By Ben O’Connell – Published in Canterbury Today Magazine

From hyper-personalisation to interactivity, and pulling on heartstrings to latching onto the next big meme, the fight for customer attention has seen some creative solutions.

Another, the rebel approach, appeals to the non-conformists, the independent, the countercultural, the rule-breakers. Challenging the mainstream norms, values and expectations of your industry can be a hugely successful way for brands to cut through the noise, provided they do it right.

Companies like Mini Cooper, Apple, Cirque du Soleil, and Starbucks all succeeded by radically redefining market expectations and brands. Radical differentiation is not just being different, but being different in a way that creates a new, unoccupied market space. Brands should grasp what makes them the ‘only’ in their space, providing a crystal-clear position for the company and its customers. Books such as Purple Cow by Seth Godin and Zag by Marty Neumeier pose these questions: ‘What makes you you?’, ‘Why are you different?’ and ‘Who loves you?’, among others.

Dan Matthews is an expert in brand strategy, design, and development. At Thinkable, he leads the brand revolution and helps organisations uncover their truth — the advantages that set them apart from the rest. He says that real rebellion in branding is not about edgy, creative, or provocative campaigns, but instead is about building trust and assurance that assumptions customers make about your industry are wrong.

“Most brands follow the same playbook, which is why they all look and sound the same,” he says. “Congratulations, you’re all equally forgettable. Revolutionary brands question why those rules exist in the first place.”

Dan says that businesses should adopt a revolutionary positioning strategy if they are trapped in a market of sameness, struggling to differentiate themselves, or competing on price. If your messaging sounds like that of your competitors, if you’re fighting for scraps in the middle of the market, or if talented people aren’t excited to work with you, Dan says that it’s time for revolutionary thinking.

“Basically, if you can swap logos with your competitors and nobody notices, we need to talk.”The brand revolutionist says that cut-through is imperative in today’s saturated market, and it’s actually a safer strategy that guarantees invisibility, so being forgettable is actually riskier than being bold. A rebel brand presents itself as an outsider or challenger, standing strong in its uniqueness and resistance to normalcy. It might even reject a slick corporate polish in favour of rawness and grassroots appeal.

“Revolutionary positioning requires courage, boldness, maturity in its depth sentence in a world where attention is the ultimate currency,” Dan says. “Playing it safe is like wearing camouflage to a party — you’re not avoiding risk; you’re just ensuring nobody notices you.”

Dan considers Liquid Death a brand revolution example. “In a world of pristine water bottles and wellness messaging, they dared to ask: ‘What if we marketed water like beer?’ The conventional wisdom said premium water should be elegant, sophisticated, and healthy. Liquid Death chose to be bold, irreverent, and punk rock. They put skull water bottles on the shelves and created a $700m brand by making every other water brand look like they were attending the world’s most boring dinner party.”

Thinkable helps brands discover their revolutionary truth, and that’s not just being different for the sake of being different. “It’s about finding the novel and creating next practices,” Dan says. “If everyone’s following the same ‘best’ practices, they’re probably not that distinctive anymore.”