Kill off the average™

Every market has a place where it is always crowded. Everyone says the same thing, everyone looks the same and everyone is interchangeable. That place is average, and it is the most dangerous position a good company can occupy. Kill off the average™ is what Stuurmen was built on. The idea came before the office, rooted in the belief that good companies rarely disappear because of their work, but because they look like everyone else.

"Average is the busiest place in the market"

Most companies never make a conscious choice. The business grows, the brand develops as a byproduct and one day they send a prospect to their website, hoping they will not look too closely.

Say what everyone else is saying and average becomes inevitable. It is the busiest place in the market, but rarely the most profitable. Mediocrity feels safe, yet it is the fastest way to be forgotten.

Nobody chooses it

Almost nobody decides to be average. It just happens.

You focus on the next client, the next project and the next month, while the brand keeps being pushed further down the list. Until one day you are left with a story no one ever consciously chose, pieced together from whatever seemed convenient at the time. It is simply there, and it says nothing.

Kill off the average™. Mediocrity is painfully boring.

The 2% who refuse

Choosing hurts. It means letting clients walk away and saying out loud what you do not stand for. That feels uncomfortable, which is exactly why most companies avoid it. They want to be there for everyone.

But a brand that tries to reach everyone reaches no one.

In other words

Play it safe and you will not get rejected. You will be overlooked. But there is a small group willing to do things differently: companies that make a choice others find too risky and stand by it when backing down would be easier.

That is where market leaders come from. Not from bigger budgets or shouting louder, but from one sharp choice they continue to stand behind. A company that is better than the rest but fails to show it is wasting its strongest card. It deserves a brand that is just as confident as the company behind it.

The world needs that 2%. We exist for the companies determined to become part of it.

When we started, there was not much. A room in the Glasgebouw in Eindhoven, a radiator that sometimes worked and a window I could barely see over at 1.73 metres. What we did have was a name and a conviction.

That is the order we built in: first the idea, then everything else. It is exactly how we have worked for our clients ever since.

Meeting room with black table, pink chairs, large plants and purple ambient lighting

We only do it one way

That is why we always start inside the organisation and build the brand from the inside out.

We start with strategy, never with a logo. We only work with companies willing to make real choices, because without that courage no brand can lead its market.

You can read how we work, from the first session to a brand that leads its market, in our methodology →.