One of the worst pieces of advice I often see is that businesses should “create a new category”. If you take this advice literally you’ll almost certainly fail, like Renault did with the Avantime Minivan Coupe (which I personally think is very cool but still).

A category is a class of product or service that customers understand. Choosing a clear category is important for two reasons: first it reflects how customers think; second it gives you boundaries that make competitive analysis and positioning amongst those alternatives possible.

Customers buy from established categories because it makes life easier. When a product is in a clear category – running shoes, office chairs, whatever – we understand what the product is for, and usually have a basic idea how to choose between options. When products fall outside an obvious category, it's easier to simply reject them – we can’t be bothered to figure them out.

When products are extremely innovative or don’t really belong in an existing category, you must still try to market them in familiar terms. The iPhone was marketed as a phone, for example, not as a hand-held nano-computer. Tesla have historically marketed their vehicles as cars with zero emissions, not as semi-autonomous EVs.

Follow their example!

See this post on LinkedIn