ZAG: The #1 Strategy of High-Performance Brands

notably unhelpful for encouraging innovation. This is because radical differentiation doesn’t test well in focus groups.

Despite a 75% increase in advertising, evidence shows we’re paying less attention to any given product, service, message, or medium.

Radical differentiation, on the other hand, is about finding a whole new market space you can own and defend, thereby delivering profits over years instead of months.

successful zags usually test poorly with consumers before they’re launched. They fare pretty well on the “good” axis, but then attract so many negative comments on the “different” axis that their companies get nervous and reject them.

Research shows that most commercial messages contain too many elements, all competing with one another for our understanding. And the elements themselves may be uninteresting, unclear, or off-message.

Instead, you have to find the spaces between the fielders. You have to find a zag.

And what about your company? Where’s your passion?

What exactly is a brand? Hint: It’s not a company’s logo or advertising. Those things are controlled by the company. Instead, a brand is a customer’s gut feeling about a product, service, or company.

since people now have a choice, they’re choosing to spend more time on the Web, where communication is more like a conversation than a sales pitch. They’re also listening more to their friends, in a return to the word-of-mouth culture