I started Tellus as a differentiator. We were Orange County's first green design-build firm, about eighteen months ahead of everyone else. That was mostly branding. It came from a real desire to clean up how we built, but the green position was a positioning call before it was a technical one.
It worked anyway. Tellus sprang off that positioning into four hundred plus projects over the life of the company. The thing that got us in the room in the first place was the green label, not a certification binder.
My opinion hasn't changed since. A brand position you commit to early, even if it starts as marketing instinct rather than technical superiority, can become the real differentiator if you build the substance underneath it fast enough to catch up with the claim. Say the honest version of that story, not the polished one, because the honest version is what actually sells.