Category Creation

5Live Your Purpose, Values, and Culture Out Loud

We’ve all seen the TED talk by now. At the time of writing this, Simon Sinek’s 18-minute monologue on how great leaders inspire action has drawn almost 44 million views and has secured its place as one of the top 25 most popular TED talks of all time. Sinek’s message was as profound as it was simple—that people don’t buy what you do; they buy why you do it. The greatest generational companies of our time, such as Apple, Harley-Davidson, and Southwest Airlines, deliver so much more than just products customers love; they create movements around their brands. Their secret? According to Sinek, these outlier companies inspire loyalty and motivate their followers and employees to stick with them through thick or thin by starting with why, while their competitors start with what.

Category creation, too, must start with why.

The truth is that every company—whether creating a new category or disrupting an existing one—should define their purpose and what they stand for as an organization. Purpose is foundational to success in the B2H era. With products (the what) becoming more commoditized over time, customers have more choice than ever before and will elect to do business with companies they respect and admire. Aligning brand to core human need has become far more than just the right thing to do, but the only way for a company to survive. This is especially true of companies creating a category, which, as I explained in Chapter One ...