When Chasing Revenue
Kills Distinction

By Justin Chatigny, CMO 

Justin serves as PlatinumBlack’s CMO and is responsible for both the day-to-day operations of PlatinumBlack and for ensuring that its strategy, marketing, and creative output delivers on client objectives. He has over 25 years of experience helping companies grow and has served in numerous marketing, business development, and consulting capacities in that time. Before taking on his current role at PlatinumBlack, Justin was a Director on Accenture’s Global Marketing Strategy team and held senior marketing leadership positions at Grant Thornton and Deloitte.  

This post was originally shared in 'The Catalyst', our monthly newsletter sharing sharp, timely perspectives that challenge conventional thinking and offer practical guidance for building lasting growth. You can subscribe here.

Most businesses think of growth as one-dimensional: more revenue, faster. But there’s another dimension—one that makes growth last. It’s the heart of strategy: distinction.

Great strategy isn’t about being “better” or “best.” Nor is it about being “different.” It’s about standing apart.

Apart in what you offer.
Apart in how you deliver it.
Apart in who you serve.

Maybe not in everything, but in at least one thing that matters deeply to your customers. And in that difference lies your staying power. Sustainable, profitable growth needs a “moat”—a strong strategy that deliberately sets your business apart from the rest of the field (or better still, which establishes an entirely new, uninhabited field). Lose it, and you’re just another commodity competing on price and speed until the margins bleed out.

Before continuing, a quick caveat for my marketing friends: I’m not talking about brand positioning as the moat, though it plays a crucial part in its depth and effectiveness. I’m addressing business strategy—go-to-market (GTM) strategy, specifically—the decisions about what you do, why you exist, who you serve, and where and how you serve them.

The Growth At All Costs Trap

For most, revenue growth is table stakes. Public companies live and die by it. Underperform in a quarter and you get punished, both by competitors and investors.

But while investors might reward you for hitting the numbers today, they’ll gut you for losing your edge tomorrow. Distinction isn’t just a nice-to-have; it’s what gives you pricing power, resilience, and brand equity in a crowded, at times volatile market.

The challenge is that distinction requires sacrifice, sacrifice that necessarily alienates some stakeholders. It is often said that strategy is as much about what you won’t do as what you will. Saying it is easy, living it is hard. Because short-term revenue is tempting, and the pressure to grab it can be relentless, especially for publicly traded companies.

A few examples in the news of late. Some big brands look stable on the surface, even posting short-term growth. But the cracks are showing, and their long-term, lasting growth is at risk. 

• A much-heralded airline, built on simplicity and freedom (bags fly free, no assigned seats), slowly adding the very pricing structures it once rejected. Near-term revenue climbs, but the loyalty that made it distinctive starts to fade.
  • "Bottom line: this is a price increase and gives travelers fewer, not more choices when shopping for airline tickets...Now Southwest is no different than American, United, Delta, Spirit, Frontier et al." (WSJ)
  • "We are watching an airline self-destruct. This is the equivalent of deliberately sailing a ship into an iceberg." (CBS)
• A major smartphone maker that once prided itself on ruthless simplicity—no clutter, no bloat—eventually joins the feature arms race. In chasing every margin, it loses the clarity that once set it apart, the focus that led to product  breakthroughs instead of incremental updates.
  • “If ever there’s been an example of over-promising and under-delivering, it’s Apple Intelligence.” (NYT)
  • “Apple’s not really innovating...they’re still behind the eight ball on AI and the market is a little bit skeptical.” (Great Hill Capital)
  • "Designing something requires focus...It takes time...there are a thousand nos for every yes. We simplify. We perfect." This is from a 2013 Apple spot. Apple has seemingly lost its ability to say no.
• Even consultancies aren’t immune. Firms that built reputations on sharp, niche expertise start adding adjacent services—IT implementation, creative production, generalist advisory. Each expansion makes sense in isolation, but together they blur the very edge that once defined them.
  • "[McKinsey] expanded partly by throwing caution—and qualms—to the wind." (The Economist)
  • "AI models are becoming cleverer with startling speed. To survive its second century, let alone thrive, McKinsey will have to be distinctive indeed." (The Economist)

The logic is clear enough: grab the revenue, please the investors, survive another quarter. But once distinction is traded away, it’s difficult to win back.

This is the paradox: the best strategy doesn’t always deliver maximum revenue in the short term. But it’s the discipline of staying distinct—of protecting what makes you different—that creates advantages (e.g. elevated price points, shorter sales cycles, lower cost to market, and stronger recruiting to name a few) and growth you can actually sustain.

A Framework for Balancing Revenue and Distinction

For leaders caught in the tension between quarterly earnings and strategic endurance, the question isn’t “revenue or distinction?” It’s a both/and: how to protect distinction and capture revenue. These principles can help:

• Clarify your nonnegotiables. Identify the brand pillars, design choices, or customer experiences that define you—and don’t trade them away for incremental dollars.
• Maintain a firm foundation internally. Winning go-to-market strategies come to life internally before they do externally. Make sure your workflows, culture and rewards system, internal rituals, and leadership (and succession planning) reinforce your distinct value and what it takes to uphold it.
• Balance the portfolio. Keep a healthy mix of brand-building (long-term distinctiveness) and demand-capture (short-term sales).
• Signal to investors. Make long-term trade-offs explicit. Communicate how protecting brand distinctiveness preserves pricing power, loyalty, and a competitive moat.
• Track the right metrics. Go beyond revenue. Monitor brand equity, churn rates, and NPS, indicators that predict future revenue resilience.
• Constantly monitor the market and innovate accordingly. Keep your friends (clients, partners) close and your enemies (competitors) closer. Use always-on insights to inspire innovation that continues to deepen your isolated position.

• Make sure your strategy irks. If you aren’t hearing objections to your strategy, you may not have one. A go-to-market strategy that will have lasting impact on growth is necessarily exclusive and limiting. If you’re hearing grumbling from a service line leader, market head, or analyst—or from an investor who, in their impetuousness, wants you to make different investments for a more immediate return —chances are you’re on to something.

   

The Real Leadership Challenge

Don’t confuse growth with a number on a spreadsheet. The right strategy doesn’t just drive revenue; it builds distinction that lasts. Staying true to your distinct value takes strength and courage, but in markets that shift quickly, it’s that difference—not just dollars—that separates the companies who endure from those who don’t.

This post was originally shared in 'The Catalyst', our monthly newsletter sharing sharp, timely perspectives that challenge conventional thinking and offer practical guidance for building lasting growth. You can subscribe here.