All week, I’ve been talking about branding lessons learned on a recent weekend trip to Broken Bow, Oklahoma.

The summary of these stories is that there are only 4 kinds of marketing pitches that any brands can make:

Alternative, Better, Cheaper, or Different.

1. Alternative – Pepsi is an alternative beverage to Coca-Cola
2. Better – Whole Foods has better quality grocery than Walmart
3. Cheaper – Residence Inn is a cheaper hotel than Ritz-Carlton
4. Different – Disney’s parks are different compared to all other parks

Your marketing needs to pick the alphabet and attribute that resonates the most with your brand. 

You can’t be all of it. 

You have to pick one and go with it.

This is the foundational ABCD of marketing that all brands need to have in place.

Which means that when someone tells you “We have good food and good prices”, they don’t have their foundational marketing built on solid ground.

You can’t be better and different at the same time.