More on this book
Kindle Notes & Highlights
Read between
January 1 - January 5, 2019
An idea developed with difference thinking looks like this: TRUTH—>PEOPLE—>IDEA—>LAUNCH
Creating difference, on the other hand, is about seeing things in a whole new light. It’s about re-imagining what the problem or the need might be, and then deciding that you will do whatever it takes to be the one to solve this problem for people. This approach leads to the creation of innovations and solutions that redefine the rules of the game, that reinvent a category or experience.
difference is not just noticed; it’s experienced and felt.
It isn’t the person with the best idea who wins; it’s the person who has the greatest understanding of what really matters to people.
you can’t change how people think or what they do without changing how they feel.
You need to create ideas and experiences that give people reasons to care and to belong, not just reasons to choose.
They watch what people do and don’t just believe what people tell them.
They understand that trust is their second-most valuable asset. The first is the willingness to be wrong for the right reason.
figuring out what people want and finding ways to delight one person at a time, one person who is thrilled to talk about you to her friends, essentially turning the funnel on its head.
Actually, marketing is, and has always been, a transfer of emotion. It’s about changing how people feel and, in turn, helping them to fall in love with something, or maybe just a little bit more in love with themselves.
In order to create the product or write that copy in the first place, you need to have a story to tell, a story that your customers will want to believe in.
What makes a brand unique now is the difference it creates—how it affects people’s lives and becomes part of their story. When you are organised to create difference, not just to be different, the result is much harder to replicate.
The secret of disruptive innovations and business models isn’t that they disrupt an industry; it’s that they disrupt people. They change how people feel about something, in a way that’s enough to change how they behave.
He never once described what a product would do; he painted a picture of what it would feel like to have.
So if people buy the story—if they buy the fortune, not the cookie; the experience, not just the raw ingredients—why don’t we as marketers work harder to give people a story to believe in?
95 percent of our decision-making takes place in the subconscious mind.
The great brands of the future will be built by those who have worked hard to gain the insight that enables them to whisper ‘we see you’ to their customers.
The truth is that people don’t fall in love with ideas at all. They fall in love with how those ideas, products, services and places make them feel.
every day we are surrounded by proof that ‘soft innovations’— relatively inexpensive, sometimes intangible, but well-considered enhancements of an experience like a package design or outstanding customer service; things that change how people feel about a product or service, and create emotional points of difference—have a real-world value.
Emotional points of difference, the things that are less obvious and sometimes not even articulated, matter. They show people that you care. They mark out brands that stand for something, shape cultures and create followings of loyal customers and brand advocates that no amount of advertising can buy.
When return on investment is measured by delight instead of sales or conversions, there’s a lot more freedom to be creative, to be bold, or maybe even to be creative and bold.
It turns out that the key to creating difference is to make something that changes how people feel and makes them fall just a little more in love, not with what we sell but with themselves.
it’s the ability to see an experience through another person’s eyes, to recognize why people do what they do.
The Difference Model is built around six pillars: principles, purpose, people, personal, perception and product.
Understanding the whole truth about you means that you can play to your strengths and have a strategy to overcome weaknesses.
The truth about the industry could be the cornerstone of your story because it speaks to the problem you want to solve and the need you want to meet.
Products, services and ideas that fly are created by understanding how to solve real-world problems.
think about your customers’ worldview and how they navigate the world from day to day.
How you make your customers feel about themselves in the presence of your brand is what matters.
So many of the great businesses which have thrived in the last five years were founded, and/or have thrived, in competitive markets because they understood the beliefs of the people they wanted to serve.
Good products work. Great products become part of our story. A good speaker leaves us with food for thought. A great speaker leaves his heart on the podium. Good marketing tells the story. Great marketing is the story.
The way forward for designers, creatives, and maybe you, or your company, is not to be lumped in with the competition. It’s to understand the people you want to serve, and why, and then to be ‘the one’ for them. You must do what it takes not to be just another creative or professional, but to be the creative or professional that people who want the particular must have.
There are a thousand ways for you to get noticed, but there’s only one way to really touch someone. And that’s to give them a reason to care, a story they can believe in.
