By Peter Getman
Principal Brand Director

I enjoy picturing our clients’ competitors totally miffed and wondering, “How do I tell my CEO this one?“

That’s what you’re really after, isn’t it? You want to beat the snot out of your competition. And so do we.

It’s this competitive charge, this legal high, that can differentiate a branding agency’s creative. To me, the difference between sound strategic creative and game-changing creative starts with an intense competitive spirit.  

Both start with the intellectual curiosity to understand the DNA of a market category, emerging with a kernel of an idea that creates a brand’s value promise.  Both attempt to create a brand position and supporting creative so clear and concise that, in one or two sentences, it

• Recognizes a consumer need
• Addresses that need with a superior offer of value
• Differentiates its offer from competitor offers
• Entices the purchase

But what can make creative work game-changing is when it does all this, while simultaneously repositioning all other brands in your market category ¾again, ideally in one sentence. 

For example, cat litter is estimated to be a $1 billion industry in the U.S. … and growing. The number one reason consumers buy cat litter is for odor control.  Our client, World’s Best Cat Litter™ truly does control odor the best.  The name is already a tagline. So we positioned the brand with the slogan:

Buy the Best. Or Smell the Rest.™

Here’s one big idea—one single line—that repositions the rest of the market category as inferior. Plus, its cadence has phonic stopping power, significantly aiding consumer recall.

No doubt, it is this competitive spirit that keeps us pushing past strategically sound creative to somehow find game-changing creative. In the case of World’s Best Cat Litter™, we not only wanted to beat the snot out of our competition, we wanted to beat the crap out of them. (By the way, the brand’s market share has doubled in less than two years.)