The blogger re-emerges.

Readers will recall I’ve been writing a book about complexity and business. What readers will not know is that in May of last year I had a major epiphany about the issues and that led to 9 months of intense re-write. While quite productive for the book, I had little energy left for blog posts. Fortunately, the book is now undergoing serious review at an excellent publisher — a review hopefully leading to publication — so I can return focus to the blog. And having removed roughly 40,000 words from the book in the past nine months, I have some interesting fodder for discussion.

Loving calm, then, I decided to avoid hot topics like politics, taxes, religion, and pineapple on pizza in this return. Instead I chose the always peaceful issue of differentiation and distinctiveness. I mean, how could that be controversial?

Okay, it’s not a peaceful topic as it led to serious wars in marketing Twitter a few years back. We return to the topic, though, because complexity offers potent insights which were missing entirely from those wars.

Our first skirmish (this post) explores how social sciences ignore the effects of time and what we learn about differentiation and distinction when we return time to our considerations. Our second skirmish will look at each idea as an emergent result and discover they are far different. In the final post, full battle is engaged based on the excellent research from the Ehrenberg Bass Institute (EBI) which started the controversy. In the end, though, what we learn through complexity leads me to disagree with both EBI’s conclusions and traditional marketer conclusions. (Guess I won’t make anyone happy.)

A Scientific Reduction: Ignoring Time

Traditional science reduces problems to simplify them. This is usually envisioned as taking apart problems to study elements in isolation. Those familiar with complexity science know that such reductions are errors when situations are complex meaning they depend on how parts interact and adapt leading a whole result to emerge, When valid, reduction is a powerful tool. When invalid, it produces grave errors. There is no middle ground.

What is often missed — especially in social sciences — is the hidden and unremarked reduction which removes time from consideration. While time is a continually interacting part of the natural world, it can make equations impossible to solve as well as highly unstable. Careful observers, though, might wonder how this can work as every natural process happens within time.

Sometimes assumptions can be made based on expectations of behavioral limits in order to remove time. Take structural analysis for example where a bridge is being analyzed for structural strength. If we can assume that applying a force to our bridge leads it to deform but it returns to its original shape after those forces are removed, the equations for deformation under that force can ignore time. Such deformation is called “elastic” because the bridge returns to its original shape. Interestingly, the eigenvalues of these same equations also tell us the vibration frequencies or modes which could lead to feedback loops destroying a bridge.

Structures, though, do NOT always return to their original shape. When they don’t, the deformations are called “plastic” in reference to how plastic remains bent if pushed too far. Once material becomes plastic, its properties change so we  cannot generally analyze plastic deformations without time. That makes it far harder, less accurate, and less stable to predict plastic deformations.

Time is sometimes removed in other ways. When behaviors are reliably cyclical frequency methods like Fourier transformations can remove explicit consideration of time. And while we rarely stop to think about what we are doing, statistics and probabilities remove time’s effects by aggregating samples across a wide range of times.

Any choice to ignore time, then, ignores some behaviors. If those behaviors are unimportant, the choice is smart. The choice is not always smart — especially in social sciences.

Using “Substance” Assumptions to Ignore Time in Business

Social sciences remove time without fanfare by assuming parts are separate and also stable through time. In my last posts about complexity I noted this approach is referred to in pscyhcology as a “substance ontology.” With substance assumptions, we take behaviors which are active in time then turn them into nouns or substances and isolate each noun for study.

So, for example, when we talk about “a business” or “the business” we take a vast range of actions (verbs) and lump them together into a noun. This is why I prefer to write about “doing business” because it is active — full of potential for robust and vital energy.

We regularly noun-ize business activities. Yet a company’s profit changes second by second. And while we think of margins as “things,” they are a fluid and ill-behaved idea which depends on many interacting choices like how overhead is allocated. Even more fundamentally, demand varies continually over time yet it is treated as a substance. The list could go on.

We also noun-ize Distinctiveness and Differentiation leading to the impression that they are similar with respect to time. They aren’t.

Distinctiveness

In marketing we attach the quality of “distinctive” to summarize whether the gestalt emerging from packaging, logos, and other “distinctive assets” make the product readily identifiable by customers. A distinctive product is easily identified in a store, on a shelf, on a website, and in the customer mind.

It should be clear, then, that distinctiveness only matters if it is managed in ways which make it stable over time. An example of this stability is seen in the illustration with 100 years of Morton Salt’s icon of a girl with umbrella. By staying distinctive in stable ways, companies find their sales increase because shoppers can quickly identify products or, when searching, quickly recall the products they “like.”

When distinctiveness develops (or emerges) over time, then, it should follow a path like that in the second illustraion. For another example, reviewing Alka-Seltzer ads from the early 1960s until 1980 we discover the “plop, plop, fizz, fizz” sounds emerge — becoming more prominent over time. From any company’s viewpoint, then, market distinctiveness should grow to become mostly stable (not entirely stable, though — a little variation isn’t bad). Once mostly stable, the company must manage this distinctivenss for the tremendous asset it is — an asset stable through time.

Differentiation — The Company View

When a company undertakes explicit differentiation they act to ensure their product is different from other products in the market in what they deliver to customers and how they deliver those.

Considered along with time, it quickly becomes clear that difference is not at all similar to distinctiveness. Let’s start by considering the effect of time on differentiation. From the company’s point of view there is a continual process of establishing difference, seeing that difference ebb, then re-establishing difference. In the next illustration, then, we imagine a new product arriving on the market which is different in meaningful ways. As its difference ebbs, intermediate updates help keep it different. Eventually, though, perception of difference can only be reestablished with a major update — and the cycle repeats. The degree to which a product is different depends on reestablishing newly meaningful difference over time.

Why would difference fade? Partly because competition blurs differences. Difference also changes as culture evolves and when customer experiences lead what was once different to be no longer meaningful.

So while distinctiveness is managed to be stable, difference can only be managed through a continual process of change and evolution.

Differentiation — The Customer View

Things change far more dramatically when we consider differentiation from the customer’s viewpoint. First, whether a product is perceived as “different” and whether that difference is meaningful to customers is a reallity which must emerge within a customer’s mind.

Then, considering the point of view of an individual customer, the effect of time becomes even more problematic.

• Customers likely are conscious of whether a product is different for only a short time. Why would their sense of the difference go away? It takes too much mental energy to maintain a conscious awareness of differences in products. Someone shopping for a new car, then, might retain a conscious sense of difference for 30 to 45 days while someone buying chewing gum might retains that conscious sense for only a few minutes.
• We seem to process difference in the ways Jacques Ellul suggests that someone seeing a factual ad for a car engine will summarize what they take away in an emotion — perhaps “I like that car because it has a great motor.” We found this with the many ads my company created for new products which were based on facts and demonstration but left behind emotional conclusions like “I want to get one of those.”

With respect to time, then, the second illustration above may best summarize the single customer’s view. For a short time “differentiation” is highly present in their mind. What remains in their mind over the long period, though, is a flavor of a “preference” or “tendency” toward a product and/or brand. Yet it appears that this preference wil only develop because they considered the product to be different when they evaluated it (even though they won’t remember specifics at later dates).

A Few Conclusions

What early conclusions might we draw from this discussion?

• Substance approaches are wrong about both distinctiveness and differentiation — but they are less wrong about distinctiveness. Neither are substances in the sense of solid, reliable, and long term stable.

• While both are emergent results (the topic of our next skirmish) the workings leading to distinction are easier to understand and perceive in action than are the workings of differentiation.

• Both are of significant importance and each is dramatically different.

• Traditional views of differentiation are misguided at best and often misleading in the worst cases. Especially, when we explore how desire for a product emerges, we will see how the idea of a USP fails to comprehend how marketing works. While it delivered useful results within specific TV advertising forms, it is a pattern only of that situation and not a comprehensive global marketing truth.

The Unspoken Issue: Product vs Brand

Marketing Twitter’s wars around these ideas were never clear about whether products or brands were being discussed. Yet, as we shall continue to learn, this matters a great deal. In fact, distinction is primarily a brand issue. When brand distinction is clear then products within that brand benefit as well.

Differentiation is nearly the opposite. Difference has the most value for products as difference is critical in leading to “I want that.” It is a stretch, though, to believe any brand can argue that it is, itself, different. Brands build when their products are each different in ways which are complementary. The sum of those differences tends to be “I like that brand” or “I prefer that brand.”

Next week, we will continue our discussion with a further skirmish considering how each emerges. In our third week, then, prepare the fireworks as the full battle will be engaged. Until next week, then, be well and don’t let the chaos get you down.

©2025 Doug Garnett — All Rights Reserved

Through my company, Protonik LLC, I consult with companies as they design and bring to market new and innovative products. I am writing a book exploring the value of complexity science for driving business success. Protonik also produces marketing materials including documentaries, websites, and blogs. As an adjunct instructor at Portland State University I teach marketing, consumer behavior, and advertising.

You can read more about these services and my unusual background (math, aerospace, supercomputers, consumer goods & national TV ads) at www.Protonik.net. Roughly once a month, Shahin Khan and I discuss current issues in marketing on our podcast The Marketing Podcast available on Google, Spotify, the OrionX website, and Apple Podcast. 

Marketing Strategy