How to Create a Movement: Beyond Category Leadership

How To Create A Movement

These days there’s a lot of talk about category-creation, which makes sense. If you win a category, you are golden right? You get to set the tone for the industry, win endless rewards in growth, and create a company that people aspire to work for.

But is that really the end of it?

I don’t think so. I think it goes beyond category-creation, to something even bigger. So let’s break down how to think about what you are aiming to win, and how that will affect your go-to-market.

You can win:

• A feature contest
• A product contest
• A category contest
• A movement contest

Let’s take an example of a company doing this really well, Tesla 😍

They are winning:

• A feature contest (best AI for autonomous driving ✅)
• A product contest (best electric car ✅)
• A category contest (best car? - still TBD here ⚠️)
• A movement contest (powering an electric future ✅)

I know, I know. Many of you will argue with me about Tesla, but if you ask the average person on the street who has the best electric car or most advanced AI for cars, I suspect most people will say Tesla. But you see, Tesla is more than a car company. They are creating a movement towards a more sustainable and electric-powered future. That’s their end goal. Not just great electric cars (which is an important category to revolutionize to get to the end goal). 

So what do you think the most memorable companies aim for?

Yep, going higher up. 

Either winning the category or the movement.

So many companies have a goal to move up, including many I’ve worked for. For example, Salesforce first won the product contest and since moved up to winning the category. They are moving towards a movement, but I’m not sure I would put them there yet, though they are close.

Oura is doing a great job of having a winning product for health, but you can tell their aim is much higher;  aiming to change how we all think about health and wellness.

• Feature winners are obvious acquisition targets.
• Product winners end up doing well over a long period of time, but often struggle to come up with a second winning product.
• Category winners have often changed the way we work or live, and have broken beyond the one-product category to create a sustainable long-term business.
• Movement winners have redefined society and the global order of things by getting people to change how we act as humans and as communities.

Choosing The Right Go-To-Market For Your Goal

Now here’s where things get interesting as your strategy and tactics will change based on what you are aiming for.

Before we get to what those are, it’s really important that you are honest about your overall goal. If not, you could end up choosing the wrong strategy and tactics for what you are trying to achieve. Trust me, I speak to enough people that everyone thinks they want to be a category leader, even though that’s hardly realistic.

• Feature winners are everywhere. Every time you do a search online, their product comes up. These companies have mastered digital marketing, and have created enough buzz so that word-of-mouth spreads among the community. These companies rarely invest in brand or comms or content.
• Product winners go even bigger. Sure they do a lot of the same things as above, but these companies also invest more in events, community-building, PR, and content to win more deals by being in more places where the right buyers are.
• Category winners do many of the same things as the two previous categories, but the investment in brand becomes much more important here because you are trying to influence people to create something that people will love for a long time. This requires a deep understanding and investment in what brand means in the long-term, and a team that can execute against that. Usually you need more than an internal team, you need expert agencies, consultants, advisors to help you win here, and you need to influence the influencers a lot more, which means investment in people activites.
• Movement winners over-invest in brand early because they are not fighting to win a feature, but to change what people think is possible and create a movement around that. These companies, as well as the ones leading categories, put a lot of effort into content, thought-leadership, analyst relations, influencers, policy, partnerships, and more. All things that time time to pay off, but when they do, they are game-changers. These companies think in terms of 5-10 years and invest accordingly.

The difference between category and movement companies is really around the goal they are trying to achieve. Category winners change how we work or how we live, movement winners usually do both.

What do you think?

#brand #category #movement