to what makes you awesome. The concept of flawsome isn’t new. The term was used by both Trendspotting and the supermodel Tyra Banks six years ago. Let’s look at both sources:
According to Trendspotting in 2012, consumers don’t expect brands to be flawless. In fact, consumers will embrace brands that are FLAWSOME: brands that are still brilliant despite having flaws; even being flawed (and being open about it) can be awesome. According to Tyra Banks, FLAWSOME is used to describe something that is awesome because of its flaws. She advocates for us to embrace the flaws in our bodies and own them for they are simply flawsome. Tyra launched the Flawsome Ball to benefit her TZONE Foundation in 2012.
More Than a Portmanteau
In addition to the flawsom portmanteau, it is also an acronym. Each letter in the F.L.A.W.S.O.M. framework represents one of seven types of differentiation:
F is for Flaunting
L is for Lopsiding
A is for Antagonizing
W is for Withholding
S is for Swerving
O is for Opposing
M is for Micro-weirding
Lessons from Cows, Peacocks, Zebras, and Polar Bears
Flawsom begins with Flaunting. Flaunting is the cornerstone of differentiation. According to the Encarta Dictionary, flaunt means “to parade without shame. Show something off—to display something ostentatiously.” Our interpretation of the word is that flaunting is positive. Flaunting is about being unapologetic about your organization’s flaws. You take pride in your organization’s unique characteristics. You emphasize them, accentuate them, feature them, highlight them, expose them, call attention to them, and openly display them. You definitely aren’t trying to hide them or fix them.
Too often, we are uncomfortable with what makes us weird. The goal of this series of posts is to help you become comfortable with what makes you weak or weird in business. We’ll advocate for you to parade those weaknesses without shame. To show them off.
This might sound unwise, because this isn’t the way most organizations operate. It isn’t what most business books recommend. Managers have been taught to find and fix weakness, to seek perfection.
The Flaunting Matrix
We’ve created the Flaunting Matrix to delineate how much and what you flaunt. The Y-axis in the matrix stands for the amount of weirdness or normalcy:
Weird is what makes you different or unique in business. What is weird is usually seen as a weakness or a flaw because it doesn’t conform to the established model of success. Doing something abnormal is often seen as doing it the “wrong way.”
Normal represents the standards within your industry. Normal defines the “right way.” Normal is usually synonymous with strong. If everyone is doing it, then it must be a good thing.
The X-axis represents doing “more” or doing “less” of what makes you either weird or normal:
Understanding the Quadrants
The Flaunting Matrix contains four quadrants:
Each quadrant in the flaunting matrix is represented by an animal. The first quadrant, the top left, represents doing less of what makes you weird. It is the COW quadrant:
Why a Cow? Every cow is unique. Their spots are like fingerprints. No two cows are alike. Yet, cows are blissfully unaware of their uniqueness. Establish a cowpath and cows will never stray from it. This is the CONFORM quadrant.
The second quadrant, the top right, represents doing more of what makes you weird. It is the PEACOCK quadrant:
Why a Peacock? Like cows and their spots, the feathers on a peacock are unique. Unlike cows, they own it. Their uniqueness is a signature part of who they are. They purposefully preen and flaunt their feathers to stand out among the flock. This is the STRUT quadrant.
The third quadrant, the bottom right, represents doing more of what makes you normal. It is the ZEBRA quadrant:
Why a Zebra? Zebras are black with white stripes. Their striping is determined by genetics. Even though zebras are unique, their individual stripes are indistinguishable among other zebras. Their stripes create a blending effect, making it impossible for an individual zebra to stand out among the herd. This is good for safety as predators see the herd as one huge object, but it makes standing out a non-starter. You can’t add stripes and be different here. It’s just more of the same. This is the MATCH quadrant.
The fourth quadrant, the bottom left, represents doing less of what makes you normal. It is the POLAR BEAR quadrant:
Why a Polar Bear? Polar bears aren’t white. Their fur is translucent because their individual hair is hollow. The fur absorbs the light and takes away all of the colors in the spectrum so they appear white. Generally, polar bears avoid the herd and live solitary lives. This is the SUBTRACT quadrant of the matrix.
The Flaunting Zone
Brands need to stay within the “flaunting zone” to differentiate themselves in business:
The goal is to flaunt that you do LESS of what makes you NORMAL or flaunt that you do MORE of what makes you WEIRD.
Case Study: Buckley’s Finds Strength by Flaunting Weakness
Established in 1919, W.K. Buckley formulated a cough syrup called Buckley’s Mixture. Noted for its strongly unpleasant taste, its ingredients include ammonium carbonate, potassium bicarbonate, camphor, menthol, Canada balsam, pine needle oil, and a tincture of capsicum. Translation: the mixture tastes horrible and is not for the faint of heart.
After W.K.’s death in 1978, Buckley’s adopted son, Frank, became the president of the company. In the mid-1980s, Frank became the spokesperson for the brand. He commissioned research and found that Buckley’s was notorious for two reasons. Consumers consistently spoke to its efficacy and its lousy taste. Frank decided to flaunt the taste and began promoting a new slogan for the brand, “It tastes awful. And it works.”
Their cough syrup is nasty, and they are proud of that. Buckley’s didn’t try to hide it or mask the flavor like the competition. Instead, they made the bad taste their focus. In advertisements, Frank compared the taste to trash bag leakage and sweaty gym socks. The implicit message is that it works because it tastes awful.
The “bad taste” campaign increased Buckley’s market share by over 550 percent in the Canadian cough & cold category. The campaign won numerous advertising awards and was subsequently launched in the Caribbean, Australia, New Zealand, and the U.S.
In 2002, the brand was acquired by Novartis. Kironmoy Datta, senior brand manager for Novartis Consumer Health, says that “Buckley’s isn’t for everyone…. We made a conscious choice to not be everything to everyone.” It takes courage to call attention to existing weaknesses, but it takes even more courage to make those weaknesses appear worse, to exaggerate and flaunt them.
The F in F.L.A.W.S.O.M. is for Flaunting. In our next post, we’ll move on to the L in the framework…
