It is a common complaint amongst graphic designers, photographers, and many other creative people who post their work online, that their designs are prone to be copied. Sometimes it is a blatant ‘copy and paste’ of a design, other times it is a slight variation to make it appear like a new design. Other industries may find that competitors adopt the same practices or marketing messages, confusing potential customers.
Aside from these actions breaking copyright and intellectual property laws, I simply do not understand why anyone would directly copy another business! It is highly likely that the ‘copier’ will be found out (so why risk this?). But more importantly, I do not understand why a business would want to pretend to be something they are not.
We should all check what competitors or our industry in general are doing from time to time. But the focus of this research should be on keeping abreast of trends or seeing if there are ways your business can improve.
If your goal for investigating a competitor is to duplicate what they are doing, your business will fail to thrive. This is because your practices won’t be authentic, and you are unlikely to have an understanding of, or a commitment to, the underlying reason behind that process or procedure.
Adopting someone else’s marketing message will only work to a degree. That marketing message is made up of that business’s values, mission, goals and so on. Taking it on as your own will only result in customers finding out very quickly that there is no authenticity and they are dealing with the ‘copy’ not the ‘real thing’.
Think about the businesses you love to deal with. They are likely to have something unique about them that no-one else does, or they do the ‘expected’ things a lot better. If your business is based on copying others, please stop! Find out what makes you unique and develop your own voice. Customers will respond to this much better than if you attempt to duplicate someone else’s image.
Michelle Grice writes a weekly column for business women in The Western Weekender