Meaning

My brother's tattoo started my career in marketing Well, started me thinking about resonance and meaning.

And before you ask — I'm not going to tell you what it was. That's not the point.

The point is what I noticed. He didn’t chose it randomly. It meant something. There was a story under the skin, and it was entirely his.

I've since worked out there are two kinds of people who get tattoos. Those who choose something because it looks good — fair enough. And those who choose something because it means something — because they couldn't imagine not having that feeling, memory etched on their body.

Brands work the same way.

Most businesses look the part. Good logo. Decent website. Reasonable tone of voice. But scratch the surface and there's nothing underneath. No story worth telling. No real reason to exist beyond the category they happened to land in.

The brands I've always been drawn to — the ones I've done my best work on — are the second kind. They know what they stand for, or want to stand for and they don't apologise for it. The story isn't something the marketing team invented one afternoon. It runs through the whole thing and you feel it.

That's what differentiation actually is. Not a tagline. Not a positioning statement you revisit every three years. It's the thing that means you couldn't be mistaken for anyone else.

Finding it is the work. The real work. The kind that takes time, honesty, and occasionally an uncomfortable conversation about what a business actually is — versus what it wishes it were.