"The marketplace is a wind tunnel, and the wind wants everything to be the same."

That simple statement by Bruce Philp, branding guru to ING Direct and co-author of The Orange Code, is what makes identifying and landing new prospects so difficult. But being different from your competitors isn't all that it appears to be.

In the second of three interviews with CZ, Philp debunks the myths of differentiation:

Brand & Strategy: What are the myths of differentiation?

Bruce Philp: I think there is just one dangerous myth: differentiation is rational. That's fatal thinking.

How so?

There are two reasons--and the first is practical. There is almost no innovation that can be sustainably proprietary anymore. Performance differences are either so slight as to be irrelevant as a basis for choice, or they are impossible to own for long in a world where fewer people make things than sell them.

You can be Apple, and live what is surely the hell of having to beat yourself every time you go to market, or you can be P&G and make a full-time job out of engineering performance claims year after year. Those are successful businesses, there is no doubt, and it would be foolish to argue that it's impossible to differentiate with innovation.

But, for most companies, innovation is expensive. And it's often pointless, and very easily emulated by competitors who, maybe even with pride, see themselves as fast-follow marketers bent on commodifying their categories.

And the second reason why it's fatal to believe differentiation is rational?

It's more complicated. I think that consumers, regardless of what they may say in focus groups, don't want the burden of comparison shopping for everything on the basis of rational performance. It's a lot of work, and it puts too much responsibility on them. They want a proxy for that.

A proxy for what?

Consumers want a reasonable excuse to make a choice that is right for them and not feel vulnerable as a result. Very frequently, this is the job of a brand. People look at what they think a brand stands for, what sense they have of its past conduct in this regard, and the authenticating coherence of its presence in the marketplace. Consumers ask, "Do the values motivating this company align with mine, as they relate to the product I'm about to buy?"

And if the answer is yes?

Then the choice begins there, and not on a spec sheet. It's not very different than the way we would pick an auto mechanic. I can't judge whether the guy who's going to work on my old sports car knows what he's doing, but I can intuit his love of cars, I can see that his workshop is clean, and that he seems to take pride in his work. I can be reassured by the way he looks me in the eye and firmly shakes my hand.

So differentiation is instinctual.

Yes. The door to trust is opened emotionally and instinctually. Only after that is it about performance.

I think this exposes differentiation for the art it truly is. The best work I've seen done in this part of the branding process has always started not with what a product can do, but with who made it and why. Almost unfailingly, that leads you to the basis for sustainable differentiation. This type of differentiation is virtually immune to what competitors might do, or how circumstances might force your hand tactically in the future.

Show me a category where this isn't true, and I'll show you a commodity business--now or imminently.