be different

I just finished marketing guru Jack Trout's Differentiate or Die, a random book I borrowed. The core of it is companies must stay different in people's minds and he furnishes his case with many real world examples. His idea seems so obvious though; everyday the media is telling me to be different/original/unique/etc until it sounds like a cliche.
But the point Trout makes is that you just have to position yourself in a unique spot in the mind, and once you're there it takes a lot to dislodge your place. Any attribute can be differentiated. Like if you're no.1/low-cost/luxury/etc and people know it, you just keep working on that special attribute of yours.
To see brands how brands are exploiting this idea, I paid closer attention to the ads on the streets over the past few days. True enough, Nescafe is positioning itself as the fat-free coffee, pre-empting other coffeemakers the fact coffee powder doesn't contain fat. Going by Trout's analysis, if the "fat-free" campaign is successful, any other coffeemaker trying to use the "fat-free" attribute would be seen as copycats.
I wonder how many of my consumption choices are influenced by these marketing tactics.