The Demand

Before your next shift, list every gimmick currently running in your operation against the four forms: anything meant to buy attention that has no brand use, anything anti-human in a place where a human adds value, anything dishonest whether you know it or not, and anything static while the category moves. Every gimmick is a cut, and every cut is the operation admitting, without saying it out loud, that it does not know how to be different. Pick the gimmick doing the most damage and decide this week whether to kill it or replace it with something that actually differentiates.

The Work

Form 1 — attention-buying tools running today (discounts, coupons, punch cards, bribed app downloads):

Form 2 — anti-human tools removing a human touchpoint that was adding value (QR codes, self-checkout, chatbots):

Form 3 — anything dishonest in your messaging, training, or naming that doesn’t match what’s actually there:

Form 4 — where your operation has held static while the category moved around it:

Rate, 1-5, how much of your current differentiation strategy is actually gimmickry in disguise:

The single gimmick doing the most damage to the Guest’s ceiling of expectation:

Kill it or replace it with earned differentiation — and the reason:

The one thing you will build this week that stands on its own, without a cut: