Here are a few of them (responses, not guilt trips):

While I found your article “The Myth of Differentiation” entertaining and somewhat interesting, you unfortunately fell flat in the valiant attempt to prove your point. While you hooked your eager readers like me in the opening paragraph, there simply was not enough substance that followed to solidly prove your underlying premise. 

Where’s the beef? The companies you cited as examples of poor differentiation strategy clearly deserved criticizing. They were indeed off the mark by a mile. But those weak examples alone did not “destroy the myth.”    

Honest differentiation is a powerful marketing tool when properly applied. I’ve used it in my business and have done extremely well financially. It can, and often does, set a service or product apart, giving it an edge in the “positioning of the mind” (Troutt and Reiss). 

Many of us out here love reading your anti-traditional thinking, but back it up with concrete evidence that truly sways opinion.

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Thank you for a clear, common-sense rebuttal to the over-used, over-simplistic differentiation planning framework. The issue that I have with this approach is that differentiation becomes the goal. Being or sounding different for the sake of contrast carries the risk of choosing an ineffective path. Taking the thought to the next level, differentiation isn’t a valid strategy. If competitors are failing to meet market needs, then the strategy is to align products and services to better meet needs. The strategy isn’t to be different, it’s to address voids. 

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Mr. Schultz' blog on the Myth of Differentiation was thought provoking, possibly because I just spent two hours yesterday at a networking event. I often ask prospective clients and agencies how they differentiate, and typically I get similar answers, stated in different ways. After reading this article, I reflected on my ‘elevator pitch’ and quickly realized I can also be placed in the category of uniquely stated sameness.

I do however believe that organizations can and do differentiate, however that differentiation is often based on actual client experiences, not on product or services. It is difficult to articulate in a short elevator pitch, however these experiences can be brought out through examples i.e. “clients tell us they were surprised and delighted by our….” Time for me to rethink my own elevator pitch and website copy and focus more on actual client experiences then interesting and ‘unique’ ways to state what everyone else is already doing. 

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The "need" for differentiation grew so strong because companies thought that customers needed a way to to see them differently from their competitors. For some companies this worked but there are only so many USP's. Eventually all the points that companies used to differentiate themselves actually made them all look the same. Perhaps they should just have asked customers what they wanted in the first place. 

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Your article on differentiation is misleading for small businesses looking for guidance. Being unique, which we all are - and articulating it are two different things. The low quality promotional copy used in your article to illustrate your point is most often written in-house or by hacks. Generalizing from there is...misleading to your readers, particularly when nothing is being offered as an alternate or better way to go. Shame on you!

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In the first part of his two-part “Myth of Differentiation” series, Mr. Schultz muddles the meanings of the words “unique” and “different” and narrowly defines differentiation as a communications process (“differentiating to the client”), ignoring the value of differentiation as a process of introspection—figuring out what makes you different from the competition so that you can better position yourself to your market or client.

First of all, the words “unique” and “different,” while synonyms, do not have identical meanings. In order to be “unique,” something must be different from every other thing in existence. Answering the question, “why are you unique?” is nearly impossible, because the comparison set is so huge—the entire universe. So I think that the word is usually used poorly in marketing, to describe a firm that isn’t really unique (or, at least, probably couldn’t tell you how it’s unique).

But the word “different” sets the bar lower, on a scale we can deal with. Something is different only in terms of how it compares with other things in the same limited category. In thinking of what makes a firm different, we consider the direct competition, and think about what makes us special.

This is an absolutely necessary part of positioning your firm for a market or a specific client. Otherwise, you’re just talking about yourself, without a competitive context, and you have no way of anticipating how effective your words will be in reaching your client. Once you know how you’re different, you don’t necessarily need to say to the client “We’re different because…” but your understanding of how you’re different can inform ALL of your communications.

I agree with Mr. Schultz that calling yourself "different" or "unique" does not make you either one, but I do believe that an introspective process (informed by research, of course) about how you compare to your competition is invaluable in developing client-focused messages that differentiate your firm from the competition. The real problem isn’t with the words, it’s with using them incorrectly to describe things that aren’t actually different or unique.