The Pattern in the Mundane: Rejuvenating Your "As Standard"
Back in 2021, I wrote a short post about being the Champion of ‘As Standard’. The premise was simple: the things you do without thinking—your baseline, your autopilot—are often the very things your clients find extraordinary. You can read that original post.
Working with three different brands recently to help them define who they are (and, perhaps more importantly, who they want to become), I’ve been reminded that the ‘As Standard’ isn’t just a nice-to-have. When properly defined, it is the most robust USP a business can own.
But there’s a layer beneath this that I didn’t quite articulate three years ago: the role of pattern recognition.
Connecting the dots (even the invisible ones)
As a brand strategist, my job is to find the signal in the noise. For me, and for many neurodivergent thinkers, this isn’t a laborious task of ticking boxes; it’s a matter of pattern recognition. It’s the ability to look at a mess of data, customer feedback, and internal culture, and see the architecture that’s already there, just waiting to be named.
When I work with these brands, they often struggle to see what makes them special. They’re too close to the engine room. They assume that their meticulous attention to detail, their specific way of solving a problem, or their internal “vibe” is just… standard.
“Doesn’t everyone do it this way?” they ask.
The answer, usually, is a resounding “No.”
Turning intuition into Strategy
If you have a brain that naturally hunts for patterns, you start to notice that a company’s ‘As Standard’ is rarely accidental. It’s usually a symptom of a deeply held value that they’ve forgotten to talk about.
My role is to shine a light on those patterns and say: “This thing you do naturally? This is your unfair advantage.”
By defining these “standard” behaviours, we do two things:
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We create consistency: Once a natural habit is codified as a brand standard, it stays high-quality even when the founder isn’t in the room.
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We build trust: In a world of over-promised marketing, a brand that simply is what it says it is—as standard—is remarkably refreshing.
Identifying your own ‘As Standard’
If you’re currently trying to find your brand’s voice or USP, stop looking for something “new” to add on top. Instead, look at what you’re already doing when you think no one is watching.
What are the patterns in your successes? What is the one thing you do “as standard” that others seem to struggle with?
It might feel mundane to you. It might feel like “just the way it’s done.” But through the right lens, that’s exactly where your brilliance is hiding.
I’m still championing the “As Standard”—not because it’s the bare minimum, but because in a marketplace of hum-drum mediocrity, your “normal” is likely someone else’s “extraordinary.” Even if it did take me a few years (and several pots of tea) to fully spot the pattern myself.
