Category Creation

9Activate Customers as Brand Ambassadors

One of the preconceived notions you might have first had when picking this book up is that companies create categories. I can understand why—almost every example I’ve shared so far attributes the success of a new category to a specific brand. The tactics that I’ve documented in this playbook are funded and operated by companies who aspire for category dominance. The truth is that there’s a missing party in the narrative here who actually carries all of the leverage and authority to crown a category created—the customer. In the last chapter, I spoke at great length about how central community is to category creation—a vibrant ecosystem made up of customers, non-customers, partners, investors, and other constituencies external to your organization. At the end of the day, a company’s ability to create a category successfully is inextricably linked to validation from its ecosystem—with customers serving as the most leveraged relationships from which to begin.

Consider a company that yells new category positioning into a void themselves with no external validation. Eventually, the company will realize that something isn’t working with that approach and move on to try something new. But what if that same company created a platform for other voices to position the category, with trusted voices from reputable companies? Would that effort create a different outcome? The science says yes—that social proof is embedded in the psychology surrounding ...