The Big Brand Lie: How Categories Make Brands & Why Brand Marketers Never Believe It

Categories make brands. Not the other way around.

Arrrrr! 🏴‍☠️ Welcome to the free edition of Category Pirates. Each month, we publish mini-books that share radically different ideas to help you design and dominate new categories. Thank you for reading, and of course, forward one of our “mini-books” to a friend you think needs to hop aboard the Pirate ship.

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Dear Friend, Subscriber, and Category Pirate,

Have you ever met someone who’s been drafted into a cult?

Did you know it’s possible to be in a cult and not know it?

A meaningful percentage of marketers, entrepreneurs, and executives are in what we like to call “The Brand Cult.” They’ve been taught the best (aka: “the most well known”) brand wins. 

Even though the data shows this is not true.

• Ford spends $2.5 billion per year on brand advertising, with a market cap of $50 billion. General Motors spends $3 billion, with a market cap of $70 billion. Meanwhile, Tesla spends $0, but has a market cap of $700 billion. What?!?

• In 2011, Google spent almost $600 million building and launching a social network to compete with Facebook and Twitter called Google+. If “the best brand wins,” how come Google+ failed? After all, Forbes named Google the 2nd “most valuable brand in the world” in 2020.

• Comcast spends more than $5 billion on branding and advertising each year. And yet, Comcast has long been considered “America’s Most Hated Company.” There’s even a Wikipedia page dedicated to the company’s inadequacies, titled “Criticism of Comcast.” (United Airlines is a close second, if you ask us.) So if branding and “shouting from the rooftops” is the key to winning the game, how come $5 billion per year can’t solve Comcast’s problems? Maybe they need $10 billion?

But sharing data with a cult member is about the worst thing you can do. That’s because facts are upsetting to feelings—particularly facts that disprove everything you’ve been taught to believe.

Well, here’s a fact:

Categories make brands. Not the other way around.

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How The Brand Cult Began

In 2011, The Atlantic published a piece titled, “How Brands Were Born: A Brief History of Modern Marketing.”

“In the 1950s, consumer packaged goods companies like Procter and Gamble, General Foods and Unilever developed the discipline of brand management, or marketing as we know it today, when they noticed the quality levels of products being offered by competitors around them improve. A brand manager would be responsible for giving a product an identity that distinguished it from nearly indistinguishable competitors.”

Note that last sentence.

From our perspective, the obvious response and clear “no brainer” solution to being “nearly indistinguishable” is to get different: design a new space, come up with something new, and make others play a game you created.

But that’s not what most “marketing & branding experts” decided.

Instead, they said, “Let’s ignore the fact there is nothing unique about us, our product, or what we do for the world. Instead, let’s do some branding.” As if sprinkling some kind of magic dust on your “brand” (changing the colors, the font, the logo design, etc.) is going to drive a breakthrough in growth. Or, even worse, “Let’s call ourselves a community. Let’s use big, all-encompassing, undifferentiated language to make ourselves appeal to everyone. Something like, ‘We are an authentic, purpose-driven brand.’” 

And thus, “the brand cult” was formed—and The Big Brand Lie began.

“The Room Where It Happened”

We will live the rest of our lives wondering how branding as a solution to a lack of differentiation ever made it out the room (“The room where it happened”).

“No one else was in the room where it happened, the room where it happened, the room where it happened.

No one else was in the room where it happened, the room where it happened, the room where it happened.

No one knows how the game is played, the art of the trade, how the sausage gets made.

We just assumed that it happens.

But no one else is in the room where it happens.”

And yet, every single day, we are shocked by how many MBAs, entrepreneurs, founders, even very smart investors, accept this premise.

How could the answer to the problem, “We’re indistinguishable,” possibly be cosmetic attributes?

How could the answer to the problem, “We’re the same thing,” be, “Let’s say we’re the same thing, but better and louder and more often?”

How could the answer to the problem, “We’ve run out of ideas,” be, “Let’s make the logo BIGGER!?”

There are approximately 7,000 books on “branding” on Amazon. 

Our guess is that many of them extol the value of “building a brand” as a path to success. 

Make The Logo BIGGER!

(We encourage you to watch the above in full because we’re going to be singing the chorus all the way down the page. Arrrrrrr!)

“Make the logo BIGGER!” is the opposite of Category Design.

Category Design is the process of moving customers FROM the way the world is TO a new and different way. Categories are about customers, their problems, their opportunities, and their future—which means category marketing is about educating customers on a new and different solution that unlocks transformational outcomes by solving a specific problem.

Branding, on the other hand, is about us. Our name. Our logo. Our team. Our “mission statement.” Which means brand marketing is about screaming, “LOOK AT ME, LOOK AT ME!” Whereas category marketing is about evangelizing a different outcome altogether.

Said differently:

Brand marketing is something we do to customers.

Category marketing is something we do for customers.

The Story of Ralph Lauren

Ask any person on earth why Ralph Lauren was successful, and 99% of them will say the same thing:

“He built an incredible brand.”

But is that actually what caused his success? Or was the Ralph Lauren brand the result of his creating a DIFFERENT category?

If you haven’t seen the documentary on Ralph Lauren, called Very Ralph, we highly recommend it.

Most people don’t know that Ralph Lauren is credited with creating the menswear industry as “a designer reality.” In the 1960s, men had gotten used to prescriptive dressing, and wore suits as uniforms with very little differentiation and personality. “Designers were for the women. The tailor was for men.” Lauren was the first designer to turn American “lifestyle” moments and characters (a carpenter, a railroad worker, a cowboy) into fashionable everyday looks. 

And it all started with his unique “wide” ties.

In the documentary, he tells the story:

“I like these ties. I’m going to make them wider. I’m going to bring them over to the store, I think they’re going to like it. So I took them over to Bloomingdale’s, because Bloomingdale’s was the entree into every store—because every store at that time was shopping Bloomingdale’s to see what was new. Who were the new resources? What’s happening? The buyer looked at the tie and said, ‘It’s too wide, and would you make it a little narrower, and will you take the label off? We want to have our store brand.’”

To which Ralph Lauren closed his sample case and walked away—and the rest is history.

The misunderstanding here is that what made Ralph Lauren different from all the other ties in the market was the brand, and that’s not it at all. What made Ralph Lauren ties (the company’s first successful product) different was the fact that they were wider. They were the first tie to break the mold of what a tie should look like for men—and the first tie that even remotely resembled having its own distinct style. Ralph’s ties were different, and as a result, created a new category of wide designer ties. The “brand” and the tag simply let people know where they could get more DIFFERENT ties like it.

And in the 1960s, what happens when you wear a wide tie?

Well, you need different shirts, with different collars. You need a different suit. (Remember: new categories create more new categories.) And suddenly, Ralph Lauren was creating a whole new category of menswear. What Lauren was not doing was copy/pasting his brand onto similar, commodity products. He was inventing new and DIFFERENT products—which, after the fact, were paired with the Ralph Lauren tag and brand. 

Fast-forward to today, and despite the fact that Ralph Lauren will go down in history as one of the greatest fashion designers ever  (and the company boasts an $8 billion market cap), it’s differentiation strategy today amounts to little other than, “Make the logo BIGGER!”

The Definition Of Branding

But before we go any further, let’s think deeply about this word the business world loves so much.

Remember:

thinking about thinking is the most important kind of thinking.

BRANDING. What did this word originally mean? 

It meant “livestock branding.”

“The practice of branding—in the original literal sense of marketing by burning—is thought to have begun with the ancient Egyptians, who were known to have engaged in livestock branding as early as 2,700 BCE. Branding was used to differentiate one person’s cattle from another’s by means of a distinctive symbol burned into the animal’s skin with a hot branding iron. If a person stole any of the cattle, anyone else who saw the symbol could deduce the actual owner. The term has been extended to mean a strategic personality for a product or company, so that ‘brand’ now suggests the values and promises that a consumer may perceive and buy into.”

OK, so let’s just think about this for a second. 

The marketing world thought it would be a good idea to borrow a word that meant “burning a symbol into a cow” to represent the act of claiming customers as your own. Hmmm…. So branding is a violent, painful approach to showing a living being as belonging to you. 

That sounds about right.

Enduring most branding efforts, as a customer, is painful.

• Maybe this this is why advertisers use the term “impressions” as a feeble proxy for a real outcome when selling advertising to corporations? 

• Maybe this means brands think of customers as their own property?

• Maybe this is why companies that spend billions of dollars in brand advertising per year also happen to be the companies at the top of the “most-hated” lists?

Things that make you go hmmm…

For example:

Mmmmm. Nothing we love more than a sweet, sweet Capital One ad taking up 50% of the screen, talking about themselves. 

We bet this big banner ad is getting lots of brand impressions, which means it must be working! Right? Actually, if we sober up for half a second and look, the data shows us it’s not. Capital One spent $1.6 billion on advertising in 2020, and has been averaging $1.9 billion per year in ad spend for the past 5 years. And yet, after the stock failed to move from 2015 to 2020, the company authorized a “new share buyback program of up to $7.5 billion for 2021,” causing the stock to artificially rise. So basically, $1.6 billion (or more) per year advertising Capital One’s brand has done nothing—so much so the company decided to deploy $7.5 billion more in cash to prop up the stock.

Let us really soak in this for a second. Capital One could not drive growth in their value through marketing. So they cooked-up fake growth with stock buybacks. CEOs buying their own stock communicate at least three (horrible) things about the company.  

1. They have run out of ideas

2. They are using shareholder’s cash, to increase their own stock compensation

3. And worst of all, they have given up trying to increase their value in a real way

Capital One is not alone here. In 2014, HBR published a piece by William Lazonick, a University of Massachusetts professor, called “Profits Without Prosperity.” Here he noted 449 companies in the S&P 500 index from 2003 to 2012 used 54% of their earnings to buy back their own stock. Another 37% of earnings were used for dividends, meaning 91% total corporate earnings from the S&P 500 went to buybacks.

Given that stock options and awards comprise the lion share of executive compensation, executives who are stewards are self-dealing at the expense of investing in growth. Stock buybacks plus stock-based compensation at slow growth companies is one of the single greatest examples of ‘legal larceny’ committed in plain sight. 

Now, we didn’t get invited to the Marketing Leadership Council meeting where “marketing experts” decided “branding” and “brand advertising” was the best way to spend a billion dollars per year. Had we been invited, we would have slammed our mugs down on the table and shouted, “That’s a chantey without a clap o’ thunder down from Davy Jones’ locker if we ever heard it!” (If you are still learning to speak Pirate, that means we think ‘branding’ is a horrible name and makes absolutely no sense.)

Are we being cheeky?

No. THINK.

Branding is defined as burning your name on someone to claim ownership.

Imagine branding as an idea doesn’t exist. Imagine you’re a marketing executive at Procter & Gamble and the guy next to you is saying, “Man, everybody’s detergent is the same. What do we do? I know. Let’s make it look different. Let’s give it a different identity. Let’s make it stand out by giving it unique colors on the box.” This is what eventually becomes “branding” (as a multibillion-dollar industry) and NOBODY goes, “Wait, hang on a minute. Maybe the solution to the problem, “We’re not different,” is to actually get different.

Opposed to whatever the hell you and a bunch of “marketing experts” just talked about.

But this is what brand marketers do. Their entire job is predicated on their ability to burn their company’s name and logo into the minds and bodies of their customers. Success is then measured by how many people they *believe* they’ve prodded with a hot poker (example: Capital One). “Congratulations! This month we reached a new high score of X million impressions. We believe we branded them—therefore, we did brand them. Keep buying more branding efforts!”

Smooth Brain Brand Plus

There’s a term that rumbles in the underbelly of the Internet (also known as Reddit) that represents people who can’t think for themselves.

“Smooth brained apes.”

“One of the first things people notice about the human brain is its intricate landscape of hills and valleys. These convolutions derive from the cerebral cortex, a two- to four-millimeter-thick mantle of gelatinous tissue packed with neurons sometimes called gray matter that mediates our perceptions, thoughts, emotions and actions. Other large-brained mammals such as whales, dogs and our great ape cousins have a corrugated cortex, too each with its own characteristic pattern of convolutions. But small-brained mammals and other vertebrates have relatively smooth brains.” —Scientific American

Well, one of the smoothest brain brand strategies in marketing today is to take your brand and then slap it on anything and everything you can find. Because the brand is what made you successful, right? Brands drive growth, right? Everybody knows how important branding is! The brand is what people love!

In 1994 (so ahead of their time), Al Ries & Jack Trout wrote one of the definitive books on “business thinking,” The 22 Immutable Laws Of Marketing. And in Chapter 18, The Law of Success, they state the following: 

“Success is often the fatal element behind the rash of line extensions. When a brand is successful, the company assumes the name is the primary reason for the brand’s success. So they promptly look for other products to plaster the name on. Actually, it’s the opposite. The name didn’t make the brand famous (although a bad name might keep the brand from becoming famous.) The brand got famous because you made the right marketing moves. In other words, the steps you took were in tune with the fundamental laws of marketing. You got into the mind first. You narrowed the focus. You preempted a powerful attribute. Your success puffs up your ego to such an extent that you put the famous name on other products. Result: early success and long-term failure…”.

If blindly branding customers with a hot poker is mistake numero uno, then mistake number two is taking your brand and doing what Ries & Trout famously languaged as “line extension”: taking your brand and extending it across multiple categories.

• Disney+

• Apple TV+

• ESPN+

• Hulu+

• Samsung TV+

• BET+

• Paramount+

Did we learn nothing from Google+? 

Here’s how this stupidity gets rationalized. In 2020, FastCompany (a commodity, undifferentiated business “brand”) published a piece titled, “Why adding ‘Plus’ to the name of every streaming service is actually good.” In it, ViacomCBS president and CEO, Bob Bakish, explains, “Paramount is an iconic and storied brand beloved by consumers all over the world, and it is synonymous with quality, integrity, and world-class storytelling.”

Pause.

Real quick, name one Paramount film.

Just one.

If Paramount is SUCH an iconic brand, and branding is all that matters, then surely you can remember which films Paramount has made versus which films 21st Century Fox has made, versus Universal Pictures, versus Columbia Pictures, right? 

Can’t?

Moving on.

Bakish continues, “With Paramount Plus, we’re excited to establish one global streaming brand in the broad-pay segment that will draw on the sheer breadth and depth of ViacomCBS portfolio to offer an extraordinary collection of content for everyone to enjoy.”

Let’s go back to how we started this letter, and the origin of branding: “A brand manager would be responsible for giving a product an identity that distinguished it from nearly indistinguishable competitors.” 

Whether Bob Bakish realizes it or not, he is explicitly announcing to the world that Paramount Plus is no different from any of its competitors. The only difference is that its catalog of products (and by extension, it’s viewers) have been “branded” with the Paramount logo. (A brand who is so “iconic,” no one can name a single one of their movies.)

The (rocket-surgeon) author of the FastCompany article then goes on to explain, “Ahhh, but there is a method to all this Plus madness. What if it was all designed to make our lives less confusing?” Listen to the words.

Translation: The reason a big brand like Paramount decides to use “Plus” to describe it’s new product offering is because executives (and FastCompany writers) believe you are too “smooth brained” to understand anything different. If they DIDN’T call it Paramount Plus, how would you possibly find the content you were searching for?

The article then closes out the argument with a quote from the Chief Creative Officer of Initial, Initial & Initial, “It’s such a complex landscape out there for consumers. There’s so much content, so much choice, so many different layers of everything. I think brands have sort of banded together with these signifiers to make it easier for people to peg what kind of product it is.”

Listen. To. The. Words.

• “We think fitting in (not differentiating) is a wise growth strategy.”

• “You are too dumb to figure out what you want to watch on your own.”

• “Your content preferences aren’t relevant. You will blindly follow whichever logo is the biggest (SING IT...“Make the logo BIGGER!”).”

• “Today’s media landscape is so big, and so complex, that the best path forward is for brands to all use the same signifiers so that products can be more easily compared against each other.”

Bob Bakish, FastCompany, and most Chief Creative Officers, are all premium members of “The Brand Cult.”

Unfortunately, this sort of comparison marketing leads nowhere except “The Better Trap.”

And companies that fall into “The Better Trap” all fight for 24% of the category.

A few other great examples of how “line extension” never works:

Red Bull Cola

In 2008, on the heels of Red Bull’s meteoric rise creating the “energy drink” category, the company decided it was time to broaden their horizons. Unfortunately, instead of creating a new category, the company decided to take its brand and try to extend it into another already established category: Cola. 

At the time, Red Bull UK’s managing director said in a press release, “The new product will benefit from full integration into Red Bull’s brand marketing initiatives, sitting alongside Red Bull energy drink.” Well, if Red Bull was one of the most recognizable brands in the world, and if brand marketing is so successful, why did Red Bull pull the plug (along with its other “line extension” product, Red Bull Energy Shots) three years later? Because Coke owns the Cola category, and 5-Hour Energy owns the Energy Shot category—and you will never overthrow the category leader by extending your brand into someone else’s category.

We find it stunning how some of the greatest category creators ever forget what made them successful. Categories are about customers. Brands are about us. We’re not shrinks, shamans, or doctors of any kind, but we do suspect this has to do with the human ego. We want to believe we make us successful. When the truth is, customers make us successful. 

Categories make brands. Not the other way around.

The Microsoft Store

In 2009, another one of the most well-known brands and most valuable companies in the world, Microsoft, decided to take on Apple’s legendary in-store customer experience by launching The Microsoft Store.

“We want to showcase what’s possible with the full Microsoft brand,” said David Porter, corporate VP of Microsoft Retail, in a press release promoting the launch.

By 2015, the company announced, “Today, more than 80 percent of Americans live within 20 miles of a Microsoft store, with more than 110 stores across the U.S., Puerto Rico and Canada.” 

Fast-forward to 2020, and Microsoft decided to shut the doors on the operation, “resulting in a pre-tax charge of approximately $450 million,” according to CNBC. That’s half a billion dollars spent trying to extend their brand into Apple’s category. “Microsoft even built a store on 5th Avenue in New York City, just blocks away from Apple’s iconic glass cube store.”

Line extension doesn’t work.

You can’t take your brand and stroll up into someone else’s category. 

And yet, executives at some of the most legendary companies in the world—companies that, at one point, designed and dominated massive categories—continue to spread the gospel of “The Brand Cult.” 

Trillions in market cap has been destroyed with these asinine branding “strategies.” 

And trillions more will be.

Your New Role As CMO: Prepare 3 Envelopes

Success in most marketing roles means changing jobs every 18-36 months.

That’s how you know you’re climbing the ladder.

Especially in Fortune 500 companies, the pattern is as follows:

• First 6 months: Dump on the person before you (“They did it all wrong”).

• Next 6 months: “Make The Logo BIGGER!”

• Final 6 months: Move onto your next gig.

Let us show you how this works by telling you a short Pirate fable.

You’re the new CMO. Congrats! 

The old CMO says, “I wish you all the success in the world. Good luck. And to help you out, I’ve left 3 envelopes on my desk with some advice—in case you ever need it.”

So you get settled. You move into your new office. But then after the welcome parties simmer down, and your responsibilities pick up speed, people start asking questions. “What are you contributing to revenue? What’s our ROI? How do we know we are gaining market share?” Turns out, being a CMO is hard! A bit harder than things seemed in the job description.

You aren’t sure how to handle it, so you open Envelope #1.

You pull out a sheet of paper, and all it says is one word:

“Rebrand.”

Terrific idea! Branding is the solution to everything.

So, you put together a fancy PowerPoint presentation. You call all the other executives into a meeting. And you say, “Listen. Growth isn’t where we want it to be. We’re not distinguished from our competitors. We need a rebrand.” And all the smooth-brained executives start nodding their heads, Yes… Yes…

*Note: If a company hires a new CMO and rebrands within the first 12 months, quit or sell the stock. You’re screwed.

The good news is, most rebranding initiatives take anywhere from 8 to 24 months to complete. Anytime someone asks you what you’re doing or why the company’s marketing isn’t yielding meaningful results, all you have to say is, “That’s because we’re in the middle of a rebrand.” Ah, OK. Got it.

Fast-forward a year, and the rebrand is done. You have a brand new shiny logo. Can’t you tell the difference?

(We guarantee SAP wasted tens of thousands of person hours and many tens of millions on this 👆)

For a while, everyone on the team is ecstatic. “I LOVE THE COLORS!” It’s practically a work of art. (Meanwhile, Andy Warhol is rolling in his grave.) Until a few months pass and people start asking questions. “Did the rebrand work? Is revenue up? Have our competitors waved the white flag yet?” The questions won’t stop!

In a jam, you open Envelope #2. 

“Re-org.”

An amazing idea!

You start to think about it, and of course it makes sense why the rebrand didn’t change the company’s position in the marketplace. Just look around! The office is a disaster—nobody knows how to communicate with anybody. It’s time to move from a centralized model to a decentralized model. (Because if you’re not the category leader, you’re fighting for just 24% of the value in the category. So you can position, reposition, brand, and rebrand all you want, but growth will be very hard.)

“How long will it take?” another executive asks.

“Probably 12 to 18 months,” you say, shaking your head. “It’s going to be tough, but we have to do it.”

And off the company goes, rebranding and re-orging.

Until finally, after you’ve been with the company for a little over two years, you realize things aren’t going anywhere. “It’s time for me to jump ship,” you say over drinks with an executive at another company. When you return back to the office, people won’t leave you alone. More questions, always more questions. “Did the rebrand work? Did the re-org work?” You’ve had enough. Clearly, nobody onboard is up to your caliber of talent! And so you open the last envelope, hoping for some parting advice from the previous CMO.

You open it up, pull out the sheet of paper, and it says…

“Prepare three envelopes.”

The Role Brands Should Play In Category Design

If brand marketing doesn’t work, then what’s a marketer, an executive, an entrepreneur to do?

The answer is certainly not to come up with airy-fairy attributes and qualities in an attempt to “distinguish” the company, product, or service from identical offerings (“Make the logo BIGGER!”). 

The only time you should ever rebrand is when you are launching a new category design. 

However, branding in the absence of category design is asinine.

Remember: categories make brands, not the other way around.

Google’s brand is only valuable in the context of the category it created and dominated, which is Search. Take Google’s brand and extend it into Facebook’s “social network” category, and it’s worthless. Same goes for Microsoft and it’s attempt to extend its brand into Apple’s category of in-store experiences. 

Instead, branding should be used in conjunction with the new and different category you are creating. The category and brand have to come together in some meaningful way for the customer, consumer, or user.

For example:

• Barcade: The original Arcade Bar. It’s not a bar, and it’s not an arcade. It’s an Arcade Bar. It’s a different thing, in a different category. The brand then reflects all the things that make this thing fundamentally different.

• 5-Hour Energy: Energy shots. The category is “energy shots.” And the brand is “5-hour Energy.” The brand name reflects the differentiated category. The two are inextricably linked. 

• Under Armour: Athletic undergarments. The category is, “clothes you wear under your clothes when you’re being athletic.” And the brand is, “Under Armour.” The brand name is telling customers what the category is. “Under Armour is the originator of performance apparel—sportswear engineered to keep athletes cool, dry and light throughout the course of a game, practice, or workout.” Their brand, in the context of this new and different category they created, is legendary. Outside of this category, Under Armour is a next-next-next-best alternative to Nike, Adidas, and so on.

• Amazon.com: eCommerce. Amazon was the first company of consequence to put dot com in their name. This immediately communicated that Amazon was radically different from any other “bookstore.” And it’s tagline in the beginning screamed their digital difference. “The Earth’s Biggest Bookstore.” (Thousands of companies followed in their footsteps and realized, “Hey, if we put dot com in our name, we’ll be valued as a futuristic eCommerce company too.”)

When done successfully, your company’s branding efforts do not (just) create the style guide for your company, but the style guide for the category. You can see this happening in plain sight when competitors start:

• Talking like you

• Looking like you

• Using similar features as you

All of which makes the category bigger (of which you, as the category leader, will capture the lion’s share of the economics).

Most small ‘e’ entrepreneurs intuitively understand branding hierarchy in category design.

Whereas most MBAs from Ivy League schools (wearing pleated pants and blue button-downs) do not.

For proof, look at any local sign for a dentist.

• BIG FONT: DENTIST

• Small font: Mark Johnson, DDS.

Or, how about your local landscaping company?

• BIG FONT: LANDSCAPING

• Small font: Miller’s Landscaping Since 1992

Or how about your plumber? What does the side of their truck say?

• BIG FONT: PLUMBER

• Small font: O’Connor Plumbing. Call us today!

Category first, brand second.

Because if we are plumbers, and we say, “Hey you should really call Eddie, Cole, and Christopher,” you don’t care. You don’t have a clue what we’re talking about. Are we plumbers? Are we fast-food delivery guys? Are we landscapers? You need to know what category of thing we are, first. Then, once you understand the category, you start searching for the “best brand” within that category.

Big ‘E’ Entrepreneurs, on the other hand, have a much harder time keeping their ego in check.

It’s as if the moment your startup passes $100 million funding you black out and forget what made you successful wasn’t your brand, your logo, your name, or even you and your incredible track record as an entrepreneur.

What made you successful was your ability to create a new and differentiated category of product, service, or offering—to which your brand name just happened to be attached.

Again: Ralph Lauren’s brand isn’t what made his “wide ties” successful.

His new and differentiated category of product, “wide ties,” were successful, which made his brand successful as a result.

Force A Choice. Don’t Invite A Comparison

So, if you are an entrepreneur, an executive, or a marketer, we urge you to ask this very important question:

What are you DOING with your marketing?

Are you forcing a choice? “We are a different thing altogether.” 

Or are you inviting a comparison? “We’re like everybody else, PLUS some more.”

The answer to this question is the seminal difference between brand marketing and category marketing.

Somehow, the business world got duped into solving a problem called, “We’re not different,” by putting drapes on the painting—opposed to creating a different painting.

Stop arguing over whose drapes are the best.

Paint a different painting.

Arrrrrrr,

Category Pirates

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P.S. - If you found this mini-book valuable, we encourage you to check out some of our other free favorites:

• A Beginner's Guide To Category Design

• How To Create A Category As A Small “e” Entrepreneur

• The Marketing Funnel Funeral

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