Your Brand Moat as Comedy Material

Brand moats are the parts of your brand that competitors can't easily copy. Usually these are discussed as strategic assets: proprietary tech, exclusive partnerships, network effects. Dry stuff for board meetings.

But brand moats also show up in another, much more useful place: they're almost always your best comedic material. The weirder and more specific your moat, the funnier it is. The funnier it is, the more memorable your brand becomes. The more memorable, the wider the moat.

Comedy and moat compound. Here's how to use it.

The observation

Look at the most distinctive brands in any category. They're almost always distinctive in a weird, specific way that competitors can't replicate. That weird specificity is their moat, and it's also their best ad material.

• Duolingo. Menacing owl mascot who threatens users for skipping lessons. Competitors can't just deploy a menacing owl. The weirdness is the moat.
• Wendy's. Social media roasts of competitors. Competitors can't fake the attitude overnight. The attitude is the moat.
• Aviation Gin. Ryan Reynolds starring in absurd ads for his own gin brand. Competitors don't have Ryan Reynolds. The celebrity commitment is the moat.
• Liquid Death. Water in a beer-can, with heavy metal branding. Competitors can't just re-skin water — the aesthetic commitment has to be real. The commitment is the moat.

Every one of these brands takes their moat and makes it the foundation of their comedy.

The mechanism

Weird moats produce comedy because weirdness is inherently interesting. A brand that does something normal isn't funny. A brand that does something inexplicable is.

The inexplicability is also what makes it hard to copy. Competitors can replicate normal things. They can't replicate weird things because weird things require commitment to something specific, and commitment is rare.

So: the weirder your brand, the harder it is to copy and the funnier it is. Those are the same property.

The identification exercise

To find your brand's comedic moat, ask these questions:

What do we do that other brands in our category don't? Not "what do we do better" — that's a feature comparison. "What do we do at all that competitors don't do."

What's weird about our founding story? Founders often had strange reasons for starting the company. Those strange reasons are often funny and always hard to copy.

What's weird about our internal culture that shows up externally? If your team has inside jokes that accidentally leak into branding, that's moat material.

What's weird about our product's non-core features? Core features get commoditized. Weird side features often don't.

List five things. At least one of them is your comedy-and-moat foundation.

The execution

Once you've identified the weird thing, commit. Run it in every ad. Reference it constantly. Make it your running joke.

Example: Aviation Gin's "extra strength" commercial where Ryan Reynolds, as CEO, appeared hungover and complained that the gin was too strong. The weird thing was "CEO is also the face of the brand and willing to mock the product." Every Aviation Gin ad leaned into this weird thing. By year three, it was the brand's foundation.

Competitors tried to copy the "celebrity-CEO" format. It didn't work because those competitors' CEOs weren't Ryan Reynolds. The specificity was the defense.

The risk

Committing to a weird thing alienates some audiences. Duolingo's threatening owl doesn't work for everyone. Liquid Death's death aesthetic doesn't work for everyone. This is fine.

Brands that try to be universally liked end up universally forgettable. Brands that commit to weirdness end up aggressively loved by the audience that vibes with the weirdness. Aggressively loved is how you build affinity.

Pick your weirdness. Accept that it'll alienate some people. Commit.

The negative test

If your brand strategy document can be copy-pasted to a competitor's strategy document and still make sense, you don't have a moat.

If your brand's comedy can be redeployed by a competitor without embarrassment, you don't have a comedic moat.

Both tests tell you the same thing: you haven't committed to anything specific enough to defend.

Fix that by getting weirder. List five things about your brand that nobody else could claim. Make ads about them.

The takeaway

The best brand strategy and the best brand comedy are the same thing: commitment to something specific that competitors can't replicate.

Find your weird thing. Lean in. Make it your whole personality. Competitors can't follow you there because following would require them to commit to their own weirdness, which most of them won't do.

Your moat is your comedy. Your comedy is your moat. They were always the same question.