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Like is a terrible word
Almost every business uses it. Chances are you do as well. It’s a shame it’s not considered a vulgar word in the business world. “Let’s make our website like that company’s. Our logo should look like that one. It’d be cool if our product looked like theirs.”
When your product or website is like someone else’s you now not only have to compete with the company from which you were cloned, you also have to compete with the mind of pre-conditioned consumers.
How many times do you have to read a book or watch a movie to determine whether or not you like it? Once. That’s it.
They’ve heard your story before. In fact, it sounds a lot like… The first experience they had with a product, service, website, company, like yours, left them with a taste in their mouth. It was either great or terrible. Either or will never be forgotten, and anything in between wouldn’t be remembered anyways.
The odds are heavily stacked against you if after telling someone what you do, they say, “oh, like so and so, right?� That company you were just compared to occupies the vacancy in that person’s mind for a category. The amount of time and money needed to one up the company you’re like, to claim the spot in that person’s mind, isn’t worth the trouble.
What you need to do is create a new spot. Invent a reason for them to remember you, in a way that’s never been done before. Be nothing like your competitors. Do the complete opposite. Take your product and mix it with something completely random in the World. Another industry, object, colour, taste, function, benefit, size, etc…
Do what Alex Bogusky defined as creativity:
“…it’s just the putting together of two or more thoughts, ideas, or objects in a way that they haven’t been put together before�.
If you practice that in everything you do, you’ll never have to worry about being like…