Point of view: Opinions wanted

This article discusses the issues that have caused a lack of differentiation among today's brands, and suggests the rules to shed, and curiosities to indulge in in order to find some originality.

Point of view: Opinions wanted

Gareth Kay

About a decade ago, Copernicus Consulting did a research study in the US to look at how we saw brands. Its most startling finding to me was the lack of differentiation people saw between brands. Four out of five categories were seen to have increasingly homogeneous brands and only 7% of ads were seen as different. The lack of remarkability was in itself remarkable.

I have a nagging feeling that this has got worse. It is almost certainly a large driver behind the infamous statistic from the Havas Meaningful Brands survey that most...

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