When I first picked up the draft of Category Creation that Anthony Kennada shared with me, I had that feeling one sometimes gets at high school or college reunions—one memory after another that brings back old associations, celebrations at bold decisions and fortuitous timing, and the occasional cringe at a misstep or dead-end path. And, for sure, Anthony’s joy at recounting the heady days of starting not just a company, but a full-on movement, is a familiar reminisce for others who have been there, who were “there at the beginning” of their own category creation moment.
But, far from a mere collection of boorish stories from the glory days, each chapter I read offered a fresh take—either a codified playbook for startup entrepreneurs on what once used to be an unscientific mix of instinct, personality, connections, and some smarts; or an ongoing call to action for leaders of established companies who perhaps have already created a category, or who suspect there is a way to leverage and break out of the category they’ve been in for years. In our early days at HubSpot, we sensed that there was a parade that we could get in front of, that we had happened upon an unfolding shift in buyer behavior among businesspeople that mirrored what was already somewhat apparent in consumer behavior. Fortunately for us, the playbook we came up with was a direct reflection of the movement we were advocating: Inbound Marketing. The best way to tell the story of inbound marketing was to excel at inbound marketing. The playbook and the newly created category were actually the same thing.
The playbook Anthony lays out doesn’t need to be discovered through alchemy and luck. Much of what he shares are elements that are common sense in some ways, but counterintuitive in others. Even after more than ten years later in our own category at HubSpot, we find there continues to be great value in making these factors explicit, and finding ways to measure them.
Human-centric. At HubSpot, we say “Grow Better” and mean very much what Anthony observes when he says that “category creation seeks to reinforce a belief that companies can both win at business while also being human first” (Chapter One), as opposed to “maximizing shareholder value as quickly and by any means necessary—even at the expense of employees and customers” (Chapter Three). And, while this may have embodied a way of working, it wasn’t until recent years that we documented what we mean by Grow Better, and found ways to track our progress. The category creation playbook still has value long after the initial creative event.
Culture. We were a little late to the impact of culture, so I am particularly pleased to see it included as an essential part of the category creation playbook. Anthony takes a lot of the mystery out of the role of culture right from the start (Chapter Five), and ties it to real business metrics such as employee recruitment and retention. Even in companies within well-established categories, culture continues to pay dividends.
In Chapter Nine, “Activate Customers as Brand Ambassadors,” Anthony employs that key word, activate. It should come as no surprise that as CMO of Gainsight, he finds great value in activating successful customers. Even so, there is a difference between successful customers and activated customers. With inbound marketing, we definitely ate our own dog food at HubSpot, and for sure we had some great customer advocates along the way. In more recent years, already deep into our category, we have rediscovered the value of positive customer word of mouth. We’ve developed actual plays to cultivate them; given them opportunities to be more vocal; and established metrics to make sure we are always moving the needle. Once again, having it as part of a playbook in the early days of category creation is a luxury I wish we had had.
There is something breathless about category creation, to “start and grow a conversation that doesn’t exist yet.” There is excitement enough just in that. There’s no need to multiply the excitement and breathlessness with making the entire journey an exercise of trial and error. There are battle-tested practices that take some risk out of the equation. Do enough of these well, and early enough, and there is one new category more likely to appear—with your name on it.
Brian Halligan
Co-Founder and CEO at HubSpot