More than a car company
I was watching TV when a Subaru commercial appeared.
Instead of the ordinary footage of a sleek car gliding through the mountain tundra, it showed a child who was visibly ill with a huge grin on her face, a group of people hugging, and seemingly impossible dreams coming true.
The commercial finished with this statement:
More than a Car Company
What?!
Even car companies feel pigeonholed and have to break out of their boxes by making commercials about their multiple identities. They want consumers to see them as being more than one thing.
In fact, Subaru even went so far as to trademark the phrase because it's become part of their corporate impact initiative.
Why would Subaru go this far?
Why does it matter that Subaru is seen as more than a car company?
Well, they're not the only one using this phrase.
Take Zoom as another example.
On its website homepage, Zoom has a scrolling header, and one of the slides says, "More Than Just Meetings."
What's going on here?
TWO WORDS: IDENTITY BIAS
Companies have identities just like people. Any label that's given as an identity is subject to societal stereotypes and influenced by social beliefs of what that label means= bias.
Ultimately, if a business is only seen as having a certain attribute, like hosting meetings or selling cars, then the rest of what they stand for or offer is minimized, even ignored. The additional identities become meaningless, although they bring more value.
Look at Apple as another example.
Most of us see Apple as a tech company, nuy they're much more than that.
In 2019, Tim Cook stated, "We work at that intersection of technology and the liberal arts and the humanities. And so we make products for people, and so the consumer's at the center of what we do."
(Insider note: notice Tim used one of my favorite phrases to signal hybridity, "work at the intersection of").
THE BOTTOM LINE
Essentially, companies are in the same boat as workers.
They're trying to be "more than X" just as we are.
This is a universal identity battle of being SEEN for full value and uniqueness.
Being boxed in is a disadvantage. We MUST break out of stagnant identity labels to avoid bias and leverage differentiation compared to others with the same identities.
This is such a difficult task that the best tool to start with is just to say "more than X."
While specialization is important to showing expertise and gaining marketshare, being siloed can be detrimental and negatively impact competitiveness in the market.
When big businesses like car and tech companies feel the need to say they're more than X, it emphasizes the power of labels to strip us of our individuality.
Being seen as "more than X" is a reality of the modern workforce and global economy.