I am not usually asked to review books and I wasn’t this time either!! But I spotted Professor Youngme Moon’s new book entitled “Different – Escaping the Competitive Herd” at an airport bookstand and the minute I saw it and held it in my hand, I knew it was going to be a good reading experience.

For context, I have a love-hate relationship with business books. Over the years, I have read hundreds and enjoyed just a few. I loved the Tom Peters books, I like Jim Collins a lot and in between there have been a few other miscellaneous "greats". But generally, I find business books incredibly tedious to read and almost impossible to finish. The idea is expounded in the first 20 pages and it often seems to go downhill from there.

So imagine my delight when I read Professor Moon’s book from cover to cover on a trans-continental flight. And my further shock when I ordered 4 more copies and sent them to our senior executive team. Why? Because it’s a great book on a topic that has been absent from the mainstream branding publications, really, since Ries & Trout made positioning famous way back 30 years ago.

Apart from some very quotable sentiments about the importance of difference that appear throughout the book, the good professor really caught my attention by articulating how and why our skills at competitive analysis may be the biggest cause of the sameness epidemic that has swept the consumer packaged goods business in recent years. Her point is that our obsession about analyzing and monitoring competition restricts us from bigger out-of-the-box thinking. Brands are usually hell bent on eliminating a competitive weakness or leveraging a close-in strength. And neither of these strategies is likely to lead to sustainable difference, she argues-

"The way to think about differentiation is not as the offspring of competition but as escape from competition altogether."

In the later part of the book, she focuses more on the role of conceptual inspiration and idea-driven brands as the source of true difference. Not exactly breakthrough thinking but a logical platform from which she outlines the three types of idea brands:

1. Reverse Brands that make the deliberate decision to defy the incremental augmentation trend that is so prominent in many categories. Reverse brands say no when others say yes. Examples include jetBlue, IKEA, Google, Wii etc.

2. Breakaway Brands that change our frame of reference entirely and defy category boundaries. Examples here include Swatch, HBO, Apple and Cirque du Soleil.

3. Hostile Brands that feed off friction, flourish in being polarizing and create heat, dissonance and conversation. Examples include Red Bull, Birkenstock, Mini Cooper and Hollister.

This is a very readable book with lots of brand examples scattered throughout to bring the subject to life. Professor Moon manages to combine this easy to read approach with some typically impressive HBS thinking and it is this combination of earthiness and high altitude thinking that got me raving about the book.

One senses a real knowledge and enthusiasm in her writing and I can’t remember a book that I have read recently that has so many points highlighted in the text. And what better way to end this review that to quote the author once again-

“Differentiation is not a tactic. It’s a way of thinking. It’s a mindset. It’s a commitment. A commitment to engage with people – not in a manner to which they are merely unaccustomed, but in a manner that they will value, respect, and yes, even celebrate.”

Let’s all drink to that!!

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