Ok. Here’s the thing. It’s basic. It’s obvious. But it bears repeating:

In order to stand out in crowded markets, you must take positive steps to differentiate your products or services. As crowded as the marketplace is, there is still room for new and innovative marketing methods, products and services.

Take Twitter, for example. As most of you know by now, Twitter is a social networking and micro-blogging platform that allows users to send short message to “followers” and to read messages from other users. Unheard of at the beginning of 2007, it has moved from being labeled as a time-waster to becoming the “in-thing” to do for everyone from journalists and savvy marketers to teens and children. How did Twitter become a household word, and the word, “tweet” become a verb in such a short period of time?

Twitter’s value proposition is different than standard blogging: it saves you time and you can get your message in front of thousands of people in an instant. Users feel instantaneously connected with friends, family and associates even as they are thinking and sharing those thoughts.

Unlike traditional blogging, you don’t have to go through the laborious task of creating a blog, hoping it will be read; you can tweet from your cell phone. Just watch the news and you’ll see that Twitter is literally at the center of some social and even political revolutions. One of its creators said of the day Twitter.com was born, “We all knew that we were going to change the world with this thing that no one else understood.”

Usually one thinks of the iPhone when the word Smartphone is used. The iPhone seems to have captured that market, having a strong market hold as the must-have high-end consumer electronic gadget that is fun to use. When Palm entered that crowded arena with their Palm Pre, many asked “Why? How can they hope to compete with the iPhone?”

Again, the answer is found in Palm Pre’s value proposition. With a value prop focused on extensively integrated features that according to their tagline (“Thinking ahead is a beautiful thing”) organizes your life, Palm Pre entered the Smartphone marketplace undeterred (or at least very hopeful) in the face of the giant in the field. It is quickly becoming an innovative must-have and fun tool for those who desire less stress and more time and who couldn’t previously find a formidable alternative to the iPhone’s stronghold on awe-inspiring gadgetry. Will it work long-term? Well, I love my iPhone 3GS – so I’m biased – but it at least is staking out some different ground than the iPhone with multitasking and a physical keyboard.

The marketing teams that brought us Twitter and the Palm Pre both took time to develop their most important marketing message and focused on delivery to the right people. They developed products that are innovative, indispensable and inspirational, proving that there is indeed room for new and exciting products and services. All businesses need to find a way to make their offering unique enough to enter the right market and break through the crowd. This is the essence of the “message breakthrough” challenge.