What is Category Design (and why the best product isn't enough)
Why the best product often loses, and how a company becomes the reference point for a new category. Origins, verified examples and common mistakes.
Blog
Notes & analysis
on Category Design.
What we think about positioning, market categories, and how brands with real substance stop competing and start defining.
Guides
What is a category king (and how do you become one)?
Google came almost three years after AltaVista, yet today we say “google it.” What separates the first to arrive from the one that takes the category.
How to name a new market category
One word decides who you'll be compared with for years. Where lasting category names come from, and why your brand name shouldn't be one.
Articles
Instagram for businesses: why reposting and recycling videos no longer works
Instagram can tell when a video has been seen before. What happens to a business profile that reposts, recycles or copies, and what works instead.
LinkedIn company page or personal profiles? Who should speak for your company
Almost every number going around about the decline of company pages comes from people selling the fix. What's left once you set them aside.
Why the best product, on its own, isn't enough to win
The best product often loses to whoever decides what it gets judged on. What mousetraps, the Palm Pilot and Swatch teach us.
What to include in a company video (and what you can cut)
Almost every company video shows the same things in the same order. What decides whether it works is usually missing.
Reels or carousels: what works for a business on Instagram
Two studies of millions of posts give opposite answers. The reason says more about your business than about Instagram's algorithm.
How to choose who runs your company's social media
Agency, freelancer or someone in-house? Before the quote come questions almost nobody asks. One of them is about the password.
How much does a company video cost in Italy (and why nobody publishes a price list)
Two quotes for the same video can have nothing in common. How to read them, and which line on the bill really matters today.
Five signs you're competing in the wrong category
A pharmacy drink, a spray that barely sold, a light beer that changed its audience: what they had in common, and how to spot it in your own company.