Why distinctiveess beats "being different"
For years we’ve argued about differentiation in marketing. Is my product truly unique? Do I offer something no one else does? I think the better question is simpler.
For years we’ve argued about differentiation in marketing. Is my product truly unique? Do I offer something no one else does? I think the better question is simpler: can people spot your brand, learn your brand, and recall your brand when it matters?
That’s a problem of cognition. And the answer is distinctiveness.
This is a substack post mainly for my students at the course Digital marketing and Social Media at Jönköping University.
Why distinctiveness beats “being different”
Distinct brands win because they are easier to notice and recognise. That’s it. They don’t need a grand meaning in every asset; they need clear signals that say “it’s us.” Colors, shapes, taglines, sonic cues, characters, pack shapes - and most of all your promise - used consistently, build mental availability faster than any manifesto ever could.
For example, I’ve asked the same question for years, across almost a thousand students. The answer never moves: Ryanair = cheap. That’s distinctiveness doing its job. Blue-and-yellow contrasts yell “Ryanair.” The design looks cheap. They spend 0 dollars on ad spend. The promise sounds cheap. Even their social moves feel… cheap. The consistency anchors one clear memory and retrieves it on cue: “low price flights.”
When I teach this, I use two simple tests for any asset, coined by Jenni Romaniuk:
Fame: do many people link this cue to your brand?
Uniqueness: do they link it only to your brand?
Branding’s three jobs
According to Romaniuk (2018), branding does three things when we do it right:
Proclaim ownership: your cues say “this is ours.”
Anchor knowledge in memory: your cues tie new info to what people already know.
Bridge activities with a common origin: your cues connect campaigns and channels so they feel like one brand.
That’s the engine behind building distinctive brand assets (Romaniuk & Sharp). We measure whether this engine runs by checking fame and uniqueness of our assets.
The cognitive angle: make your brand easy to learn
Working memory is small: it holds only a few items before they drop away. Long-term memory, on the other hand, has no known limit, but it keeps only what working memory has processed and linked to existing schemas.
So our job as marketers is then twofold:
To reduce extraneous load, meaning to remove clutter that wastes attention.
To optimise intrinsic load, meaning to structure the brand so it’s easy to learn and encode.
If I then connect it to the classic funnel, it would look like this:
Attention and Awareness: what actually gets in.
Consideration: Processing & understanding, make it clear and chunked; connect to prior knowledge.
Storage – link to schemas so it sticks.
Conversion: Retrieval & decision: win the moment because your cues surface first.
How to optimise intrinsic load (so your brand sticks)
As marketers, we should think like a teachers, not as a poet. Your goal then, should be learning.
Front-load brand cues. Show logo/color/sonic in the first second.
One message, one CTA. Don’t split attention.
Plain language. No puns that hide meaning.
Predictable layouts. Stable logo lock-ups and placements.
Show, don’t imply. Product + pack shape + brand name together.
Then add simple decision helpers (used lightly, and only when they help people learn you). Those could be:
Framing and priming to prepare the schema.
Anchoring to set expectations.
Trust signals to reduce doubt.
Scarcity or decoys when the context fits.
Peak-end moments to finish strong.
How to measure if it’s working
Measure recognition and recall. If you can’t show movement on these, you’re guessing.
Recognition (perception → working memory)
Test assets without logos (color block, shape, tagline, sonic).
Track hit rate, false alarms, confusion matrix, and time-to-brand at 2–6 seconds (with/without sound). Faster = more fluent. JU-lecture5-2025-creativity
Recall (long-term memory → retrieval)
Unprompted category recall split by category entry points (situations).
Breadth: in how many situations do people name you?
Depth: your rank within each situation.
Cued recall: give the situation, not your name, and see if you surface. JU-lecture5-2025-creativity
Design it well
Run pre→post or test/control.
Strip labels when testing assets.
Include delays (immediate vs. 24–72h) to see consolidation.
Segment by prior knowledge (users vs. non-users).
Declare success as higher uniqueness, fewer confusions, faster recognition, stronger linkage at short exposures, and broader/better situational recall. JU-lecture5-2025-creativity
A quick checklist
Do our assets stand alone and still point to us?
Can distracted viewers link the ad to our brand in under three seconds?
Did we expand the number of situations where people recall us? JU-lecture5-2025-creativity
Bottom line
Optimise intrinsic load so people can learn your brand quickly. Remove noise so they can recognise it instantly. Repeat your distinctive cues so they retrieve you in buying moments. That’s how Ryanair owns “cheap.” That’s how your brand can own your word.
Distinct > different. Make it easy to learn, easy to spot, and easy to recall. The rest follows.
Further reading:
Romaniuk, J. (2018). Building Distinctive Brand Assets. Oxford University Press.
Romaniuk, J., & Sharp, B. (Revised ed. 2022). How Brands Grow: Part 2. Oxford University Press.