Look Beyond Your Category for Fans

In my book, Ramping Your Brand, I stress the importance of category as the primary analytical tool, especially in your initial product development. What are you really bringing to the category? What’s the cultural news? How are YOU the most modern choice? What is new about your brand’s key attribute-outcome signal? 

And this is still as true as ever. The point here is not to please retail buyers. The point is to speak “category” – the universal frame where consumers, retailers, and brands meet. We all understand this language. Consumer culture trains us to shop for categories of goods. And so, all your prospective fans will compare you to other brands in the category they’ve consumed (or even just heard of) before. No matter how clever your marketing is.

However, your premium pricing will turn off most current category buyers. So, premium-priced brands have an inordinate need to bring consumers into (or back into) the category based on the power of their attribute-outcome signal and marketing (of that signal). 

Innovate for category competition. Yes. But market your brand to anyone interested in your brand’s key outcome (or outcome mix). Just scream it to the broadest relevant audience possible. 

Using the most mainstream outcome to fuel your communications is key to finding this big audience. And don’t worry too much about other categories that seem to ‘own’ that outcome.

Our ADHD consumer culture should give you confidence that great product design and marketing can easily steer ‘outcome’ traffic your way…