According to data from the US census bureau, in the year 2023, a record-breaking 5,481,437 new businesses were created in the United States alone. That means on average, nearly 457,000 startups were created each month in the United States.
To avoid giving you math anxiety—as well as disincentivizing your own entrepreneurship endeavors, I’ll avoid telling you how many startups are currently launching in the country each day in 2024 (it's reportedly even more than last year).
To be clear, my intent with imparting those statistics isn’t to discourage you from launching or persevering your startup. To the contrary, the purpose of highlighting those numbers is simply to convey not just how easy it is to start a business these days, but also just how crowded the industry that your startup either currently belongs to or aspires to belong to—will be in the near future.
Which is why today, more so than ever, it is imperative that you build a brand that is truly remarkable in order to stand out from the crowd.
What your startup must have to become truly remarkable
Let’s keep it all the real here, even if your startup were to offer consumers the most innovative, efficient, low-cost, or life-changing products or services in its respective industry—we both know that it would only be a matter of time before another business would copy your formula and put their own twist on it.
It is for that particular reason, your startup’s brand must be more remarkable than the actual products or services that it provides its audience.
An indispensable component when building a remarkable brand is to ensure that your brand has its own worldview. What's more, consistently articulating that worldview to its audience.
If you’re wondering just what a brand’s worldview consists of, author of the best-selling book, Purple Cow: Transform Your Business by Being Remarkable, Seth Godin, explains it excellently in his book, This is Marketing: You Can’t Be Seen Until You Learn to See.
“Just as you can group people by the color of their eyes or the length of their ring fingers, you can group them based on the stories they tell themselves. Cognitive linguist George Lakoff calls these clumps worldviews. A worldview is the shortcut, the lens each of us uses when we see the world.”
Godin further explained that, “Loyal Fox News viewers have a worldview. So do fox hunters. So do people who show up at the midnight screening of The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Everyone deserves to be treated as an individual, with dignity and respect for their choices. But as marketers, we must begin with a worldview, and invite people who share that worldview to join us."
Identifying your brand’s worldview
Identifying your brand’s worldview is a lot like identifying a philosophy that you’ll choose to live your life by—it must be something that is emotive to your brand—and more importantly—something that the tribe your brand seeks to serve could passionately identify with.
For example, in 1976, some 10 years after the company was founded, the American apparel brand Vans, began using their now iconic “Off The Wall” slogan; which refers to slang used by skateboarders at the time when performing their tricks in empty swimming pools.
Since then, skateboarders from all over the world have gravitated towards the Vans brand on an emotional level. And it’s not because of some technological reason like Vans having a patented sneaker that skateboarders couldn’t find anywhere else.
It’s because “Off The Wall” is more than just a cool slogan to Vans—it’s their worldview.
A worldview that has played an integral role in helping the brand resonate with both youth and street culture. Which is something that the brand proudly states on their website.
“To us, “Off The Wall” is a state of mind. It means thinking differently and embracing creative self-expression. It’s choosing your own line on your board and in your life. Vans has over 50 years of connecting to youth culture and we continue to advocate for action sports while recognizing the global “Off The Wall” connection between our brand and art, music, and street culture enthusiasts."
Conclusion
This probably comes as no surprise to you, but it isn’t the startups with the best products, services, or even the best business plan that win. As Netflix co-founder Marc Randolph recently said on X, “The truth is that no business plan survives a collision with a real customer.”
Sure, all of those things are important. However, the brands that win and go on to have the biggest cultural impact are those that connect most with their target audience on an emotional level. A great way to do that—while also distinguishing your brand from the myriad of others in its respective industry—is by your brand having a unique worldview.
If you’d like help with establishing your startup’s worldview and finding the ideal audience that it would resonate with on an emotional level—contact us today at Decryption so that together—we’ll ensure that your will advance by doing just that.
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