Sales & Marketing May 14, 2010, 1:35PM EST

The Case for Sustainable Differentiation

How do you build an enduring brand that stands out from the competition? Innovating and improving isn't enough. You need to forge a deep emotional connection

Story Tools

Traveling is hard. Being away from home, eating out, sleeping in an unfamiliar bed—not to mention the nightmares of airports and airlines—make even the most hardened road warrior appreciate small niceties.

It was one of those niceties that brightened my life one day back in 2003. I was attending a conference at a resort in Palm Springs, and I rolled out of bed before dawn to get to an early seminar. I shuffled my sleepy feet into the bathroom and turned on the water. Stepping into the shower, I tugged on the curtain. To my surprise (and delight), there was no vacuum of air sucking in the unruly vinyl and trapping me against the wall. In fact, the reason I noticed the curtain at all was that it was standing completely still.

Wondering what this was all about, I looked up and saw what struck me as one of the most wonderful inventions of all time: a curved shower-curtain rod. What a brilliant concept, I thought. How simple. How obvious. How come nobody ever thought of this before? I was happy. And grateful, not only to the inspired inventor who came up with the concept, but also to the hotel that was thoughtful enough to install it.

Now here's the bad news. I don't remember where I was staying. This terrific invention, this fabulous innovation, this morning-making milestone that could have made the difference next time I booked a room, didn't have a lasting impact. Other hotels immediately started adopting the feature and I lost track of who was first. The curved shower-curtain rod was great news for the frequent traveler but provided no lasting differentiation for any one brand. My kids will have no memory of life without it.

That's the problem with product and service improvements. Curved rods, rearview cameras, artificial sweeteners, faster processors—all are nice, but none offer sustainable differentiation. Sure, they can offer tactical advantages for a period of time, but like any successful innovations they will be duplicated. Even if they're patented, they'll likely be ripped off by crafty imitations.

Right-Brain Connections

So what's a brand to do? How can it achieve differentiation that is real, meaningful, and sustainable? The answer lies not in pursuing left-brain benefits, but in fostering right-brain connections. Successful differentiation takes place not only in the minds of your customers, but in their hearts.

That's how Doubletree has made its brand stand out in the hotel industry. For more than 20 years, Doubletree has been giving away its trademark chocolate-chip cookies—more than 200 million to date. Like any hotel chain, Doubletree focuses on many different ways of making its guests comfortable, but more than 10 million times each year its customers sink their teeth into warm, moist, signature cookies. Sure, most hotels will offer some sort of sweet snack, but nothing like Doubletree's. Ask the average business traveler what differentiates most hotels and you'll get a host of random answers. Ask them what differentiates Doubletree and you'll get one answer—usually accompanied by a smile.

Or consider Mini Cooper (BMW:GR). How did this funny-looking upstart break out in the über-competitive automotive market, especially with its tiny (by comparison) marketing budget? Sure, the car has some impressive features, but features alone don't differentiate. The marketers behind Mini smartly realized that the key was to find an emotional nook for the brand—and to occupy that nook with every marketing dollar.

Mini's strategy reflects an understanding that when it comes to brand identity, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Broadly speaking, there are two elements to differentiation: rational and emotional.