Stop Saying Your Company is the Amazon/Facebook/Apple, etc. of “X Industry”

Spoiler-alert.?It’s not.

The other day a curious ad in my Firefox Pocket app showed up with the title “Here’s how *insert company* is the Amazon of Fresh, Delicious Meals”.

I knew it was a paid advertisement with an assuredly hyperbolic claim, but every time I see a company compare itself to another, especially one with a market cap of say over a trillion dollars, I get curious.

How could I have never heard of this company before?!??-end sarcasm-

I clicked the link and it was a surprisingly generic ad/review for another epicurean-esque meal delivery service.

Don't get me wrong, there's nothing wrong with meal-delivery services. In fact, I think they're the bomb. I used Hello Fresh before and it was awesome (albeit expensive), and I’m sure Factor is awesome too (they're pre-prepared meals, unlike Hello Fresh which requires you to prepare it).

Though to me it seems like the market for these services is saturated (along with online mattress retailers and personal VPN services), more frustratingly to me, I was promised industry-dominating immensity.

Are they like Amazon because of a brilliant and innovative content delivery ecosystem?

Do they offer culinary fare from all corners of the world with free 2-day shipping?

Are they pioneering robotics, automation, and artificial intelligence?

Nope, the link just brought me to some basic promotional marketing content for a fairly standard online meal delivery service.

Boo.?I felt cheated. #clickbait

Overselling Limits

Here’s the thing though.?Companies, and especially startups, use this marketing tactic often.

And IMHO, I think possibly to their growth detriment.

"Overselling" is part of the sales and marketing game, I get it. But there are sells that strain credulity.

When you compare yourself to a major global corporation like a Google, Apple, or Amazon - well you have some pretty big claims to back up, and shoes to fill.

And most companies or startups cannot back up those general claims in any empirical or meaningful metric.

This has a negative affect because whomever potential investor or consumer you’re pitching to hears that grandiose claim...well they’ll expect greatness on a super-yacht premium level.

And if you can’t deliver, you could be setting yourself up for failure even before you’ve had a chance to actually make your case.

The bar was simply set too high. (counterpoint: most people don't take these claims seriously...but that's not a good place to be in either really right?).

So how do you sell your company/product/idea quickly and effectively if you can’t use a common reference point though?

If you truly only have 20 or so seconds to deliver your pitch while sharing an elevator with that Fortune 500 CEO, then isn’t associating a well-known organization the best way to get across your idea?

Well yes and no.

You can reference a Fortune 500 company with your paper-napkin idea, but you should be strategic and specific about why you think it to be true.

The Same, But Different

For my master’s program, our team’s capstone project startup company was based around a crowd-sharing, electric vehicle charging rental solution.

After all, range anxiety and the lack of an adaquate charging station infrastructure are still the top barriers to entry to EV ownership.

In our solution, users would sign up with our service and have a standard EV charging device installed on their property (if they didn’t have one already). They then could “rent” it out to a marketplace of EV-owning tenants in search of temporary or long-term charging-capable parking spots.

I believe we tossed the motto of “the Airbnb of EV charging” around a few times early on, because everyone knows who Airbnb is and what they do, right?

Yes, but that was misleading, and setting the bar way too high for a three-person startup with zero revenue.

We were not in the vacation rental business, we have no idea how to operate in international markets, and we certainly did not make 3.378 billion dollars in revenue last year just to state a few of the obvious differences.

But we did have a business model like Airbnb though.

And that’s the key.?

You want to strategically associate that reference specifically to something your business does like an Amazon or an Apple or a Telsa.

That way you're able to make the association to your audience, without the baggage of Unobtanium expectations.

Maybe your company operates a robust and convenient e-commerce website like Amazon.

Perhaps you retain strong customer loyalty and effectively branding for your product like Apple.

You may even produce an innovative solution that disrupts an entrenched legacy industry like Tesla.

There is nothing wrong with trying to describe your company or solution by using a generally recognized company as a baseline reference for the uninitiated, but in the absence of metaphoric or distinct attribution, a blanket association statement has the potential to backfire and/or render inert genuine interest.

Whether it’s operational process, or content delivery, or customer engagement - consider the specific reasons you think your company is like another.?

That way you can take advantage of the commonality you know your audience will understand, but it gives you the latitude to craft your own unique story without the expectations of a whale when you enter the shark tank.