Simply Different: A Brand Advantage

How Nintendo beat the giants using innovation

Brand Strategy Insider, September 11, 2009 — Marketing is a battle of categories. The brand is only a marker for the category itself. If you want an energy drink, you reach for a Red Bull. If you want soy milk, you buy Silk. Rental DVDs by mail? Netflix.

Creating a new category and then branding that category in such a way that your brand is perceived as the innovator and category leader (in both senses of the word) is the essence of marketing today. To create a new category, however, you have to think different, not better.