✋ If your marketing sounds like everyone else’s… your customers stopped listening a long time ago.
Most brands don’t fail because their product is bad.
They fail because they blend in.
And in 2025—when every founder, CMO, consultant, and agency is repeating the same 12 buzzwords—sounding the same is the fastest way to make your marketing irrelevant.
Today’s edition is about fixing that.
Here’s how to market in a world where everyone sounds the same—and why storytelling + positioning are your only real advantages left.
1. Positioning: The Part Everyone Skips (But Pays For Later)
Most startups jump to content, ads, or influencers before answering this simple question:
“Why would someone pick you over anyone else?”
If the answer is vague (“better quality,” “great service,” “easy to use”), congratulations—you sound exactly like your competitors.
Strong positioning focuses on three things:
1. A specific enemy
It could be slowness, complexity, expensive alternatives, outdated tools, or a broken industry norm.
Clear enemies create clear loyalty.
2. A specific person
Not “everyone with a credit card.”
A very specific situation, moment, frustration, or aspiration.
3. A specific outcome
What happens after they use you?
What changes in their day? Their workflow? Their results?
Real differentiation lives in transformation, not features.
When you nail these three, you stop sounding like a commodity and start sounding like a category.
2. Storytelling: The Shortcut to Memorability
Nobody remembers features.
Everyone remembers stories.
In an oversaturated market, the brands that win are the brands that tell stories that feel personal, emotional, and specific.
Here are the 3 stories every modern marketer should tell:
1. The “Why This Exists” story
Not a fluffy origin myth—your real frustration that made you build something better.
2. The Customer Shift story
Show what changes after customers use your product.
Not “3x faster.”
Show the moment their workflow finally stops feeling chaotic.
3. The Industry Wake-Up story
Make people see the problem differently.
Teach them something they didn't know.
If you change their worldview, you earn their trust.
Great storytelling doesn’t make you louder.
It makes you stickier.
3. The Real Reason Everyone Sounds the Same
Here’s the truth no one likes admitting:
Most brands copy each other because they don’t actually know who they are.
They haven’t made the hard decisions:
Who they’re NOT for
What they WON’T promise
What hill they’re willing to die on
What makes them meaningfully—not artificially—different
If you don’t define your own voice, the market will assign you one.
And you won’t like it.
4. How to Actually Stand Out (A Simple Framework)
Here’s the exercise I use with clients who are drowning in sameness:
✔ Step 1: Identify the clichés in your category
List all the phrases your competitors use.
Your job? Never use them again.
✔ Step 2: Find your “against”
Define what you disagree with in your industry.
Differentiation starts with tension.
✔ Step 3: Create a 7-second narrative**
A simple line that explains:
who you help
what problem you solve
what makes you different
If a stranger can’t repeat it back, it isn’t working.
✔ Step 4: Build your content around 1 worldview
Good marketing is consistency.
Great marketing is one worldview repeated until it becomes yours.
If you can’t explain why you’re different… the market will assume you’re not.
In a world where everyone sounds the same, the brands that win are the ones willing to think and speak differently—consistently, repeatedly, unapologetically.
The future of marketing isn’t “more content.”
It’s unique perspective, strong positioning, and storytelling that people can actually feel.
