It’s Super Bowl Sunday. Today marks one of the biggest competitions in sport. At some point this year, at a sales meeting or a marketing conference, someone is going to reference today’s game as a metaphor to illustrate the competitive nature of business. Corporate types like equating the dog-eat-dog of business with the stories of great battles on the playing fields of football and baseball or the arenas of basketball and hockey. They cite golfers, grand slam tennis champions and boxers. Unfortunately, aside from being cliché, such allusions exaggerate and misrepresent.

In regard to business, the term “competition” is itself a misnomer. Businesses have overlap. They have shared interests and goals in regard to offered services/products and target customer demographics. On the surface, these shared similarities appear to be the stuff of competition. However, dig deeper, and the reality becomes that these businesses, while providing similar services, appeal to very different demographics. Would these businesses focus on the unique qualities of their own services/products versus focusing the similarities, any sense of competition would dissolve. Competition is a construct – and a costly one at that.

In the media, competition in business is discussed in terms of large corporations. However, small business is not immune, though the competitive squabbles of these smaller entities are not widely discussed. In the branding process, competition is more often than not the number one concern of a client looking for a marketing edge. This is unfortunate as small businesses have limited resources and are not backed by large purses for marketing and advertising such as that spent by their bigger corporate brethren. While a smaller business should be focused on improving its message and products, many small business owners make the mistake of throwing money they don’t have at ill-perceived notions of competition.

Knowing the nature of our client base at Luxecetera, you can imagine the motivation behind this particular article. As branding consultants and designers for small business, our mission is to aid small businesses in getting the most out of their branding. In addition, we encourage small businesses to do so by focusing their branding on the unique qualities of their business – not focus it on “beating” another small business in a competitive tete-a-tete.

Sure, you work in a market of 20 other photographers, but are you offering the exact same services? Do you have the same approach to your art? Are you looking for the same kind of client? Let’s say you are a caterer in a mid-size metropolitan area. Are you really equipped to be the only caterer in that market? Can you offer enough variety in your menu to satisfy every pallet? Here, let me solve that one for you – no, you can’t. What you can do is make sure that your services or products make the most of your unique perspective and intellectual resources. What you should do is focus on making your business better at what it does – not try to compete with what others are doing. It’s just, for lack of a better word, silly. In some of my experiences with clients, it feels as though I’m talking to some high school student, angry because the popular girl at school got asked out and she didn’t. Please.

I, however, recognize that these are real situations and that, yes, there are some nasty boogers out there who don’t “play fair” and who are wholly caught up in competition. What I tell our clients is to ignore it. You cannot control the actions of someone else. You can control the your reaction to their nastiness. Don’t get pulled into a costly marketing battle with a perceived competitor. Instead, focus on improving your product and your image and the rest will fall into place. If folks put half the energy into self-improvement that they put into competing with others, they would experience unprecedented success. This, I believe, is the most understated dynamic in business.

It’s Super Bowl Sunday and I’m watching Temple Grandin on HBO. Competition in sport, like competition in business, is a trifle. I prefer Grandin’s story of an individual competing against a mental disorder (autism) and working to improve herself and her abilities. That is a better metaphor for success in business. It truly gets to the heart of what defines greatness.

Tyrie Smith is the copywriter and editor for Luxecetera. He has worked in journalism, public relations and marketing for 10 years and, sometimes, watches the Super Bowl for the commercials.