Marketing and positioning was never really about being different. It is about serving customers in a way that they haven’t been served before. This is a small but power distinction.

No one chooses a brand just because it’s different (although this maybe true for some specific fashion / luxury brands) but even the most different and unique brands must add some type of underlying real value to the customers reality – or else it is not a brand – its just an egocentric circus.

Differentiation for the stake of differentiation is the tool of the amateur.

Standing out and being different is a by product of serving a market subset that was once neglected.