They Can Copy the Idea. They Can't Copy the Source.
Lock in and listen. This is a LONG one but I promise it’s worth it.
A few weeks ago, Britt Thelemann Pangerl asked me a question that sent me down a rabbit hole about trust.
That rabbit hole turned into a blog. Then that blog turned into a LinkedIn post. Then Kate Coffey-Bacon left a comment on that post that sent me straight down another rabbit hole.
Apparently this is just how I write now. One person says something interesting and three weeks later I'm questioning an entire marketing philosophy.
Kate was talking about the pressure we're all feeling to stand out right now. Be different. Have the idea nobody else has had. Create the session everyone talks about afterward. Build the event people actually want to attend. Say the thing nobody else is willing to say. Find your differentiator.
Escape the sea of sameness.
But then Kate said something I haven't been able to stop thinking about:
“Trusting that you don’t have to protect one great idea because there will be another one.”
Well, shit.
Because THAT is the part we don't talk about.
We spend so much time talking about how to have the big idea. Nobody tells you what happens after you have one.
First, Someone Copies It
That's usually how you know it was good.
You build something different. People notice. Maybe it's a campaign. Maybe it's an event. Maybe it's a framework. Maybe it's a session. Maybe it's a phrase. Maybe it's the way you position something that everyone else has been talking about for years but you finally found a way to make people care.
And for a little while, it feels like yours.
Then you see something that looks suspiciously familiar. At first, you convince yourself you're imagining it. Then another one appears. And another.
Suddenly the format you created is showing up somewhere else. Your language starts appearing in other people's posts. Someone launches a program that feels an awful lot like the thing you built. A competitor adopts the messaging your team spent six months developing. The clever event concept you were so proud of suddenly has cousins.
And if you've ever created something you genuinely cared about, you know exactly what happens next.
You get pissed.
I know I do.
There is something deeply irritating about watching someone else get applause for an idea you remember creating on your couch at 11:47 p.m. while eating something you absolutely did not cook.
But eventually you have a decision to make.
You can spend your time policing the copies. Or you can make the next thing.
Because This Is the Part Nobody Wants to Admit
Standing out has an expiration date.
Not because your idea suddenly became bad. Because good ideas spread. That's literally what good ideas do.
Someone sees something that works and thinks, we should do that.
Then five companies do it. Then twenty companies do it. Then somebody makes a webinar about how everyone should do it. Then someone puts it into a “2027 Trends” carousel. Then ChatGPT has seen it enough times that it starts recommending it to everyone.
Congratulations.
Your differentiator has officially entered the sea of sameness.
And this is where I think we misunderstand differentiation. We treat differentiation like something we're supposed to FIND. Like somewhere buried inside our company is The Thing. The messaging statement. The campaign. The brand concept. The event format. The positioning. The one brilliant idea that will finally separate us from everybody else.
But differentiation isn't something you find once.
Differentiation is something you have to keep producing.
That's a very different expectation.
And it's harder.
Your Best Idea Should Eventually Become Obsolete
I know. Marketing nightmare.
We're taught to find what works and scale it. Optimize it. Repurpose it. Turn the webinar into a blog, the blog into twelve LinkedIn posts, the LinkedIn posts into a guide, the guide into a nurture sequence, the nurture sequence into a webinar. But that playbook is dated. Sorry, I said it, and I'll say it again: repurposing old content into formats everyone else is using doesn't set you apart.
And yes, absolutely get mileage out of good work. I'm a marketer. I'm not suggesting we set perfectly good content on fire for sport.
But there is a difference between extending a good idea and becoming dependent on it.
Eventually, somebody will catch up. Eventually, the audience will get used to it. Eventually, what felt surprising becomes expected.
And expected is dangerous territory for a brand.
Because expected eventually becomes invisible.
So maybe the goal shouldn't be to make one idea last forever.
Maybe the goal is to become really damn good at making the next one.
The Moat Isn't the Idea
This is where AI makes the conversation especially interesting.
Ideas are getting cheaper. Execution is getting faster. Someone can see your campaign today, feed the basic concept into an AI tool tomorrow, and have seventeen variations before lunch.
They can recreate the format. They can mimic the structure. They can analyze your writing. They can generate something that looks a lot like the thing that worked for you.
Which means protecting the output is going to get harder and harder.
So stop treating the output like the moat.
The moat is the machine that created it.
And that machine is messy as hell.
It's your experience. Your curiosity. Your relationships. Your audience. Your failures. The conversation you had at dinner six months ago. The weird thing someone said during a podcast recording. The session you watched that had absolutely nothing to do with your industry.
It's the restaurant you visited that made you rethink customer experience. The B2C campaign that made you wonder why B2B marketing is so painfully boring. The thing your salesperson complained about. The question a customer asked that nobody on your team could answer. The book you read. The creator you follow. The ridiculous idea your coworker threw out as a joke that made everyone stop and say, wait... could we actually do that?
That is the source.
And nobody else has exactly the same source material.
Creativity Isn't a Department
I think this is where companies get themselves into trouble.
They hire creative people and then slowly remove everything that made those people creative.
Fill the calendar. Add more meetings. Build more approval processes. Ask for guaranteed outcomes before anyone is allowed to experiment. Measure every idea against what worked last quarter. Benchmark the competition. Demand more content, more campaigns, more pipeline, more output.
And then wonder why everything starts looking the same.
You cannot spreadsheet your way into originality.
Creativity needs input. It needs boredom. It needs conversations that don't have an agenda. It needs people from outside your industry. That's one thing I've been getting back to: webinars outside of the Microsoft space about what's changing the game in businesses today. It needs time to notice things. It needs permission to chase a thought before anyone knows whether the thought is useful.
This is one of the reasons I think Kate's comment mattered so much. She pointed to the value of looking outside your own industry for ideas and inspiration. She talked about finding her inspiration by getting outside of her head in yoga, in play, in experiences.
The most interesting ideas aren't always coming from the person who has solved your exact problem seventeen times. Sometimes they're coming from the person who has seen the underlying problem somewhere completely different.
That's cross-pollination.
And I think we're going to need a hell of a lot more of it.
Because if everyone in your industry is studying everyone else in your industry, why are we surprised when everyone starts looking the same?
Stop Benchmarking Yourself Into Boredom
There is a place for competitive research. I would like that entered into the official record before every product marketer I know comes after me. You should know what your competitors are doing. You should know how they position themselves. You should understand what buyers are seeing. But there is a dangerous moment where research turns into imitation.
We look at the competitors. We look at industry benchmarks. We look at what performed last year. We look at what everyone else is doing. And then we try to create something “different” using exactly the same source material as everybody else.
Of course it looks the same.
What if we looked sideways instead?
What is a grassroots organization doing to build momentum? What is a neighborhood restaurant doing to create regulars? What makes someone drive across town for one coffee shop when there are twelve closer? Why do people wait in line for merch from a musician they've never met?
Why will someone watch a creator talk for forty-five minutes but won't sit through your seven-minute corporate video? Why do some communities create actual belonging while others have 14,000 “members” nobody has heard from since 2023? Why does one event become something people talk about all year while another is forgotten before everyone reaches baggage claim?
That's where the good stuff is.
Not: What are our competitors posting on LinkedIn?
Please.
We can do better than that.
You Need More Inputs, Not More Outputs
AI has created an absolutely bonkers amount of pressure to produce.
Because now we can.
We can publish every day. We can generate 100 ideas. We can create 40 social posts. We can turn one webinar into enough content to haunt LinkedIn for six months.
But the ability to produce infinitely more content does not mean we suddenly have infinitely more things worth saying.
That's the bottleneck now.
Not production. Perspective.
And perspective needs inputs.
If I want better ideas, I don't necessarily need another brainstorming session. Maybe I need to go somewhere. Talk to somebody outside my bubble. Read something completely unrelated to marketing. Attend a session I normally wouldn't choose. Ask a customer a question that isn't on the approved interview script.
Maybe I need to walk around a conference without trying to network.
Listen. Notice. Be curious without immediately asking how it converts to pipeline.
That's uncomfortable for businesses because you can't always draw a straight line from curiosity to revenue. But you also can't draw a straight line from every conversation you've ever had to every good idea you've ever had.
Some things need time to collide.
And Then There's the Scariest Part
You have to release the idea.
This is where Kate's comment really got me.
Because when something you've created gets copied, your instinct can become: "Fine. I'm not sharing the next one. I'll protect it. I'll keep it close. I'll wait until it's perfect. I'll make sure nobody can take this one."
Except creativity doesn't work particularly well with clenched fists.
The more afraid you become of losing an idea, the more precious that idea becomes. And suddenly you're asking one concept to carry way too much weight.
It has to be perfect. It has to perform. It has to stay yours. It has to prove you're still innovative.
That's a hell of a burden to put on an idea. What if you released it instead? Here. Take it. Build on it. Argue with it. Adapt it. Make your version.
Because I'm already thinking about what comes next.That is a very different kind of confidence.
Not: Nobody else can do this.
But: Nobody else can do what I haven't thought of yet.
That's the Trust I Want to Build
My original rabbit hole started with whether buyers can tell who to trust. Then it became whether trust can be measured.
Now I think there's another layer.
Maybe trust isn't only something your audience gives you. Maybe it's something you have to give yourself.
Trust your instincts. Trust your curiosity. Trust your ability to connect things that don't obviously belong together. Trust that you can give away the good idea. Trust that someone can copy it. Trust that the market can catch up. Trust that something you created can become commonplace. - THANKS KATE!
Because you're not trying to spend the next ten years defending one brilliant idea.
You're trying to become the kind of person, team, or company capable of having another one.
And another.
And another.
That's a much harder thing to copy.
So What Happens After They Copy Your Big Idea?
You make another one.
But not immediately.
First, you refill the damn well.
You get out of your own industry's echo chamber. You collect experiences. You talk to WEIRDOS like me. You ask better questions. You consume things that weren't created for your job title. You notice what makes you stop.
You follow ideas before you know where they're going. You give yourself enough space to be bored. You pay attention to the things everyone else dismisses. You let seemingly unrelated ideas crash into each other.
And then, eventually, something clicks. There it is.
The next thing.
And when everybody else catches up to that one?
Good.
Let them. (Mel Robbins anyone???)
You'll already be somewhere else.
They can copy the idea.
They can't copy the source.
So stop protecting the last thing you created.
Protect your ability to create the next one.
