When we think about a strategy for a brand, we generally think first about researching our competitors. While this is right in the sense that it allows us to find opportunities and gaps where we can compete more easily, the best thing a brand can do is not create a strategy based on the gaps that exist in the market — but on the characteristics that the brand, the business, the business owner, and all the people working in that business have. Because if you use those characteristics, you will create a personality that is impossible to copy, since there is nothing more unique on the planet than a human being.
Look Inward Before You Look at the Competition
The best inspiration you can draw on to create a strategy is research — but within that research, investigate what characteristics make you, as a human being, completely different from everyone else. In this moment, when it is very fashionable to use artificial intelligence tools every day, and now that these tools have memory, it is quite practical to ask the tool what makes you completely unique compared to what exists in the market. The AI has observed your patterns, your language, your way of thinking. Use that.
There is nothing more unique on the planet than a human being. Build your strategy around that.
Why the Copycat Strategy Always Hits a Wall
Something you will see a great deal in the business world is a very common strategy: simply copying a successful person so that you don't have to do the work. You don't have to struggle — you just latch onto a brand like a parasite and copy exactly what they are doing to gain a piece of the market they already built. All the innovation, all the investment in research and development — you save yourself the trouble, because you are simply waiting for someone else to do it, and then you copy them.
But if the characteristics of your business are so unique that no other human being — or group of human beings — shares those same characteristics anywhere on the planet, this copying strategy hits a wall. It becomes very difficult to overcome, because what makes you different cannot be transferred. It cannot be acquired. It can only be lived.
If your uniqueness is tied to who you are as a human being, copying you to take over the market hits a wall that is very difficult to overcome.
The Wow Agency: Three Pillars No One Can Replicate
At The Wow Agency, we have a rather unique strategy that illustrates this principle in practice. On one hand, we have a track record of 23 years working in the best branding agencies in the world. On the other hand, I, as the founder, had the opportunity to study mechatronics engineering before entering the world of agencies — and that has always given a technological characteristic to everything I do. At the beginning, this wasn't particularly relevant because digital marketing wasn't the dominant force it is today. But now that digital marketing is where the largest investment exists, having such a deep technological component — the kind that only comes from engineering — ends up being very unique and very relevant.
Finally, something I did as an advertising professional — even though I came from the world of branding agencies — was discovering, many years ago, how performance marketing works. Not just learning the platforms, but diving deep into the code to understand how it truly operates at a technical level. And these three characteristics — globally awarded branding, an engineering and technology foundation, and a performance understanding with the depth of a programmer — create a profile for our agency that is completely unique in the market and very difficult to replicate, although many have tried.
The Practical Takeaway
The exercise is simple: before you map the competitive landscape, map yourself. What is your professional background? What unusual combinations of disciplines have shaped how you think? What has your life journey given you that most people in your industry simply don't have? The answers to those questions are the real foundation of your strategy — not the gaps someone else left in the market. Build from the inside out, and you build something that cannot be copied.