If you want a lasting competitive advantage, differentiation is more critical than ever. Step one is to liberate your agency from outdated disciplines.

If you agree that differentiation is essential to sustained growth and healthy margins, then your priority is how to create it – not least in a market where traditional positioning statements feel so limiting.

No-one’s ‘just’ digital, advertising or design anymore, or SEO, experiential or PR. Being defined by a single discipline is deeply dissatisfying. 

It’s the biggest single reason why agencies struggle to stand out. But that said, although it’s a big strategic question, it’s not as important as you think. 

What do you do? 

Nothing divides an agency Board more than identity. What kind of agency are we? Will our clients – or our people – abandon ship if we get our discipline wrong?

Someone always argues for being ‘creative’ and another will say “but ‘Creative’ means ‘advertising’”. To which the first replies, “but how else will people know we’re creative?”. 

Face-palm. 

Adjectives are in play too. ‘Integrated’ gets pitted against its cousins, ‘full-service’ and ‘multi-channel’. Some argue ‘full-service’ only means media-plus-creative. Others worry that ‘integrated’ is shorthand for jack-of-all-trades. 

Even the word ‘agency’ ties people in knots. Are you a studio, firm, business, consultancy, company, collective or even – Jesus wept – a ‘group of people’? 

Although the intellectual gymnastics are impressive, the endless debate is exhausting. And the result is either a flimsy consensus that no-one likes, or a diktat that no-one uses. 

Everyone does everything

It all used to be so simple – few disciplines, all neatly defined. Clients knew what they wanted and where to find it. But they don’t buy like that any more

Now that traditional channel boundaries have melted away, single-discipline positioning statements just don’t do you justice. UX specialists do service design; shopper agencies offer experiential; everyone does social media. And so it goes on. 

You become a hostage to how clients choose to define the language – not least in how you optimise for search listings. 

Of course, it helps if you’re in an emerging discipline, like digital transformation was 10 years ago. But an in-demand positioning won’t differentiate you for long. Not only will other specialists flood in, but dabblers soon squeeze out the credibility from your expert language. Surely ‘agile’ just means ‘fast-and-cheap’, right? 

In recent times, agencies have understandably converged on the multi-disciplinary holy grail of ‘customer experience’, so discipline-based positionings became blurrier still. 

And then along came Web3. Then AI. Flash-in-the-pan or profound, the conveyor belt of shiny new things never stops.

Standout in a positionless world 

Some agencies respond by inventing their own pseudo positionings. But if you’re ‘The XYZ Agency’ and have to immediately explain what your all-new ‘XYZ’ discipline actually means, then you’re burying your value not surfacing it. 

Others recognise the need to focus on their proposition, defining an outcome for a discrete audience. But they often falter at the first sign of sacrifice, defaulting to offering their generic discipline to anyone with a pulse – maybe adding a superlative for insecurity’s sake.  

  • Awesome PR for ambitious clients 
  • Digital Transformation for the world’s best brands 
  • Advertising for brave CMOs. 

In fairness, none of these are wrong, they’re just stale, hyperbolic and undifferentiating. Which causes way more problems than an empty pipeline and poor sales conversion, not least a lack of culture and identity. 

As a sense-check for standout, ask yourself ‘could the opposite ever be true?’. Clearly ‘so-so SEO for unambitious brands’ would be madness. 

The one exception to discipline-for-great-clients falling flat is where you’ve earned serious recognition in your field. Check out Work & Co. Not much of a proposition, but a Who’s Who of clients, with a simple, confident site to match.

But for the vast majority of agencies, positioning isn’t enough. So your proposition needs to work much harder. 

Becoming truly client-centric 

By solving a specific audience’s problem, a strong proposition makes your whole business more client-centric and empathetic. It shifts your emphasis from services to outcomes. 

  • We’re spinal surgeons for sportspeople, getting athletes back to the top of their game
  • I’m an artist creating multi-sensory experiences for the blind
  • We’re social media experts for listed companies, here’s what happens if the shit hits the fan. 

In all these examples, a generic positioning – or discipline – only serves to tee-up a far more differentiating proposition, i.e. a defined outcome for someone in particular. 

Note that your outcome must be specific to your target client. Just as ‘marketers with money’ isn’t a discrete audience, helping clients ‘sell more stuff’ won’t make you stand out. 

Proving your promise 

Another tip is to hold fire on proof points like capabilities, clients and case studies – they’re the ‘how’ that follow the all-important ‘what’.

Until you’ve stated your proposition, how you do it lacks context. You’re selling a meal, not the ingredients. 

Back in the day, an ‘advertising’ agency buying an internal comms specialist would have confused their positioning. Were they still an ad agency? An internal-and-external brand specialist? Or – kill me now – the world’s first ‘Intern-vertising™’ agency?

But with a modern proposition around ‘reinvigorating retail brands’, acquiring skills that impact shop floor staff would add valuable proof.

Their ailing clients don’t care about positioning, as long as that promise is kept. A rose by any other name would still stop my retail chain going bust. 

So once your outcome captures attention, that’s when proof matters. And it’s not just what you say, but also what you do. Your entire agency customer experience should substantiate your proposition. 

Be hard to ignore

Ultimately, demonstrating your expertise in delivering an outcome is what creates standout. That generates scarcity, which gives you leverage to get upstream, thrive on the pitching merry-go-round and command a premium. 

Endlessly rephrasing your discipline will never create standout. But defining your own ‘Market of One’ certainly will.

Although proposition development can be tricky, searching for a unique positioning will drive you to distraction. So accept the fact that all the good words are taken. Just be comfortable with the least worst option. 

The next time your Board is arguing over your discipline, remember that clients don’t give a toss. They ignore dozens of positioning variations every day. But if your offer is exactly what they need, then they won’t ignore the right proposition.

 

Image: Robert F