Why brands to be distinctive not different matters

Marketing departments hunt for an “ownable” word as if the English language has been leaving unclaimed adjectives in a cupboard.

Weeks later, a consultancy reveals bold. Nobody else may use bold now. Please update the trademark register and invoice accounts.

Functional difference is lovely when you have it. It is also copied, matched or made irrelevant with annoying speed. In many mature categories, the harder problem is being noticed and remembered among products that all broadly work. A bottle shape answers before the label comes into focus. A sound identifies the advertiser from the kitchen. A consistent character or phrase makes ordinary category information belong to one brand in memory.

None of these assets has to be physically impossible for a competitor to use. The ownership comes from repetition. One company keeps turning up in the same clothes until customers recognise it; the others change outfit every season because the marketing team got bored.

Internal boredom is an appalling proxy for public wear-out. Staff see the campaign in every meeting, every draft and every corridor. Customers see it while making tea and looking for the remote. Just as the asset begins doing its job, somebody announces a brave new chapter and memory is sent back to reception. The replacement usually looks modern in exactly the same way as everything else launched that quarter: clean type, tasteful gradient, voice described as “human”. Distinctive has been removed in pursuit of contemporary.

Improve the product. Give people a reason to choose. But stop demanding that every useful cue pass a philosophical test of uniqueness. Distinctiveness is not permission to be arbitrary, either; the assets should still fit the promise and make recognition easier. Tesco did not own the words “every”, “little” or “helps”. It behaved as though the combination belonged to Tesco until the public agreed.