Differentiation for Corporations, Brands, and Thought Leaders

Get What You Want By Finding a Spot That’s Unoccupied

When I was nine years old, I fell in love with baseball and dreamed of playing first base. To aid...

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Coming up with a persuasive marketplace differentiator for your business can be difficult. One reason why: Since your business is...

One morning awhile back, I awoke early and wanted to know the time, so I reached for my iPhone. Inadvertently,...

Sometimes your best brand story isn’t the one you think it should be. It’s one of your throwaway stories; an...

Sometimes it’s easier to learn positioning and branding lessons when we look outside our field. Let’s look at a lesson...

To prepare for a workshop I’m giving, I’ve spent hours doing exploratory writing on how to create an elevator speech....

I asked my friend, Jake Jacobs, how business was doing, and expected a mechanical response, like “Things are good” or...

When it comes to business practices, what you’re confident about today may be proven wrong tomorrow. I’ll explain. When I...

In the mid-1990s I conducted interviews for a small entertainment newspaper. The editor was a friend who knew my tastes,...

We’re told attention spans are shrinking, so if we want people to read what we write for the web, we...

“The two drummers settle in behind their kits. One sends out a cosmic boom from a bass drum, and we...

I’d like to tell you about a daydream I had that may be relevant to you and your business. First,...

In my previous post, “Telling an Appreciative Story,” I wrote about how my wife and I stumbled upon the rotting...

“I’ve got to take a photo of this.” That was me talking to my wife when we unexpectedly stumbled upon...

Fast Company Expert Blogger, Tom Clifford, posted the second of a two-part interview he conducted with me. In this last...

When I started doing positioning a decade ago, I didn’t have a defined methodology. I worked intuitively. I’d hang out...

I was listening to a consultant who was trying to write a book proposal. One of the most attention-grabbing things...

One of my favorite books on writing is Beth Baruch Joselow’s “Writing Without the Muse.” You don’t read it as...

A consultant named Tim was telling me about the field he worked in. He, in fact, wanted to write a...

Charles Kettering, the famed inventor and head of research for GM, said “a problem well-stated is half-solved.” Here, then, are...