Buyers can't tell our messaging apart from our competitors.

Much of B2B messaging fails because businesses optimize for clarity when they should be optimizing for memorability. We'll iterate and tweak copy for weeks, you know, we'll A/B test headlines and maybe even throw in a quote from Gartner to make everything sound even more plausible, but we're using the same words our competitors use. Half the bit time because verbiage has to pass legal review and we don't want to scare off the sales team. But clarity without distinctiveness creates invisibility. Buyers can't tell our messaging apart from the messaging of our competitors. Yes, we've achieved perfect comprehension, but at the cost of zero recall. If you walk through any B2B website, everyone's enabling, everyone's empowering, everyone's transforming. It's the same old power verbs and benefit statements. Even the AI image isn't much better than a standard stock photo of a culturally and gender-diverse team collaborating over a computer screen. Well, whoopee friggin' do. We've professionalized ourselves into sameness. We've got frameworks for messaging and templates for value propositions, but when everyone follows best practices, we all end up in the same place. Our brains notice what's different over what's technically accurate. Every time we mirror competitor language, we're training buyers to see our category as interchangeable. Procurement becomes a conversation about price and who got there first. We complain about commoditization, but we're the ones who created it. The usual knee-jerk response to this is to add more specific— specificity, more technical details, or more feature lists. But buyers aren't confused, they're just bored. They understand what we do, it's just they don't care enough to remember it. The opposite of clear isn't always unclear. Sometimes it's just interesting. Sometimes it's the only thing that makes someone stop scrolling. But the concept of creating distinctive messaging scares us to our very core. Someone from product might push back. The C-suite might ask an uncomfortable question or two. So instead of having to confront that, we sand off anything vaguely sharp and ship something that's safe. Nobody hates it, but nobody remembers it either. The approval process guarantees this outcome. Legal hedges every claim. Product wants more features mentioned. Sales needs more objections addressed. Each round strips out another bit of personality. Until what's left is thoroughly vetted and as a result is about as interesting as a wet flannel. Bland messaging costs more than we think. Every generic touchpoint trains buyers to tune us out. We're not building awareness, we're teaching the market that our category doesn't deserve attention. Who actually breaks through? I think it's the businesses that are willing to sound like somebody instead of like a committee. Organizations that aren't afraid of potentially alienating certain buyers in order to better connect with others. Firms that would rather half their audience remember them than have everyone forget them. Buyers scroll past our stuff without batting an eyelid. We call it brand awareness, and then we wonder why our pipeline looks so anorexic. The problem isn't comprehension. Buyers understand us perfectly. They forget us because we sound like the provider they spoke to yesterday and the one they'll speak to tomorrow. Safe wins in the approval meetings, but distinctive wins in the market. We keep optimising for the former and then wondering why the latter isn't working. If you like what you heard, please pass it on. I'm not saying I'm right, I'm saying many out there are wrong. Please subscribe, share, comment, whatever works for you. Find out more at kickzino.com. That's K-E-X-I-N-O. Hope to see you again here soon.