Have you ever noticed how a crowd exits a packed venue? Even when there are three exits most people take the middle one. You see this play out in business too. Take a walk through the running shoe department in any sports store, and you’ll find little to differentiate one shoe from another. When one brand starts designing and manufacturing with a new kind of material others follow suit. The same patterns emerge in marketing.

Every brand aspires to be unique, to stand out and create something meaningful—yet when it comes to executing on those aspirations we imitate, dumb down and deviate towards the mediocre mean. We head where everyone else is headed because the uncrowded edges feel risky. In fact, the opposite is true. You stand out when you stand for something— when you go to a place your peers or competitors aren’t prepared to go.

Image by Zoi Koraki.