Beware of the duh factor

I recently saw an ad with the tagline "the difference is our people!" It doesn’t matter what business it was for because many businesses claim this as their unique point of difference. No offense to all of the businesses that think this is what makes them stand out from their competition — but duh. Everyone claims that they have great peopler, ergo great customer service. And the truth is…most of them do. To break through the marketingplace, we need to be about more than good customer service.

Why? Don’t people want good service. Sure. But they also expect it. It’s a duh. A given. If you don’t provide good customer service, you’re not going to keep their business. Don’t you think most businesses are hustling to serve their customer? That’s not a brand — it is a cost of doing business. An expectation.

Another popular duh is competency. Companies will tout their expertise as though their competitors are completely incompetent. The reality is that’s just not true. To create marketing materials or ads that claim "we’re good at what we do" is a waste of resources. Again, your consumer assumes you’re qualified to do your job. If you weren’t, you wouldn’t be even under consideration. Skill-level or competency is a show me message, not a tell me. It’s a little like honesty. If someone has to keep telling you that they’re honest, pretty soon you wonder why they are making such a big deal about it.

So why do companies rely on "duh" level taglines or promises? Because it’s easy. It doesn’t require digging deeper to find out what really does set them apart from their competition. Double-check yourself. Are you taking the easy way out and making a duh promise?