YouTube clones like the ones here, here and here, Flickr clones (like the one shown), and Google clones are abundant these days in cyberspace. How far can these guys actually hope to go?

Back when I wrote The Business Model IS the Brand or when my Global Brand Network colleague Dr. Dan Herman observed that the Brand IS the Strategy, our instincts were on the money but the bigger pattern eluded us (or at least me, I can’t speak for Dan).

Since then, being on the road to following my own entrepreneurial dreams and actively innovating for other emerging brands, it finally became crystal clear! The only real advantage in today’s hyper-competitive marketplace has nothing to do with “best practices” or “market share” but reinventing the market to follow ones one unique path. In other words, it actually is this simple:

Originality IS Strategy!

Think about all the great brands that have prospered and endured in today’s hyper-competitive world. How many of them are “me too” companies, and how many of them behave like their perceived competitor? If you know Virgin, ING, U2, Apple, Cirque or any of the other one-of-a-kind institutions you can already see it. They move to their own pulse and make decisions based on their own world views.

In the age of trackable behaviors and measurable metrics (made up premise or not), it’s easy to get sucked in to performing what you believe the market wants you to do, but that’s only on the surface.

Copying is never cool, no matter what the stats tell you. We can smell lame a mile away like in the case of the feds trying to be YouTube here.

In the age of chaos, the true market gems are the ones that follow their own rules (here's another cool example).