A brand becomes stronger when you narrow its focus. What happens when you narrow the focus to such a degree that there is no longer any market for the brand?
This is potentially the best situation of all. What you have created is the opportunity to introduce a brand-new category.
The most efficient, most productive, most useful aspect of branding is creating a new category. In other words, narrowing the focus to nothing and starting something totally new.
That’s the way to become the first brand in a new category and ultimately the leading brand in a rapidly growing new segment of the market. To build a brand in a nonexisting category, to build something out of nothing, you have to do two things at once:
You have to launch the brand in such a way as to create the perception that that brand was the first, the leader, the pioneer, or the original. Invariably, you should use one of these words to describe your brand.
You have to promote the new category.
The rightful share of a leading brand is never more than 50 percent. There’s always room for a second brand and a passel of lesser brands. Instead of fighting competitive brands, a leader should fight competitive categories.
Leya Foods created a new category in Raw Bars segment by creating the first raw bar with a filling. This innovation gave them an incredible advantage to create extremely tasty and as they say lusciously healthy foods.
Customers don’t really care about new brands, they care about new categories. They don’t care about Domino’s; they care about whether or not their pizza will arrive in thirty minutes. They don’t care about Callaway; they care about whether or not an oversize driver will cut strokes off their golf scores. They don’t care about Prince; they care about whether or not an oversize racquet will improve their tennis game.
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