Uniqueness is Your Superpower

The other day, I was at a little happy hour with friends, and we were talking about branding, content, and just business overall.

The main through line of the evening was one thing.

Be unique.

A founder was being put into a box by designers to say your branding needs to look the same as Casper and other DTC folks.

But he didn’t want to look the same.

He wanted something different.

As someone else talked about their product, they talked about being different than the competition.

Of course, I am blabbering about content, but I say the same thing.

To stand out on the timeline, your ads have to be unique.

So many people will talk about a successful DTC company’s ads - heck, even lust over them - but when it comes time for them to make ads, they just copy.

The reason a company breaks out is they break the rules.

Successful companies see the competition, and they know the best practices, but they decide to be original.

If you are going to win in a sea of content, you have to be original.

How to become original?

1. Give your team space and time.

It starts with putting emphasis on giving space for creativity.

The original, rule-breaking ideas are not the first ones that come to mind.

You need space to think and come up with ideas.

For us at Goodo Studios, we have a weekly two-hour call where we come up with ideas, pitch each other, and then bounce around with even more ideas.

It is by far my favorite time of the week, and everyone else’s too.

But we have space to think and create.

You need to give your creative people time to think and space to explore.

2. Don’t say no to an idea right away

Before you say no to ideas, sit on them for a bit.

Take time to find out why you should or shouldn’t do an idea.

And don’t say no just because you haven’t done it before - find a real reason.

Usually, in trying to find a reason to say no, you will end up refining the idea and saying yes.

Too many creative ideas get cut in meetings before being fleshed out or thought about.

You have to be willing to step out if you want to be successful.

You need to differentiate compared to other brands.

As you go about your week, try to come up with one idea that is different than your usual content and test it out!

Q4 is busy for everyone and you are gonna be great.