Different

Escaping the Competitive Herd

By: Youngme Moon

Narrated by: Bernadette Dunne

Why trying to be the best...competing like crazy...makes you mediocre.

Every few years a book - through a combination of the author’s unique voice, storytelling ability, wit, and insight - simply breaks the mold. Bill Bryson’s A Walk in the Woods is one example. Richard Feynman’s Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman! is another. Now comes Youngme Moon’s Different, a book for “people who don’t read business books”. Actually, it’s more like a personal conversation with a friend who has thought deeply about how the world works...and who gets you to see that world in a completely new light.

If there is one strain of conventional wisdom pervading every company in every industry, it’s the absolute importance of “competing like crazy”. Youngme Moon’s message is simply “Get off this treadmill that’s taking you nowhere. Going tit for tat and adding features, augmentations, and gimmicks to beat the competition has the perverse result of making you like everyone else”. Different provides a highly original perspective on what it means to offer something that is meaningfully different - different in a manner that is both fundamental and comprehensive.

Youngme Moon identifies the outliers, the mavericks, the iconoclasts - the players who have thoughtfully rejected orthodoxy in favor of an approach that is more adventurous. Some are even “hostile”, almost daring you to buy what they are selling. The MINI Cooper was launched with fearless abandon: “Worried that this car is too small? Look here. It’s even smaller than you think".

These are players that strike a genuine chord with even the most jaded consumers. In fact, almost every success story of the past two decades has been an exception to the rule. Simply go to your computer and compare AOL and Yahoo! with Google. The former pile on feature upon feature to their home pages, while Google is like an austere boutique, dominating a category filled with “extras". Different shows how to succeed in a world where conformity reigns...but exceptions rule.

©2010 Youngme Moon (P)2010 Random House

Winning at Marketing by Breaking the Rules

"Different" is probably only of interest to people involved in marketing.

Through a variety of examples author Youngme Moon illustrates that breaking the rules of conventional marketing wisdom is often the right path for companies to follow. All too often marketers and senior management aim for the big middle, but in markets where the middle is already reasonably well served, this is often a mistake. Instead, radical positionings can be far more effective. For success in the marketplace, it doesn't matter how many people think your product is okay. What matters is how many people love your product. Moon describes and gives examples of ways this can be achieved by breaking various rules of marketing, such as taking what may be considered a product's weakness and exaggerating it and promoting it as a positive feature; whereas conventional marketing wisdom would dictate playing down the negative attribute and focusing on other attributes.

If you're a marketer, this is a great read which may stimulate your marketing thinking.

Different is different in every GREAT way

If you could sum up Different in three words, what would they be?

insightful, fun, creative

Any additional comments?

Loved her approach to writing this book - different than any other book I've read and one that should be on the must read list for all entrepreneurs and investors

different is a different plan for success.

Would you consider the audio edition of Different to be better than the print version?

I always like audible version better.

What was one of the most memorable moments of Different?

I like seeing the thought process of becoming successful, but not following the crowd! Being different can be cool and work!!

Which scene was your favorite?

Discussions of Ikea and Mini cooper

If you were to make a film of this book, what would be the tag line be?

All of you guys follow the cowd and the trends, I'll be over here, being successful!

An enlightening book on marketing

I love books that help you are things in a different way and add you listen based on your own world experience you know the author is correct in their observations. a great read (or listen)

Beautifully explained foundations of marketing

In the sea of shallow books this is a refreshment. I thoroughly enjoyed it. Whoever says this book is "boring" or "too wordy" either has no intelligence or no vocabulary to understand the concepts. It deserves a way higher rating than it has. I am not in the business world, and this taught me so much about the science behind everyday products that I or people around me buy. No wonder she is a Harvard professor, she is world class. I am so glad I found her via Audible, and I wish there are more books like this. Thank you so much!!!

Hard to listen to, very few insights

I love reading books and I love the topic. I had high hopes for this book.

The first thing you need to know is that you should not listen to this book while driving. The narrator could make you go to sleep. Her tone and rhythm are so monotonous I had to really concentrate to the words.

Then, the author is one of those who likes using big words. While my vocabulary, thank good, is ample enough to understand them, she makes every sentence longer and more complex than usual.

Now, combine that with text that is long, slow, full of fluff and with very little emotion and mostly absent of practical value - it is a boring book. I have listened to over 100 audiobooks, this is probably the third I stopped listening to after an hour . I skipped to the beginnings of the other chapters hoping it would get better, but no.

Her example of Yahoo vs Google misses the heart of the story and the reasons why Brin and Paige designed Google they way they did it. The author gets the causality and intent wrong

For the time I invested in this book (about an hour and a half total), I got no value. I am returning it. If you want a book on differentiation may I suggest Differentiate or Die by Jack Trout,.

Waste of Time

I loved the author's comfort with big words, but beyond that the book is painful listening. There are no new ideas here, just different words to describe branding, market life cycles and so forth. If this is the sort of dreck coming out of Harvard Business, it is no wonder we're in the state we're in.