Category Creation

What most people mean

Read Play Bigger. Invent a new category. Name it. Define it. Become the king of it. The narrative is seductive: don’t compete in an existing category, create your own and win by default.

Where the definition breaks

I was like a chef trying to convince Irish tourists to try snails with garlic-herb butter when all they wanted was lasagna. I was trying to create demand for services that the people in my segment (1) didn’t know about and (2) didn’t feel like they needed.

I spent 18 months doing this with a conversion rate optimisation business in Dublin. Pedalling uphill with a baguette for a wheel. It never occurred to me that there were few others doing this because CRO services were not in demand in Dublin. There was a market force completely out of my control: category demand.

You can’t create demand for anything because demand is too large for you to create. The demand has to be out there. Just like you can’t make a tornado with a $35 desk fan, you can’t create demand. This is one of the hard lessons the bro marketers don’t tell you.

The “demand creationists” love to talk about the “problem-unaware prospect.” I’m always puzzled by this. The problem-unaware prospect is an absurd notion. They might not be aware of YOUR solution, but they’re certainly aware of their problem if it’s urgent and high-value.

How we define it at STFO

Don’t try to create a category. Position in one where demand already exists.

Your goal is to find a category that’s in demand and that your segment both understands and wants. Three reasons this works:

• People don’t like making decisions from scratch. It’s tiring.
• People don’t like taking risks on things they don’t know.
• Our brains hate chaos. A familiar category provides mental relief.

When the fit isn’t perfect, use the Trojan Horse: present what you do in a way that aligns with your segment’s current understanding. It’s better to pick a category that is in demand with an 80 percent match to what you do than create something that feels like a 100 percent match that no one understands or wants.

A market full of competitors is a good thing. It means there’s real demand. Zero competition might mean zero demand.

Nothing is lost, nothing is created, all things are merely transformed. You can’t invent something truly new. You can combine existing things in new ways and position them where demand already lives.

What it is NOT

• Not a viable strategy for 99% of businesses
• Not the same as choosing a specific, narrow category (that’s smart positioning)
• Not evidence that you’re special (blue oceans are often blue because nobody wants to swim there)
• Not a shortcut around doing the positioning work
• Not what “Play Bigger” examples actually did (most “category creators” positioned in adjacent existing categories)