What is different about your business? #lateralthinking #marketing #leadership

5 Jun 2026 · 1 min

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1:19

Paul Sloane argues your business needs something only you can do. He points to a New York ice cream shop with a giant stuffed polar bear at the entrance that became social media gold, and Virgin's reliance on Richard Branson's personality. Find or create what competitors can't copy, then build everything around it.

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If you're in business, particularly if you're selling to consumers, it's important to be able to complete this sentence: only we can. What I mean by that is what differentiates you from your competitors? You know, if I had opened a new ice cream parlour in New York, it could be the best ice cream parlour, it could offer the best choice of flavours, but it's just another ice cream parlour. But if I made it different, if I had, say, a giant stuffed polar bear, a real polar bear that was once alive but now stuffed in the entrance looming up there, the kids would come in and they'd be in awe of it. And people would say, have you seen this new ice cream parlor that's got a polar bear in? And it could feature in all of your social media posts and your advertising and so on. It makes you different. And you need something that makes you different. Only we can— can you answer that question? The Virgin Group, only they can produce Richard Branson, Sir Richard Branson, and they feature him in a lot of their gimmicks and marketing stunts and so on because they're the only company that can do it. So is there something that you can do which your competitors can't do? And if so, you should major on that. And if you don't have such a feature, perhaps you should find one, even if it's a gimmick like a giant stuffed polar bear.