First heard this years back when the company I worked for found me space on projects in the Middle East. 

The key to successfully delivering projects back then and there appeared (to my ignorant eyes and ears) nailed squarely with those four magic words. 

It was disarmingly honest as well. 

No pretensions, just give us what they’re doing but make it look like you're not. Not quite. But reasonably similar would be good. 

Why spend money on risking your success when you can piggyback someone else’s investment? If the sauce was good enough for their customers, let’s stir some out for yours. And so we ended up catching the category we wanted to counteract by short-changing the thing that could have really created attention; namely, designing in the difference rather than the same same. 

Swapping out one situation for another - say moving your sales operations from sheds to shops, or garages to galleries - and then doing what everyone else is doing seems, well, just a bit pointless. 

If the pain of shifting the scene was to be seen, to stand out rather than reappearing to look just like everyone else, all that effort seems rather beside the point. What have you gained by jumping to fit right back in to the background?

Yes, sometimes you need to send signals your audience can recognise. But sometimes we forget we don’t need the competition to see themselves reflected back. Your category is not your customer.