Differentiation Is Just As Important in Corporate Public Relations

Companies spend a lot of effort, time and money differentiating themselves from competitors for marketing purposes.

Don’t make the assumption that differentiation is something that only advertisers need worry about. It goes right to the core of answering the public relations question: Why should anyone care about what we have to say?

And it goes right to the core business strategies around what business you’re in, and what you deliver to customers.

In a great think piece, Kevin Kelly examines the homogeneity that comes from instant access to a world full of easily distributed information. So many things have become commodities.

His advice: When copies are free, you need to sell something that cannot be copied.

He offers eight examples of “generatives,” values that can’t be copied:

1. Immediacy – People will pay for something that is so new it cannot be found elsewhere.
2. Personalization – Otherwise known as stickiness, a relationship evolves between supplier and customer that increases value by customizing the product or service to best match needs.
3. Interpretation – Making sense of information or tools that are freely available is a service people will pay for.
4. Authenticity – Some people are willing to pay for the peace of mind of knowing that what they’re buying isn’t a knock-off, or a crappy reproduction.
5. Accessibility – People are more mobile than they’ve ever been, and they want to be able to access their information and entertainment wherever they happen to be.
6. Embodiment - You may be able to download Prince’s music at a discount, or even for free, but if you want the experience of seeing him live, you have to pay the piper.
7. Patronage - (Hey, you’re going to have to read Kelly’s post if you want all seven descriptions in full).

According to Kelly, a new skillset and a new way of promoting yourself is necessary in a world where content can be copied (often stolen) and distributed widely. Instead of trying to find ways to stop people from sharing what they like, find a way to ride the wave of attention that sharing can bring.

That’s where some smart public relations work can attract that attention, and influence potential customers.

But first, you must figure out what it is about you, your organization, your products or your services that is unique and “generative.”

Photo by Luis Carlo Torres via iStockphoto.

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