Starbucks has been the only coffee chain since the 90’s where you can legally buy a Frappuccino®. Try selling a whipped iced coffee with that name and you’ll be busted by the intellectual property police. You can’t call your customer service centre the Genius Bar® either, that doesn’t mean you can’t have one.

Even a few short years ago the opportunities to confidently say ‘only we’ abounded. Features and benefits, along with factories and platforms were difficult to duplicate. Today we have one man magazine publishing houses and very different opportunities to tell the ‘only we’ story to our clients and customers.

This might sound like bad news, but actually it’s the best news for tiny app developers, boutique designers and solo-entrepreneurs. The ‘only we’ of the industrial era has become the ‘only I’ and ‘only with us’ of the digitally connected era.

Your ordinary story has always been what makes you extraordinary. You just have more opportunities than ever to see that for yourself and share it with your audience now.

Image by Nathan Makan.