Brand Shorthand

Designing a New Category - Part 2

May 20, 2024 Mark Vandegrift and Lorraine Kessler Season 2 Episode 17
Designing a New Category - Part 2
Brand Shorthand
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Brand Shorthand
Designing a New Category - Part 2
May 20, 2024 Season 2 Episode 17
Mark Vandegrift and Lorraine Kessler

Before the positioning gurus tackle the marketing strategy of Designing and Building a New Category, they throw a red flag on Apple's latest iPad ad, and Starbuck's trend downward. Then Mark and Lorraine cover the next six rules of designing and building a new category. Learn what inverted marketing, insulating siding, getting there first, shooting losers, and Segways have to do with category creation. One of THE greatest moves you can make as a marketing is to build a new category, but it's not for the faint of heart. Proceed cautiously using this wisdom from our positioning duo.

Spend 40ish with Mark and Lorraine as they talk all things marketing, advertising, and positioning.

Show Notes Transcript

Before the positioning gurus tackle the marketing strategy of Designing and Building a New Category, they throw a red flag on Apple's latest iPad ad, and Starbuck's trend downward. Then Mark and Lorraine cover the next six rules of designing and building a new category. Learn what inverted marketing, insulating siding, getting there first, shooting losers, and Segways have to do with category creation. One of THE greatest moves you can make as a marketing is to build a new category, but it's not for the faint of heart. Proceed cautiously using this wisdom from our positioning duo.

Spend 40ish with Mark and Lorraine as they talk all things marketing, advertising, and positioning.

Mark Vandegrift
Welcome to the latest episode of the Brand Shorthand Podcast. I'm your host, Mark Vandegrift, and with me is the sherpa of sales, Lorraine Kessler. Welcome back, Lorraine. How are things going with you today?

Lorraine Kessler
Yes, well they're going pretty well, Mark. It's a beautiful day. We've got some sunshine and the bright greens and rhododendrons are out and peonies are not too far behind, so it's nice. It's a beautiful world.

Mark Vandegrift
Yeah, we're harvesting all of our spring vegetables already, if you can imagine that. My wife started eating her first batch of salad the other night and our peas are looking good and … our garlic is like, I don't know if you can see that on screen, but our garlic is so far along already, it's hard to even comprehend, but everything's going well in our garden, that's for sure.

Lorraine Kessler
Well, you are totally a survivalist. You can live alone in your own backyard. Not me. I'm reliant on the kindness of grocery stores.

Mark Vandegrift
Well, Lorraine, you got to rant on Ergo last time. We don't need to rant on anything because the social sphere is doing it for us. Have you seen and heard about Apple's latest commercial?

Lorraine Kessler
Yes, as a matter of fact, I just saw that just the other day. Yeah, the one for the iPad.

Mark Vandegrift
Yeah, where they're compressing all those, all the things in life down to announce that they are the thinnest, you know, thinnest they've ever been. So, the Twitter verse especially is not giving it good reviews. What's your take on it?

Lorraine Kessler
Well, I did read some of those Twitter reviews and there's just this dystopian kind of feeling about… the spot doesn't make people feel good, particularly, and this is really important because we talked about how a brand has to cultivate a certain mindset around people who care a lot about what they stand for. Apple's always been the product for creators, right? And it's the creators who are aghast, who were not only disgruntled by this, but upset by it. That they were, that Apple's destroying all these symbols, if you will, of creativity. Only, and I just thought the punch line to again show me an even thinner iPad. Like really, I mean, what are we, are we going to have to get magnifying glasses out? I think what's thinning, and this is dangerous, for the brand, and I think Starbucks is in the same boat. I think what's thinning for Apple is the fascination of their audience with Apple. 

Their recent technological advancements have been aesthetics almost primarily, not functions, not wow me with new wonderful functionality and things that I never expected to be able to do with my phone or my iPad. And I think that once a brand like a dying star starts to lose some of its brilliance, that's always a scary time for me. I think Apple needs to take stock and back up. I think the ad is just icing on the cake of a lot that's going kind of wrong in Apple.

Mark Vandegrift
Yeah. You know, when I, after thinking through it, it was one of those things where instead of destroying everything like they did, ‘cause I mean, they're crushing musical instruments and they're crushing icons. I mean, even the very last thing you see is a ball with the eyes popping out. It's just like, yeah. You're crushing statues. You're crushing paintings. I mean, you name it… paint. All of it is being crushed. I don't know how you'd execute it cause I'm not the video guy nor creative, but couldn't you somehow grab all that stuff and suck it into the screen as though it all becomes a part of the iPad rather than the sense you got was, I'm destroying all this and here's your replacement. It's a cold, very thin piece of computer equipment, have fun, right?

Lorraine Kessler
Actually, Mark, that's brilliant. I mean, that would be a brilliant and it wouldn't be hard to do creatively to have that all kind of sucked in. And then, now the thinness, it's kind of like all of this stuff you value and love is now here versus we destroyed it and smashed it. And yeah, so I, again, it's just, it's bad creative.

Mark Vandegrift
And it was interesting, you mentioned Starbucks. I was just reading an article about them. They're really, really hemorrhaging money. And the interesting thing was, is when I did some classes like last month at Grove City College, I was talking about Maslow's hierarchy of needs and where Starbucks fits into that. And it was interesting because they went from...so we thought of coffee, I helped the students work through that, coffee being just one of those higher needs in life, because it's liquid, right? Not that it's water, but it would have been in the needs category where you would say, okay, it's an alternative to water. Well, they jumped up to the self-acclamation of the category. So the highest rung of “This is me, this is my identity.” I hold the Starbucks cup and it's part of me. It shows I've arrived. Well, they wanted to push it down a rung to self -esteem, which is below that. It was no longer about identity. It was just a symbol of something that I've accomplished in life. 

So that whole idea that it moved to that top rung and now they're wanting to push it down is a very basic understanding of what's going on even in, you know, 18, 19, 20, 21-year old minds. They don't see it as the way we did when it first came out. I mean, I remember when people would come with a Starbucks cup at three in the afternoon and they'd set it down in front of them at a meeting and you'd go, well, are you drinking cold coffee still or what? It didn't have anything to do with the coffee. It was someone that was saying, look at me, this is who I am, I can afford an eight dollar cup of coffee, you know what I mean? So it was interesting to see that.

Lorraine Kessler
Yeah, it was a status. They're not wrong. It's status. And there's a fine line between, I think what you're saying, between self-esteem and status and self-identification. But I think where they're, for me, the big turn is they weren't just selling coffee, what's in the cup. They were creating an image of an experience of a community where you used to like to hang out at the Starbucks with your MacBook, your Apple computer, and see whoever's coming in and maybe have office conversations. It was about experience beyond the product. 

And they created an environment in your store with fireplaces and no one else did that. And what's happened, and you could see it happening because Shultz started talking about ROI, started talking about return on investment is they've abandoned that for the drive-through. There is no experience in the drive-through. They didn't even make that better like Chick-fil-A. Chick-fil-A, there is an experience of the drive-through. And look at what they're doing with their new buildings in terms of how they're delivering the product. So there's been no innovation on that. The lines are a mile long. And now you're just selling coffee in a cup at a high price. So...

I can see why they're moving down the ladder. There is no experience. They don't invite you to go in their stores anymore. I think it's a tragic loss of the core position and in touch with what really the true DNA was that made Starbucks a fascination. And you know, we've said this before, Mark, ubiquity… they're everywhere. Ubiquity is a killer to fascination. And when you lose fascination, just like that dying star metaphor, it's really hard to get it back. Sears never got it back. GM never got it back. It's almost impossible to get back.

Mark Vandegrift
You know, it's funny, you keep leading me to other brands. You know, ubiquity, we always use the example of Krispy Kreme because we did some work for them, right? All of a sudden, they're at every corner shop. Well, do you see who they're co-proing with right now? McDonald's.

Lorraine Kessler
McDonald's. I think it's a brilliant move for McDonald's. 

Mark Vandegrift
Yeah, oh yeah, but not for Krispy Kreme.

Lorraine Kessler
Because they are the, if you want to eat real junk food, fast food, it's McDonald's. I love McDonald's. I will admit I haven't had it because I've been really being good. But it's my favorite. And I think it really fits that brand. And I'm happy for that. But you're right. They tried to sell this donut theater and it was really cool and how do they make the product and the smell because you're going to smell that all day. And then my first experience was it was in the grocery store and it tasted like four day old donuts. So, like if that's your first experience, you're like, where's the mystique? Where's the fascination?

Mark Vandegrift
Well, and how are they going to keep them fresh in a McDonald's when you think of the heat lamps, right? But, you know, McDonald's sells eight million cups of coffee every day. So, they definitely have the audience. The question is going to be, what does that do for the Krispy Kreme brand? It can only hurt it, in my mind. They might as well just call it, change the company name to McDonald's Donuts and left it, left the rest on the cutting room floor.

Lorraine Kessler
Well, no, don't discount. It's going to pull in new people into McDonald's. So, because there's people who prefer Krispy Kreme, who like it. And so, I think there, not only is it a new breakfast item side, but it has some cachet and a following. So we'll see how that shakes out.

Mark Vandegrift
Yeah, it'll be interesting. You know, it's funny because Duncan got rid of their name Donuts. It's just funny. All these fast foods, they just, they're trampling on each other and it'll be interesting to see who's still alive here in a decade. We may be having a podcast talking about all the different fast food companies that are no longer in business, but we'll save that for another five years down the road.

So, our topic today is about creating a new category. And this is the second part of what we started talking about last week. And we did a quick intro on taxonomy, just understanding the way the mine works and the classifications that our mines need to organize information. We use the category of toothpaste, which we pulled out. And very quickly, you can name some brands on that category ladder, but the problem is it's very crowded. So, one of the best things to do is to create a new category, a subcategory if you will, or a completely different category so that when that category is pulled out, you're now number one or number two. So, our first three points in terms of designing a new category, you have to design it before you can build it, is you need to build your own sandbox only you can control.

And what we mean by that is as you're designing this new category, you can't do it in a vacuum. You have to understand that there's a big enough niche that's going to provide you dollars to keep you in business. So that's really step number one, because building a new category can be very laborious and it can also be very expensive. So, you have to think about how you're carving out that niche. 

The second point that we had, was what Lorraine likes to call coherence. It's connecting to an existing idea or a category. And a lot of times what we like to say is you need to grab something old and marry it to something new that is very clear, just like automobiles were once known as horseless carriages. So, at the time, everyone got around in a horse pulled carriage, which became the horseless carriage. And then once people knew what it was, they changed it to automobiles. The typewriter, for instance, was called the personal printing press. So that was kind of point number two in terms of developing a new category. 

And then when you name that, our third principle was the KISS principle, keep it simply straightforward. And we talked about things such as Poppi being a healthy soda when they first started out as a functional beverage. And how when you think about that, functional doesn't mean anything. It certainly doesn't point to healthy. It doesn't point to the ingredients or anything else like that. And beverage is too broad. It covers water to liquor. Whereas a soda puts us in a category. So now we're dividing the category. We have a healthy soda. So those are our first three points.

Lorraine, I did a lot of talking there. Let's have you cover our fourth point, which we call: invert your marketing.

Lorraine Kessler
Right. Invert your marketing really means that you have to, and I would encourage that this be a one-two step, but the first step is you have to invest and be mindful how to name and then build the category first. Because the category is what has to catch on. That's what creates demand for a new idea within existing competition. So you really have to start there. 

What idea is going to take market share away from a current category? Right? So we have passenger cars, and now I have sports cars. And so you have to build kind of what is a sports car? What's the meaning of that? Who does it appeal to? What are the values? What are the benefits that someone can get from a sports car versus Mark's minivan? How about a sports car minivan? No, I don't think I would. Although Porsche did a minivan and I'm like, really? That doesn't work. All right, come on. 

So that's first, but you also at the same kind of, you know, with the next beat, I don't know, I'm not a drummer, but there's downbeat and upbeat. You have to come in behind very quickly with your brand name. Because as we said in our first episode, people think categories first and brands second. So, you think of the category as a ladder.

So, when you mention a category like soda or toothpaste or sports car, people carry in a ladder in their mind with this taxonomy you're talking about. And then they put brands on the rungs in the order that those brands have registered. 

So, you don't want to build a category only to forfeit it to someone else who wakes up and is looking at the market and says, that's a hell of an idea we're going to outspend them and shut them down and put our name number one on the rung on the ladder. So, you really have to be fighting. And I know this doesn't sound like regular military warfare, which Jack Trout compares a lot of marketing to, but you really have to fight a two-front war. It's a one-two punch. The first building the category uses the tactics of PR most heavily. And the second, the brand, attaching your brand to be number one or two, hopefully number one if you're creating the category, has to use advertising tactically.

Mark Vandegrift
Good. Yeah, it's funny because sometimes companies will create a new category and all they do is they take that category descriptor and put it below their logo. And then they start doing advertising the same way. Well, unless you're Poppi and you want to drop $7 million on a Super Bowl commercial. 

And even then, did you notice in that ad that they didn't talk about the brand name first? They led up to the fact that when new things come along, it disrupts. And why hasn't someone come up with a healthy soda? Boom, that was the next part. And then they said, OK, we're here. There is a healthy soda and it's called Poppi. So even in their advertisement, they did it in the proper order versus, OK, we're Poppi, we're a healthy soda. And there was no discussion about, well, what do you mean a healthy soda? What is it?

What does that have to do with anything? So even in their communication, they did it in the proper order. And wouldn't you say that, I mean, we've done this before, so we know the answer to this, but wouldn't you agree that you actually have to have a marketing plan for the category that's separate from the product or service or the brand? Those would be two different marketing plans. They can be executed simultaneously, but they have to be thought of independently.

Lorraine Kessler
Well, yeah, I guess I would think of it as one plan, but with two specific objectives and the dimensions to it, right? So, two channels where you're trying to, again, do one and attach two to it. And you don't want to have two different houses doing that, not communicating. So one backs the other. And how you do it...

I think also differs in terms of, you know, we talk a lot about consumer products because they're easier for our audience, I think, to understand. But you and I work in a lot of business to business and highly technical space where there's a lot of innovations like Babcock & Wilcox, right? And what they're doing is well beyond, you know, buying something off the shelf. There's a lot of category building they have to do.

And there's a different way of tactically doing that through the PR where you write white papers, you do research, you sponsor symposiums where you are the knowledge leader in the market. You then want the brand of the service or science or whatever technology to be the first call from news media when they ask about that category.

It changes a little, but not in terms of the tactics and how you approach them, but not in terms of the strategy.

Mark Vandegrift
Yeah. Well, you created, you know, you were deeply involved in creating the insulated siding category. Give us a little rundown of how you saw that develop over the years and when you knew that the category had really taken hold.

Lorraine Kessler
Well, the interesting thing was about that when the client came to us, the first thing he wanted was a name for this product that only he, with siding manufacturers as partners, could create, which was a totally foam backed siding as one piece. It could be two piece, but as one piece. And the key was you have to extrude, I think it was extruded that foam and then have it cut to all the different profiles. Siding comes in many different profiles in terms of width and depth and shape. 

And so he had the only manufacturing process to custom mold or not, it wasn't a molding, it was a cutting and forming of that foam and then adhering it with a coefficient to the siding. And he was really all about the product, the product, selling this product, selling the product. 

The problem is … the product was wasn't a problem. I just saw as a greater opportunity was no one knew what the heck to call this stuff. Right. It's siding with insulated foam. It's siding with insulation. It's why this was a perfect opportunity to go against the anesthetic, which was hollow vinyl siding, which has a lot of problems. Hollow vinyl siding. You hit it with your weed whacker. You got a hole in it you kick a stone in your driveway, you got a hole in it. You get a windstorm, it flops off. It gets too hot, it warps, right? 

But if you put a solid back of EPS foam on it, it now has two fundamental attributes, strength and rigidity that it didn't have, and it has insulation value. So, one of the interesting things was tactically, we didn't know how to name the category. So, we used research to help us because we were trying, the first thoughts were it's the strength, it's the strength. So now we're saying it's as strong as wood or metal or whatever. 

But here's what we found in the research. It was the insulation value because unless you could put the siding in every person's hands from New Jersey to California and they could feel it and see how solid it was. They couldn't conceive that mentally. What they could conceive instantly was insulation value. That hollow siding is just put over sheathing and your house isn't very protected. And this product, of course, has markets that fit where insulation was needed. So, the people and the research told us that's the first take.

So, we knew we needed to name the category that. That doesn't mean we left behind the story about it being solid and more permanent and all that. It just meant that that became the lead. And sometimes you do have to prioritize. So instead of becoming solid vinyl siding or foam backed vinyl siding, which could have been a category name, it became insulated siding. And now let us tell you what insulated siding is all that. 

And what we wanted to have happen, was we wanted editors to pick this up. This was the old days when editors still ran a lot of the trade pubs and start writing about it. And what I wanted in my own mind's eye was anybody who's been in building products would know that at the end of the year, they will do like a whole chart of what's like brick siding, vinyl siding. You know, in those days it was like stucco siding, wood siding, and they'd show you how much volume it sold. I wanted insulated siding to be on that list. If that was on that list, then it made it, and it became, it was on that list. So now you created a category. 

And because the client, this is about the sandbox, is the only one who can make this stuff in the entire world, as long as they ran the race as fast as they could, they were the only one who would benefit. So, it's a no-lose strategy.

Mark Vandegrift
Very good, very good. Okay, number five is Get There First! And we like to call this launch the category with intention. So, when you design a new category, no one's going to hand you business because you're creating a new market. So that means you get to mold and shape the market. So, one of the things to think about is find those who will or could be market spokespeople and encourage them to be first adopters. There are those in the business world who want to be the first to adopt new ideas. I think last time we talked about neophiliac, right? Those that don't like being first, but there are always early adopters. And if you can arrange a strategic partnership with them, then they can take your ideas much further than a product ad campaign.

You might think of these in today's parlance as influencers, media influencers, industry influencers, association influencers, university influencers, you name it. So, remember if your new category is valuable and catchy, okay, competition's always going to be there. So, you want to make sure that all those well -established competitors that you just tried to break away from and have the resources to defend their market share that they can't just swoop in there and take it from you. We talked about purple cameras last time, I think it was. Well, Nikon can go out and create a camera that's purple in a matter of a hot second. So, because positioning is a battle for the mind, not a battle of products, you have to be the firstest with the mostest. So, make sure that you are there for first and that you're launching it with intention. Don't go at this in a haphazard or a lazy approach or you're going to get run over faster than you can even say the category name. So, any comments on that one?

Lorraine Kessler
Yeah, just that, you know, I think that you have to also kind of have a point of reality that sometimes you might think a category is the be all and the new thing. And it's really a dog. It's a loser. Right. And if that happens, you have to be willing to shoot losers pretty quickly, because if your idea isn't great, what you end up doing is you're underfunding winners to fund a loser. 

So, and that history has shown in marketing that early losses are eventually followed by greater losses, where early successes are usually doubled by greater successes. So, you know, how do you know that? Well, I think you have to really just really be close to the market. One of the things that I thought of in this, do you remember years ago when one of our creative directors were in bonkers over this big PR about the thing that was going to change the world. Say, yeah, it was segue, right? And it was like, people were going to get rid of cars and like, okay, that PR and that over bloated whatever they were trying to do. When people found out what it was, it was a toll, right? We're laughing at it. Right. It was a total disappointment. You see them like, yeah.

Mark Vandegrift
Oh, Segway.

It was a disappointment. Well, we got Paul Blart Mall Cop out of it, so that wasn't a bad thing.

Lorraine Kessler
I can't imagine a worse category idea where someone just over was too in love with their idea and over promised what it could do and its value in a modern society. So that's just an example.

Mark Vandegrift
Yeah. Well, and I think you said, you always say it really well. This is the way you talk about this one is no one wants to be Gablinger Beer, right? Which was the…

Lorraine Kessler
Yes, yes, right.

First diet beer or light beer, yeah, until Miller bought.

Mark Vandegrift
Yes, yep. And no one even remembers them anymore, you know?

Lorraine Kessler
No. Yeah, that's being first to a category with no cache on your brand, no investment on the brand and losing it. Losing it.

Mark Vandegrift
Yeah, yeah. Good, well, our next point, number six, is what I think you like to refer to as Ground Zero Thinking. And we call this designing a new category is not the same as marketing. So make sure you understand this. This is ground zero thinking. Go ahead, Lorraine.

Lorraine Kessler
Right. Well, and just as I said, you have to identify your losers early. You also have to give them time and give them fuel and give them oxygen to develop. Right. And so you can't approach this like a mature brand in a mature category, because again, we're saying that you have to support a two front war, building the category and what its meaning is and its value and building the brand as, as the hero of that category.

So it's a slower road to glory, I think is how you like to say it, right? And you're not going to get huge wins right out of the box because it takes time for people to become comfortable with the unfamiliar in a new category by definition, even if married to a familiar idea, is a relatively new or innovative idea. And in many spaces, we've seen that history.

Time to full adoption is something like 30 to 40 years. And the more technological the advance, it could be even more than that. So, it's not like it's going to happen overnight. You have to stick with it. Now you need to be seeing positive results. And that's why I mean about losers. If you start just not seeing positive results and kicking the can down the field, that's not a good thing. But you're not going to reach your maximum market saturation for 30 years, 40 years. So you have to hang in for the long game and control it as long as you can. That means you have to keep investing in it, not run at the first, you know, sign of trouble from a competitor or something like that.

Mark Vandegrift
Well, and really the way I like to point out this particular point is that as a CEO, don't pull category building budget from the marketing budget. You might need to set aside as you would for a new product investment for development and such. You're going to need to pull aside budget that is just to build the category that doesn't come from your marketing budget because you're still going to have to have that marketing budget and it's going to have to be a big one because it's a product launch potentially, right? 

So, you have to spend just as much on category as you do the actual brand advertising. Whatever you would normally spend on a product launch, double it because you need to build the category if you're going to go down this point.

Lorraine Kessler
Yeah, and it's better to put that budget under the product development hood, I think is what you're saying. And that's the, I think that's good advice.

Mark Vandegrift
Number seven is all roads must lead to your brand. And this is kind of what you just touched on. Don't forget the need to market the brand. So you built the category. You have to market the brand. And if the category is built, just like we said with Gablinger, we need to have that follow right on. 

If you think of someone like Jeff Bezos, right? He had the long game in mind. I think you said several episodes ago, his genius was getting investors to realize and buy in the dream of Amazon before they ever turned a profit. And I think you said he thought maybe it would be 20 years before he ever turned a profit. Yeah, well, yeah, now he's one of the most, one of the richest men in the world. So I think things are going well for him.

But all that means is, build the category, the brand has to be right there and combine that with our point number six. The budgets need to be similar to each other and they have to be big. You're not going to get it done for a couple of grand. So, keep that in mind. 

Okay. Finally, and you've already touched on this Lorraine, number eight, the long view wins.

Lorraine Kessler
Right, right. Creating a category isn't selling things as seen on TV, right? Or at the counter right before you check out, you know, the impulse items. This isn't an impulse buy. 

Building a category is an intentioned development of additive product and or services in a market that exists that hasn't had that product or service delivered in that particular way. So, it is something that must be looked at in terms of, as we're saying, this long view. And I want to separate again when I said cut your losses early. What I mean by that is, you know, even Jeff Bezos with Amazon, he started with books, he started narrow, but his traction wasn't so much in profit. His measurement was subscribers or people buying books, which was happening in droves and more and more and more each month and each year. So there has to be some measurement that fits kind of this long trajectory that you're going to be on that might not necessarily be profit right out of the box. And that doesn't mean this is a loser. A loser is one that gets no traction in any kind of measure or metric that makes sense.

So, and I think you have to take them into category that the newer the category, the more disruptive it is technologically, for example, the more time it takes to develop. And so that's this idea of how long it takes 30 to 40 years to really get full adoption. You know, I happened to look up some markets just to test this. 

Air passenger, like… air travel passenger for passengers, not for freight or anything, mail, which is how it started, was introduced in 1914 and they flew all of 17 miles between St. Petersburg and Tampa, right? It didn't mature until the 50s and 60s. And home ownership of cars reached 60% in 1929, which was sooner than I thought, but more than half the US. But it was 30 years after the introduction of the first gas-powered automobile, introduced by Charles Dure and I think J. Frank, that was it, yeah, and Springfield, Mass. So, you know, that's 30 years to get a car in every house and replace horses. 

And I think you mentioned Apple’s Newton before in the past, right? It was launched in 94. And it was off the market by 98. So they cut their losses because it was too soon. And they didn't have the right name and they didn't develop the category. They put a name on something no one understood what the category was. It was premature. But from that learning, right, sometimes cutting your losses leads to greater learning and conserves money because from that they learned how to figure out how to put everything on a very thin tablet.

Mark Vandegrift
Yeah, the iPhone didn't come out until 2007. So, it was about 10 years later, you know, and that was the seed of the idea. But this whole concept of mobile phones or mobile computers or whatever you want to call it, that was just too early. I mean, most people in households were lucky to have a computer by 1994 and they're already launching a Newton, which is a smaller version of a computer. So, it's hard for people to comprehend. 

The ninth point or principle here is the immutable principle, and that is strategy before execution. You probably get tired of us hearing this from us, but if your strategy is wrong, no manner of great execution will overcome it. In fact, the better you are at execution, if the idea is wrong, it's the strategy is just going to fail faster. The product will fail faster. 

So, we've now come full circle, if you will, and that is getting the name of the category right, designing it well, and then building it to a market size capable of keeping you in business. So, that's our thoughts on building and designing and building a new category. Lorraine, any final thoughts on this?

Lorraine Kessler
Well, no, I got to get busy because I need to build a new category. I have no idea what it's going to be, but I'm interested in some passive reward. So, what can it be?

Mark Vandegrift
Well, we hope this has helped. We enjoy talking all things marketing and advertising and positioning. And this is just another love that we have, which is creating a new category. It's not for the faint of heart. We'll say that over and over again. But man, when you own that category, the sky's the limit. So thank you for joining us today. If you haven't liked, shared, subscribed… Lorraine, subscribed or told your friends about the Brand Shorthand podcast, please do. And until next time, have an amazing day.