Zag: Good versus Different?

Business Week has a nice interview with Marty Neumeier who talks about his excellent new book Zag.

I picked it up a week or two ago. Whilst the book doesn't contain that many bleeding edge ideas, Zag succeeds in challenging you to rethink the way you go about differentiating brands. Neumeier's main strength is his ability to communicate complex ideas provocatively without resorting to jargon or needless waffle. You will find most of the same ideas in Disruption and Big Moo but don't let that stop you reading this.

As BW points out, "one of the most thought-provoking elements in the book is a Good Versus Different graph, in which you plot products into four quadrants based on their performance along the two axes of good (high quality, workmanship, aesthetics, etc.) and different (surprising, fresh, offbeat, etc.)."

"The surprise is that products in the Not Good and Not Different quadrant, obviously a bad place to be, tend to test well in market research, while products in the best quadrant of Good and Different tend to test poorly."

If your product is advertising you will no doubt recognise the truth in this statement.

I'm always a sucker for a 2x2 matrix (I'm one of the sad people who bought and read this book) so I'm bound to start using this. It will be particularly useful for encouraging clients to be braver and bolder methinks.

I also like the simplicity (if not the grammar) of his test for "onliness"...

Can you complete this sentence? Our brand is the only _______ that ________ in a way that makes you unique and compelling.