{no AI was abused writing this post}

Differentiation is never safe; it takes guts to step over the threshold from what’s proven into what could be. Now is your time to stop copying and start leading!
Being remarkable is always worth the risk.

Brands claim to chase innovation, yet if you examine any industry—from sneakers to software to banking—it’s like déjà vu all over again. Logos, slogans, products, even the way brands talk online, all sound and look eerily similar. In some fast-moving sectors, you could swap out the competitor’s name and few would notice. In fact, I did this once at a company meeting about our brand and the C-suite could not pick our mission and values statement out from our main competitors.

But why do so many companies, even those shouting about creativity, default to blending in? The answer lies in the comfort of what Dave Gray calls “liminal thinking”—the act of challenging what we believe is true and venturing intentionally into uncertain, in-between spaces, or corssing new “thresholds”.

Face it, almost every brand is a safety junky. I know this from experience. They follow “best practices” or hop onto whatever trend seems to be working for others (can you say personalization in any marketing plan?) That’s understandable—being bold feels risky when the stakes are high. Careers, money, reputation, even jobs are on the line! But, as Gray’s book makes clear, if you never challenge your core assumptions or examine the beliefs shaping your culture, you’re always going to play the same old game of corporate tag: chase, copy, blend in, repeat.

The Safe Path Is the Most Crowded One

Liminal thinking is essentially about becoming aware of the models we unconsciously use to make sense of the world. Your beliefs aren’t facts. They are your version of reality, influenced by experiences, emotions, and social pressures. Companies are made up of people, and people crave certainty. So organizations naturally build their processes, branding, and products around what has worked before, or what’s working for their peers.

Over time, companies construct invisible fences—beliefs about “how things are done,” what customers want, or what’s too risky to try.

That’s how we end up with what I call “corporate camouflage.”

Look at fast food: how many burger chains go through the same drive-thru redesigns, jump on plant-based patties together, or launch similar loyalty apps? Or banks rolling out near-identical mobile experiences. Or tech firms echoing each other’s design language and lingo. It becomes a self-reinforcing cycle where innovation means tweaks, not leaps.

Why Don’t More Brands Break Out?

It’s not because talented, creative people aren’t inside those companies. They are. The challenge, according to David Gray, is so few company cultures make it safe to actively question beliefs. When people do suggest something truly different, it’s often treated with suspicion or even hostility. “That’s not how we do it here.” “That will never work.” These are classic defenses built to protect the comfort zone—and the status quo.

Liminal thinking invites us to view belief as a flexible framework: a model to be upgraded.

To innovate, organizations and individuals must deliberately step onto the threshold, suspending certainty, and daring to try something unproven. It’s in those moments—on the edge, not in the middle of the herd—that brands can uncover what sets them apart.

What Happens When Brands Do Dare?

Brands that master liminal thinking don’t look over their shoulder and ask what the competition is doing, they look inward and forward.

You see it in brands that upend categories.

  • Nike didn’t just sell shoes but sold motivation.
  • Airbnb turned spare rooms into a global hotel chain.
  • Dollar Shave Club disrupted grooming ads with irreverence rather than slick traditionalism.

These brands didn’t land on their boldness by accident. They questioned what was “normal,” challenged unspoken beliefs, and gave themselves—and their teams—explicit permission to experiment, fail, and learn.

How to Make Your Brand Unmissable: Ideas for Marketers & Leaders

If you want to push your company out of the camouflage zone, start here:

  • Run “belief audits.”
    • List your embedded assumptions: What do we believe customers want? Why do we do it this way? Seek outsider perspectives and invite naive questions.
  • Reward discomfort.
    • Create safe spaces for dissent or unconventional ideas, celebrate failed experiments as bravely as successful ones, and broadcast the learning from misses.
  • Steal from different industries.
    • Too many brands obsess over direct rivals. Look at what’s working in completely separate sectors and remix those lessons.

Your next step … through the doorway to success…

In my post-covid brain, I’m a huge fan of in-person. We need real time, in person conversation and exploration to feel human and be creative. Innovation is very difficult to accomplish in any extended back and forth on slack. It needs to be face to face.

Create regular “Assumption-Busting” Workshops where you bring teams together in-person for facilitated sessions where everyone is encouraged to challenge the most deeply held business and brand assumptions. By making it a workshop and not just a meeting, the atmosphere becomes collaborative and creative, lowering the barriers to voicing unconventional views.

Create Cross-Department Experiment Teams, mixing employees from marketing, product, customer service, and even finance to collaborate on mini-innovation projects. Run these as short, in-person sprints where teams are empowered to test bold ideas and quickly share what works—and what doesn’t.

Invite and Involve Real Customers Live to move beyond spreadsheets and surveys and engage real customers in the ideation process. Hold live sessions where customers and brand teams co-create, react, and iterate on new offerings or campaigns. Seeing and hearing the customer perspective in real-time forces brands to reconsider old beliefs and opens the door for truly differentiated thinking.

Why In-Person Workshops Work Best:

Zoom calls and email threads don’t generate the energy, focus, or candid debate needed for true breakthrough thinking. In-person workshops build trust, foster empathy, and spark creativity in ways that digital tools can’t match. The collaborative spirit and “we’re all in this together” vibe of a workshop help teams let go of safe habits and explore new territory. If you want to break your brand out of the rut, there’s no substitute for getting everyone in the same room, rolling up your sleeves—literally—and crossing the threshold together.

Don’t believe me? Maybe you should step over that threshold and give me a call…. (hint, hint, nudge, nudge, no-what-I-mean?)