Memorable brands sit at an intersection

I’ve recently been doing a bit of a purge on who I follow on my (personal) Instagram account. I didn’t realise how many ‘influencers’ I followed, and began quickly picking who to unfollow and who I would keep engaging with. After scrolling through a borderline embarrassing number of ‘followings’ (what even is the right term for that?), I took a moment to try to reflect on why I kept some, and unfollowed others.

I broadly put it down to the fact that the ones I kept:

• Owned a category. I knew what they stood for or what they were about, whether that was a big issue or not.

• Had a clear point of view on that subject.

• Actually had a difference to every other creator on the platform.

This definitely didn’t equate to the influencers I ‘kept’ owning a ‘heavy’ category. Some that I continue to engage with include:

• Mia McGrath (@miarose_mcgrath): Defined the ‘frugal chic’ aesthetic. Promoting a lifestyle of living luxuriously, but spending intentionally.

• Bethan McGinley (@bethanmcginley): Combines fashion and politics through her series of getting dressed whilst breakding down the news.

• Jennifer Mannion (@jennyyyy_fit) : Founder of runners and stunners. Promoting girls running at all paces and abilities.

• Sim Kaur (@friendsthatinvest): Podcast, newsletter, and book about getting girls into investing and finance

What’s interesting is that all these influencers own a unique intersection. Rather than fitting themselves into just one category (“fashion”, “running”, “marketing), they’ve brought together two or three elements to create a space that only they can sit in.

Every brand that wants to be successful needs to do this, too.

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You need to find your intersection, not your niche.

So many brands try to categorise themselves into a niche or a neat box they belong in. But when you sit in just one category, you’ll inevitably have lots of competitors. Lots of businesses can do the same thing, so multiple brands will compete to be the same solution for the same customers.

This isn’t what successful businesses do.

The most successful businesses are the ones that define their own intersection. Rather than fitting into one category, they bring together two or three ideas to create a unique intersection that only their brand occupies. In other words, they build a category of their own.

Take GoPro. Rather than competing with every camera brand, they built their business at the unique intersection of wearable cameras and extreme sports. And then marketed this intersection really really well. Helped by the fact that the founder, Nick Woodman, was a surfer himself, they were the first to really showcase surfers, skydivers, mountain bikers all capturing moments that no other camera could. They weren’t competing with any of the traditional camera brands because they were occupying an entirely different space.

This is a similar story to Liquid Death. I only came across these recently, but they’re basically just a canned water brand. How do they stand out in that market? They own the intersection of canned water, and heavy metal culture. A combination that is very hard to replicate and very hard to forget. They own this completely, selling a speaker ‘urn’ (literally a speaker shaped as an urn), and a ‘flasket’ (a flask shaped like a casket), and using clever copy like “murder your thirst” and “killer merch”. Incredible. The perfect example of using a unique intersection to stand out in a category where everything else looks the same.

Liquid Death homeapge

This pattern is everywhere

It’s so easy to fall into the trap of naming your USPs and coming up with a list of things that are just slightly better than your competitors. How many brands have you seen talk about how they’re the same results but faster, The same results but easier. Likely a lot, but what’s more likely is you can’t actually name a single one. Because they’re doing nothing to make themselves stand out.

Apple hasn’t become Apple by saying their cameras are better, or their laptops are faster. They probably aren’t, but that’s not the point. Apple owned the new (at the time) intersection of technology, design, and creativity. Allowing them to resonate with creative professionals rather than generic tech ‘nerds’ (who at the time, all tech was positioned for). Opening up a whole new market and a whole new space.

The new Apple Neo is a perfect example of a product that effortlessly sits in their intersection (not made for the code-heavy tech bro)

Once you start looking for it, you can see the intersection in almost every successful brand.

Duolingo combines language learning and gaming.

Oatly combines milk alternatives, environmental activism, and humour.

Lego combines toys with storytelling.

But how do you define your own?

Uncovering your intersection

I usually recommend that your intersection should be a combination of two or three things. This is generally the sweet spot because it’s easy for your customers to identify and recall, and it still helps you cast a relatively wide net by bringing in people who resonate with one specific element without alienating them with too many other focuses.

Through my very unofficial research of breaking down my favourite brand intersections, these work best when you pick one option from two or all of the three categories below:

1. The capability or product you own.

The easiest starting point, and the easiest way to make sure your intersection is actually relevant. You have to care about the thing you do, and do it well, because if you don’t care then why should your customers?

This can be broad, covering your whole industry. For example, Tony’s Chocolonelys sell chocolate (but their intersection combines chocolate with activism and humour),

Apple is tech, Duolingo is language learning, you get the point. Name your industry.

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2. The world you care about.

Some of my examples have had a bit of a heavy care, in the sense of Oatly advocating for environmental problems and Tony’s Chocolonely advocating for slavery in the Cocoa industry. Choosing a ‘heavy’ topic only works if you genuinely care about it and are genuinely advocating for it, else you’ll only harm yourself by participating in “fake activism”.

But it doesn’t have to be heavy. Duolingo wanted to make language learning accessible to all. Hello Fresh wanted to reduce food waste. Lego wanted to use play to develop the builders of tomorrow. This is ultimately your mission statement or your unique take that differs from the others in your same ‘capability’ element.

Oatly combine oat milk (product), climate change (their care), and humour (emotion) to create their unique intersection.

3. The culture or emotion you bring.

How you show up is a huge part of your intersection, and is probably the part that makes you most uniquely you. M&S and Aldi both sell supermarket food, both have similar values, but it’s Aldi’s humour that makes them entirely separate from M&S.

It’s the same with RyanAir. RyanAir and Easy Jet both sell flights, both care about them being at accessible prices (although their carry on bag charge would say differently…), but there’s a reason why RyanAirs’ jokes and humour across their socials land so differently to Easy Jets. RyanAir absolutely own the space of bringing together cheap flights and humour.

Your emotion doesn’t have to be humour of course. And I probably wouldn’t recommend it is, as humour can be a very difficult emotion for brands to land, and only works for certain types of brands (usually cheaper).

It can be any emotion or culture, as long as you own it correctly. Red Bull absolutely owns adventure, combining extreme sports and energy drinks in a way no other brand can match.

Oatly really nicely balances their environmental activism with humour to still make them an accessible brand.

Four Seasons is known for its exceptionally personal service, pairing this with the consistent luxury in their hotels to make the prices justified (coming from someone whose never stayed at one).

So don’t worry about narrowing yourself down to one thing. Work out what capabilities you offer and what beliefs you have, and combine them. Think about the intersection where your two or three most important ideas meet, and use that intersection to create a category of your own. Because that’s when your brand becomes much harder to copy, and much easier to recognise.

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