'Differentiate or Die' by Jack Trout
'Differentiate or Die' by Jack Trout

The core message of this book, which is outlined in the first chapter, is a good one: in the modern world, we are overloaded with choices and companies competing for our attention, so to be successful, you must somehow stand out and be different.

However, after that, the book seems to meander in random directions, without any clear structure. Moreover, the advice isn’t particularly actionable. There are lots of examples of differentiators that do and don’t work, but also many counter-examples where the opposite happened, and no real guidance as to how to find one that’ll work for your company. Also, the book feels dated, with much of the advice targeted at massive corporations (those at the scale of a Walmart or Coca Cola) and perhaps not being a good fit for the modern world of hypergrowth startups / Internet / tech, and showing this lack of awareness in some nonsense predictions (e.g., the book confidently claims webmd would lose to other medical websites who have better differentiators and makes fun of all-in-one devices like the Apple Newton, claiming convergence never works—and who would ever want a single device for messaging, media, and phone anyway?)

So, for the most part, I didn’t get much value out of this book, beyond a handful of minor insights:

  1. Aim to own a product attribute—essentially, a single word—in the mind of your customers (e.g., Volvo used to own “safety”). For example, list the 10 most important attributes of your category and have customers rate each competitor on that attribute. Which company owns which attribute? Which one do you own?

  2. Don’t be afraid to sell directly and even brag. Creative and entertaining advertising may be fun, but isn’t nearly as effective as clarity of differentiation and logical selling points.

  3. What you market, what you sell, and and what you make money on can all be different. For example, Burger King can market flame grilled burgers; once people are in the restaurant, Burger King can also sell lots of French fries and soda; and most of the profit margin may come from the soft drinks. But just because you make your money on soda doesn’t mean you need to market soda! Instead, focus on getting people in the door.

  4. If everyone else is doing it—don’t.

Rating: 3 stars