Wednesday, August 15, 2007

Who is Your Opposite?

Seth Godin has an interesting, dare I say Taoist, post on branding. He suggests that you need to know your opposite in order to effectively brand yourself (or your product). I guess that makes sense for the purpose of branding as a marketing technique. Things like Gap and Pepsi can have opposites because they spend massive amounts of money defining who and what they are. The hardly offer products, however, that are opposite from their major competitors. In fact, the opposite (no pun intended) is true—you need to effectively brand yourself when you offer very similar products to very similar audiences. If you think that Coke and Pepsi or McDonald’s and Burger King are opposites, you should get out more.

So how does this relate to legal marketing? I think the same holds true—if you’ve got a lot of competition in your space, you should spend more time and money branding yourself. To that extent, you should ask how your major competition is branding itself, for better or worse. I don’t think you have to worry about creating an opposite, but determining a solid distinction on which you can rest your brand.