Better is boring

Better is boring. Better sucks. Better is evolutionary, incremental. Better is moving the sticks a few more yards down the football field. Big deal.

Different is in. Different is sexy. Different is new. Different is exciting. Different is brandable. Different is attention-grabbing. Different is a pattern interrupter that breaks through the attention clutter and gets noticed.

From Seth Godin:

Every day, in almost every office of almost every organization, people are going to get together to make something better.

Making things better is a natural impulse, especially if you want to grow.

Unfortunately, better is not always the right strategy. Better is not always superior to different.

And from Mike Wagner:

We’re bombarded with over 3,000 marketing messages a day – and we remember next to nothing …

and

… as Kathy Sierra has so carefully articulated, the human mind comes with a crap filter. The mind filters out sameness and responds to different.

Different is revolutionary. Different is unexpected. Different is surprising.

In the neverending mashed-up undifferentiated stream of data we experience every day, unexpectedness and surprise are welcome, even craved.

As Chaucer said six hundred years ago: “Men evere seeke newfangle.”

You got it, baby.

[tags] differentiation, branding, innovation, novelty, chaucer, purple cow, seth godin, john koetsier [/tags]