The next time you’re gathered around the conference table generating ideas to kick-start marketing and someone blurts out something like, “What if we conduct turtle races in the parking lot,” LISTEN TO THAT GUY. Ideas that once may have seemed too outrageous for customer consumption should be paid closer attention to. Why? Because in today’s business climate, differentiation is at a premium. So much so that you should seriously consider “differentiation” right up there with your other core values—integrity, innovation, service, etc—to help guide your decision-making. There are myriad reasons for this. Here are a few of the biggies.

We live in an age of abundance. Walk into a department store and find nine different colors of toasters. Find a lawyer in one of 27 law firms in a five-mile radius. Go to the Web for virtually anything and it’ll be in your living room the next day. Everything is being produced and delivered faster, stronger, and cheaper than ever before. In this age of abundance, it’s hard not to be a me-too.  So, you simply must begin with the assumption that your audience is distracted by or disinterested in what you have to offer. Their “seen that, done that” mindset means they are easily bored, tuning out, falling asleep, or worse yet, building negative impressions of your business.

There’s been a dramatic shift in the way information is created, consumed and controlled. If you’ve witnessed your daughter text messaging, listened to a podcast, downloaded a video to a friend’s phone, created your own blog or contributed to a wiki, you get a sense of it. Call it “participatory media,” “viewer created content (vc2)” or whatever you like, your audience is no longer passively consuming media. They’re in complete control of what, when and how they experience your brand. They’ll decide what’s credible and worthwhile—and what’s not. So you better have something interesting to say.

So, let’s get back to the boardroom. Make the word “differentiation” visible in your organization and use it to help filter out the “it’s too risky” and “someone won’t like it” comments that can permeate decision-making. Doing so will lead to the more beneficial-than-ever discussion about “How can we do it differently?” “What’s compelling about the way we communicate or remarkable about the approach we take?” This can have profound implications for your business. Standing out in a sea of sameness requires you to place an onus on big ideas and, we recognize, may require you to take a sizable step out of your comfort zone. As long as an idea is on strategy and stays true to your brand, take that step because it is most certain to pay dividends.