When Growth Stalls: How It Happens, Why You're Stuck, and What to Do About It

12.2. Distinctiveness Is "Job #1"

In a noisy, competitive marketplace, the worst thing your brand can be is indistinct. Some 90 percent of the thirty thousand brands launched each year fail,^[] many because they are simply yawners—too undifferentiated to offer a meaningful enhancement in value over current options.

That's why, in our research, companies that had stalled were much less likely to agree with the statements, "It's easy for prospects to tell us apart from other companies like us," and "our prospects understand our point of differentiation." They also reported having more difficulty enhancing the loyalty of existing customers. These are all problems that wouldn't surprise Porter. "Too often," he says, "efforts to grow blur uniqueness, ...