Lochhead on Marketing™ is the award winning, chart topping podcast for entrepreneurs, marketers, and category designers with a different mind. Most people do not like it.
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205 The Category Makes the Brand: Unpacking Brand Hierarchy in Category Design | Pirates Perspective
Season 1 · Episode 205
Wednesday, July 24, 2024 • Duration 32:27
On this episode of Lochhead on Marketing, Christopher Lochhead, a three-time CMO and a leading figure in category design, gives his Pirates Perspective into the critical concept that “the category makes the brand, not the other way around.”
This principle underscores the importance of understanding and defining a category in marketing, as it can profoundly influence consumer perception and the overall success of a brand. Through engaging stories and practical examples, Christopher illustrates how effective category design can lead to market dominance. Additionally, Christopher highlights Microsoft’s strategic shift in the tech industry, emphasizing the importance of a unified category approach.
Welcome to Lochhead on Marketing. The number one charting marketing podcast for marketers, category designers, and entrepreneurs with a different mind.
Understanding Category Design
Category design is a strategic approach that involves creating and defining a new market category, thereby positioning a brand as the leader within that category. This concept is pivotal because it shifts the focus from competing within an existing market to creating a new space where the brand can dominate.
Christopher emphasizes that successful brands are those that not only understand their category but also actively shape it.
The Category Shapes the Brand
Christopher’s central thesis is that the category makes the brand, not the other way around. This means that the success of a brand is largely determined by how well it defines and owns its category. By focusing on the problems they solve and the experiences they create, companies can differentiate themselves and achieve lasting success in their respective markets.
Case Studies: Barcade and Qualtrics
Christopher then shares compelling examples to illustrate the importance of category design. One notable example is Barcade, an innovative arcade bar that successfully carved out its niche by blending the nostalgia of classic arcade games with a vibrant bar atmosphere. By defining its category clearly, Barcade attracted a dedicated customer base and differentiated itself from traditional bars and arcades.
Another significant case study is Qualtrics, a company that transformed its market position through a focus on experience management. Christopher contrasts Qualtrics with its competitors, such as Medallia and SurveyMonkey, to highlight the impact of effective category design. While Qualtrics successfully defined and owned its category, the other companies struggled to differentiate themselves, leading to varying degrees of success in the marketplace.
Microsoft’s Journey
Christopher recounts the story of Microsoft and its journey to dominate the office productivity software market. Initially, Microsoft faced fierce competition from established players like WordPerfect in word processing, Lotus in spreadsheets, and dBase in databases. Despite launching competitive products, Microsoft struggled to gain significant market share.
The turning point came when Mike Maples Sr., a key figure at Microsoft, discovered an anomaly in sales data during a trip to Australia. He learned that bundling applications together and offering them at a discounted price led to a significant uptick in sales. This insight prompted Maples to rethink the problem: instead of viewing these applications as separate categories, he recognized that they collectively addressed a larger issue—productivity for office workers.
To hear more about Christopher Lochhead’s Pirate Perspective on Brand and Category Design, download and listen to this episode. You can also check out more Pirates Perspective at Category Pirates.
Don’t forget to grab a copy (or gift!) of one of our best-selling books:
We hope you enjoyed this episode of Lochhead on Marketing™! Christopher loves hearing from his listeners. Feel free to email him, connect on Facebook, X (formerly Twitter), Instagram, and subscribe on iTunes and Spotify!
204 Apple’s Strategic Mastery: Unpacking the Category of Personal Intelligence | Pirates Perspective
Season 1 · Episode 204
Tuesday, June 18, 2024 • Duration 27:03
On this episode of Lochhead on Marketing, Christopher Lochhead and Eddie Yoon dissects Apple’s latest announcements from the 2024 Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) on an all-new Pirates Perspective.
The conversation centers around Apple’s introduction of Apple Intelligence, a cutting-edge AI-driven personal intelligence system, and their strategic partnership with OpenAI. They break down the key insights from their discussion, offering actionable advice and thorough explanations for marketers and tech enthusiasts alike.
Welcome to Lochhead on Marketing. The number one charting marketing podcast for marketers, category designers, and entrepreneurs with a different mind.
Apple Intelligence: A New Category in AI
Apple’s announcement of Apple Intelligence marks a significant milestone in the tech industry. This AI-driven personal intelligence system is designed to enhance user experiences by integrating smarter, more intuitive tools into daily lives. Christopher Lochhead praises this move, emphasizing Apple’s role as a primary category designer, particularly in the realm of personal computers.
Actionable Insights:
Embrace Category Design: Companies should focus on creating new categories rather than just competing within existing ones. This approach can lead to market leadership and long-term success.
Integrate AI Thoughtfully: Embedding AI in products should be done in an evolutionary manner, ensuring that it enhances user experiences without overwhelming them.
Strategic Partnership with OpenAI
Apple’s decision to partner with OpenAI rather than compete with them is a strategic move that highlights the importance of collaboration in the tech industry. Christopher Lochhead commends this approach, noting that it allows Apple to focus on serving their customers through thoughtful and aggressive innovation.
Actionable Insights:
Leverage Partnerships: Collaborating with other industry leaders can lead to innovative solutions and a better customer experience.
Focus on Customer Needs: Innovation should always be driven by the goal of serving customers better, rather than just outpacing competitors.
Privacy, Data Usage Concerns, and Regulations in AI
Don’t forget to grab a copy (or gift!) of one of our best-selling books:
195 From Category Contenders to Category Kings with Al Ramadan
Season 1 · Episode 195
Wednesday, March 13, 2024 • Duration 01:31:17
On this episode of Lochhead on Marketing, we enjoy the first of many visits from Al Ramadan in 2024, as we talk about moving from being a Category Contender to a Category King.
We’ll dig into what is a category contender in what it takes to win the 18-to-36-month epic category battle that every tech startup faces. So if you’re an entrepreneur or marketing leader who wants to go beyond competing to actually create and dominate your own market, you’re in the right place.
Welcome to Lochhead on Marketing. The number one charting marketing podcast for marketers, category designers, and entrepreneurs with a different mind.
Al Ramadan on Tech Industry Category Development and Dominance
Christopher and Al discuss the concept of being category contenders, reflecting on past research and their book on category kings.
They emphasize the dominance of one company, earning around 76% of the economics in every tech category, despite skepticism. They outline the three phases of category development: define, develop, and dominate, taking approximately 15 years.
They note outliers like open AI and Google’s swift battles, contrasting with Salesforce’s longstanding dominance. They highlight the importance of category design, likening it to a fast-paced battle where one company wins all, stressing its critical role in the tech industry’s landscape.
Market strategy in a competitive industry
Al and Christopher discuss marketing strategies in a competitive industry, emphasizing the importance of a winner’s mindset and setting the agenda.
They share a scenario where a leader in a crowded field differentiates by framing the problem uniquely, focusing on end-user needs rather than feature sets like competitors. Both highlight the futility of incremental strategies and the significance of capturing mindshare by empathizing with customer problems.
They term this the “Battle Royale” for mindshare, where winning means addressing the core problem effectively, rendering feature comparisons irrelevant. Christopher also stresses the pivotal role of understanding customer problems in securing market dominance.
Category design and understanding customer needs
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Don’t forget to grab a copy (or gift!) of one of our best-selling books:
106 Did The Roaring 2020s Just Start? Bannister Breakthroughs (Part 1)
Wednesday, April 7, 2021 • Duration 13:49
Welcome to a special two-part series on Lochhead on Marketing called, “Did the Roaring 2020s Just Start?” In this episode, we talk about the Bannister Breakthroughs, and how its influence can be seen everywhere today.
We believe there is a chance we could be heading into a time of unprecedented economic growth. We’ll get to the specifics of it in part 2, but for this episode, let’s talk about how category breakthroughs can lead to even more category breakthroughs. If we play our cards right, we might be living at the greatest time for new innovation in history!
This two-part series is based on a recent letter published in Category Pirates, my newsletter with the legendary co-pirates Eddie Yoon and Nicolas Cole.
“The four-minute barrier stood for decades — and when it fell, the circumstances defied the confident predictions of the best minds in the sport. Experts believed they knew the precise conditions under which the mark would fall. It would have to be in perfect weather — 68 degrees and no wind. On a particular kind of track — hard, dry clay, and in front of a huge, boisterous crowd urging the runner on to his best-ever performance. But Bannister did it on a cold day, on a wet track, at a small meet in Oxford, England, before a crowd of just a few thousand people.”
Roger Bannister’s achievement served as the breakthrough that led to more breakthroughs in the world of competitive running. Only 46 days later, the “impossible” record was broken again. A year after that, three runners broke the four-minute mile in a single race.
Creating a Before and After
Bannister Breakthroughs Everywhere
Bio
105 Value is 100% Perception
Wednesday, March 31, 2021 • Duration 08:12
In this episode, Christopher Lochhead talks about value, and how it is 100% dependent on people’s perception. That is to say, nothing has any intrinsic value until someone believes it has value.
You can also learn about one of the greatest stories about how an entrepreneur and category designer created value, that is to say, the perception of value for a product that left a lot of people scratching their heads.
Gary’s Pet Rock
Gary Dahl and his pet rock is an amazing study on how people assign value to something based on their perception.
In 1975, Gary Dahl thought it would be funny to sell pet rocks. He never would’ve thought that this funny running gag would sweep the nation, selling roughly 1.5 million pet rocks at $3.95 a pop.
Christopher remembers his sister wanting to join in the fad, so he offered to catch her a pet rock himself.
“I remember this well. I was a kid at the time and my sister wanted one, and I remember exactly what I said at the time: “Well, if you like, I’ll go outside and catch you a wild one.” “- Christopher Lochhead
Was it a weird fad? Probably. Yet it wasn’t the first of its kind, and certainly not the last crazy fad people subscribed to.
Value is in the Perception
While it may seem silly that Gary Dahl managed to sell that many pet rocks, but how he marketed it was nothing short of genius.
He packaged it in a colorful box that even had holes so your pet rock can “breathe”. There was even a comprehensive manual on how you can take care of your pet rock, which just adds to the hilarity of it all.
Basically, Gary Dahl assigned a value to his pet rocks. As a Category Designer and some brilliant marketing, he made people perceive the Pet Rock as something of value. All due to the story he weaved to back it up.
Creating Value Out of Nothing
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104 Languaging: How Category Designers Use Language to Change the Future
Wednesday, March 17, 2021 • Duration 07:19
In this episode, Christopher Lochhead talks about language. Specifically, a concept that most entrepreneurs and marketers don’t know much about: Languaging.
Languaging and Creating Context
Languaging is the strategic use of words and language to change and create the future.
As any category designer worth their salt should know, how you frame a category could make or break them. Having a great context for your category is a must if you want to be ahead of the pack.
What better way to add a strategic context than to use statements that will make customers relate to your category. If you do it right, even just one sentence can propel you to the top.
Language and Differentiation
Christopher uses MP3s and Apple iPods to make his point. In the early 2000s, MP3 players had already been in the market for almost half a decade. Yet a lot of people were not using them, and a bigger portion of the population doesn’t even know what it was.
So when Apple launched the iPod in 2001, they had to find a way to get people to switch from their Walkmans to their new product.
To do this, Apple used strategic languaging to distinguish iPod from other MP3 players by calling it a digital music player. That’s differentiation.
To drive it all home, they have this one-sentence slogan that resonates with consumers.
One thousand songs in your pocket.
On his first Apple iPod press release, Steve Jobs made it very, very clear that Apple was absolutely designing a new category with its new product. It wasn’t just another MP3 player. He said:
“With iPod Apple has reinvented a whole new category of digital music player that lets you put your entire music collection in your pocket and listen to it wherever you go. With iPod listening to music will never be the same again.” – Steve Jobs
Frame it and Name it
Bio
103 Digital Products, NFTs, Clubhouse, Oh My with Jason DeFillippo
Wednesday, March 10, 2021 • Duration 40:01
In the last episode, Christopher popped the hood on digital products, more specifically about NFTs or Non-Fungible Tokens. As you may know, a 10-second GIF recently just sold for $6.6M. This was due to NFTs.
Yet our producer, Jason DeFillippo, has some questions. Jason is the greatest of all time in podcast producers, and he’s worked with Tim Ferriss, Jordan Harbinger and many others. He also hosts one of the greatest podcasts ever, Grumpy Old Geeks. He also has a lot of experience in the art world, as he worked with his dad for a long time. Jason has an opinion about NFTs, and he and Christopher talk about that, Clubhouse, and a bunch of other fun things.
Digital Products have been Here Forever
Jason DeFillippo comments about Christopher’s statement about digital products and NFTs being a category-defining moment. For someone who has played online games like Jason, digital products have been around since the early 2000s. People have been buying and selling digital items to use in-game, and there’s even a whole industry built on farming in-game currency for it.
As for NFTs, Jason doesn’t see the purpose to all of it other than being a rich man’s game. It’s like buying a pet rock, but at least with the pet rock you get a rock for your troubles.
“We had this kind of shit back in the day, 10 years ago, and we would buy digital items, we would buy digital clothes, we would mine gold. It was Bitcoin before there was Bitcoin, and it was just a bunch of nerds sitting around killing orcs. There was a purpose to the NF T’s back then, because it was all in-game. Now we have all of the crap that you know was the digital stuff, but no game to play. Today’s NF T is one of those things that to somebody like myself with a highly tuned bullshit detector made my head explode.” – Jason DeFilliippo
On Digital Natives Buying Digital Products
Why is Clubhouse a Thing?
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102 The Future Just Changed and Most People Missed It
Wednesday, March 3, 2021 • Duration 13:36
In October 2020, a 10-second video clip sold for $67,000. Just recently, that same 10-second video sold for $6.6 Million. This selling of a piece of digital art changed the future… and most people didn’t even notice.
This new category design could have profound implications in the art world of art – and soon, everywhere else! So in this episode, Christopher Lochhead talks about digital-exclusive products, how it can be the next mega-category, and how it can affect your business and brand in the future.
Prioritizing Your “Real Life”
As the age of digitization continues to evolve, people find themselves becoming more invested in their digital life. If you’re between thirty or thirty-five, you’re probably a digital native. Everyone below that are definitely digital natives: those who spend most of their time online and connected digitally.
The big AHA moment here for Christopher is that digital natives prioritize their digital life more than their physical life. It is almost as if their digital life is their “real life”, therefore it has more value for them.
“If you’re a digital native, the AHA here is your digital life is more important than your physical life. If you’re a digital native, you’re having the opposite experience that someone like me. Someone who believes my primary experience in life is a physical one, but it’s supplemented with a rich digital life. But if you’re my buddies and their kids, your real life is the digital life and the ocean and the sunset are an interruption to your real life. That was a profound moment for me. I understood at that moment the difference between digital natives and non-digital natives were 180 degrees different.” – Christopher Lochhead
This episode talks about the Category Design Scorecard and how you can use it to spot a Category Designer. It also breaks down how you can evaluate a company’s ability to create a new category or redesign an existing one.
Christopher and his Category co-pirates, Eddie Yoon and Nicholas Cole, just unveiled this new Category Design Scorecard. It is based on a tremendous amount of primary research, and they can’t wait to share it with all of you.
How the Category Design Scorecard Came to be
The episode starts off by explaining why they created the Category Design Scorecard. Christopher, Eddie, and Nicholas wanted something that can distinguish a company that is a category designer or creator from a high growth company fighting tooth and nail for market share in their existing category.
We analyzed Fortune magazine’s 100 fastest-growing companies list for over a decade. Were there certain things that companies are trying to design and dominate a new category? They were easily distinguishable from other high growth companies due to certain things they said. So we picked the Fortune 100 fastest growers list over a decade. What we discovered as we began to dig into the data are five key indicators. Those five key indicators distinguished category designers from other successful companies. – Christopher Lochhead
The Five Components of the Category Design Scorecard
Christopher then enumerates the five components of their new Category Design Scorecard, and they are as follows:
1. Category POV
Does the company have a clear “Point of View” of their category?
Are they able to frame a powerful problem, articulate a compelling vision, and most importantly, communicate the core compromises, trade-offs, and problems inherent to the way the category is today, but in such a way that the consumer/customer will be open to a new and different approach.
Category designers have a very specific way of doing it; which is they are going after something that they see as a noble cause, a noble purpose, or a giant problem worth solving. It’s either a problem that we didn’t know that we had, that they’re educating us about, or it’s an existing problem that they meaningfully reimagine it in a new context. – Christopher Lochhead
2. Future Category Reimagined and Without Compromise
3. Radically Different Offer + Business Model
4. The Data Flywheel
5. Depth & Degree of Customer Outcomes
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100 How To Write A Legendary Brand Story w/ Park Howell
Wednesday, February 17, 2021 • Duration 40:07
Stories are incredibly powerful. It is legendary. People fall in love based on the stories they tell themselves about each other. People go to war and start countries over stories. Furthermore, when stories are used to design a category and a brand, it creates massive enduring value.
In this episode of Lochhead on Marketing, we talk to the guru of the business of story himself, Park Howell, to educate us on how to construct legendary marketing stories and how story marketing and category design actually come together. Park also shares his fantastic thoughts on nursery rhymes and the Gettysburg address.
What Marketers Get Wrong About Storytelling
Most marketers are not award-winning screenwriters, they’re not great at long-form content like in Hollywood and Pixar. Park discusses how marketing comes down to just three words, one framework that is built on: and, but, and therefore (ABT). This perfect three-act structure is a complete customer framework that will allow the connection to the customer on an empathetic level and help develop the contrast in their problems.
“I’ve learned that this framework hooks the subconscious of your audience, which is always looking for this fight or flight. It’s a problem-solution dynamic that you are playing to the natural way your audience’s brain creates meaning. Now what a lot of people do is they start with the problem in the ‘and’ statement. Start with the aspiration, what is it that your customer wants and then insert the problem in your ‘but’ statement. Therefore, here’s my solution on how to help you get that. And the trick here is to have as much contrast between that aspiration and that problem as possible. A short, succinct, and specific contrast. If you do that, your audience will give you all the time you need in your therefore solution.” – Park Howell
How to End Up with A Captivating Story
Park encourages everyone to start in the middle through the ‘but’ statement and then proceed to answer the singular problem that needs to be solved. Once the singular problem is determined and boiled down, then jump to the ‘and’ statement, the specific audience, and lastly the ‘therefore statement’. Following the ABT framework can lead to amazing and captivating brand and founder stories.
He discusses that when somebody articulates the customer’s problem powerfully and effectively, the human brain makes the assumption that the person by definition must have the solution.
How Story Marketing and Category Design Unite
Eddie Yoon expresses both excitement and concern about the potential benefits and privacy implications of Apple’s personal intelligence system. He highlights the need for careful consideration of data usage and consumer privacy.
The conversation also delves into the need for oversight and regulations in the AI space. Christopher emphasizes the importance of strong controls while acknowledging Apple’s historical business practices and the need for critical examination.
To hear more Pirates Perspective, download and listen to this episode. You can also check out more Pirates Perspective at Category Pirates.
We hope you enjoyed this episode of Lochhead on Marketing™! Christopher loves hearing from his listeners. Feel free to email him, connect on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and subscribe on iTunes!
Al and Christopher discuss category design and understanding customer needs. They highlight the importance of framing the problem uniquely to differentiate in a crowded market.
Christopher shares a scenario where a leader in a competitive field focuses on customer needs while competitors emphasize feature sets. They critique the common focus on technology rather than customer-centric solutions, illustrating with examples from Gartner’s history and Google Plus.
They emphasize that categories are about customers’ problems and opportunities, not just technology, stressing the significance of defining the problem scope to win in category battles.
To hear more from this Al Ramadan and Christopher Lochhead dialogue, download and listen to this episode.
Al Ramadan is a co-founding partner of Play Bigger Advisors and coauthor of the book, Play Bigger. He also co-founded Quokka Sports, which revolutionized the way people experience sport online.
Al then joined Macromedia and Adobe, where he spent almost ten years changing the way people think about great digital experiences. At Adobe, Al led teams that created the Rich Internet Applications category and helped develop the discipline of experience design.
In the early ‘90s he applied data science to Australia’s Americas Cup — an innovation in sports performance analytics. His work in sailing led directly to the idea for Quokka. He lives in Santa Cruz, California.
We hope you enjoyed this episode of Lochhead on Marketing™! Christopher loves hearing from his listeners. Feel free to email him, connect on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and subscribe on iTunes!
Much like Bannister, legendary innovators and category designers make the impossible possible. While it may seem mundane now — like Bannister’s four-minute breakthrough, it still serves as a catalyst for others to believe that something impossible could be done. It makes people receptive to the idea that there is a possibility that they can explore which leads to a different future.
The results of a Bannister Breakthrough or creating a revolutionary category always creates a before and after. People who bear witness to both sides are changed as a result. They either embrace it, or find new ways and breakthroughs themselves.
“Category designers, innovators, entrepreneurs, that’s what they do. They create a before and after they change reality, they make new possibilities into new realities.” – Christopher Lochhead
Category designers create a before and after they change reality, they make new possibilities into new realities.
In Rogers’ case, he smashed an imaginary what seemed like an immovable milestone. His breakthrough, like all legendary breakthroughs, opened up others to ask, “What else is possible?”
Fast forward to today, where you can see Bannister breakthroughs happening everywhere. With information at our fingertips, you’ll see people come up with new categories to solve things others didn’t know they even needed up until today.
For a more relatable example, having a large-scale remote workforce wasn’t deemed possible before. It was always a means for emergency access to work for some, and usually only available for managerial roles. Yet within the span of a year, we’ve seen businesses thrive in full-remote or hybrid setups worldwide.
As these breakthroughs continue to happen, just like back in Roger’s days, there are three categories of people:
“There are the people who make the change. There are the people who sit there and go, “oh look, something just changed”. And there are people who say, “What the fuck, did something happen?” – Christopher Lochhead
At this unique moment in history where almost everything about the way we work, live and play is at least potentially up for change, the question we all have to ask ourselves is what kind of person am I?
Christopher Lochhead is a #1 Apple podcaster and #1 Amazon bestselling co-author of books: Niche Down and Play Bigger.
He has been an advisor to over 50 venture-backed startups; a former three-time Silicon Valley public company CMO and an entrepreneur.
Furthermore, he has been called “one of the best minds in marketing” by The Marketing Journal, a “Human Exclamation Point” by Fast Company, a “quasar” by NBA legend Bill Walton and “off-putting to some” by The Economist.
In addition, he served as a chief marketing officer of software juggernaut Mercury Interactive. Hewlett-Packard acquired the company in 2006, for $4.5 billion.
He also co-founded the marketing consulting firm LOCHHEAD; the founding CMO of Internet consulting firm Scient, and served as head of marketing at the CRM software firm Vantive. We hope you enjoyed this episode of Lochhead on Marketing™! Christopher loves hearing from his listeners. Feel free to email him, connect on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and subscribe on Apple Podcast! You may also subscribe to his newsletter, The Difference, for some amazing content.
So what does this teach us? For Christopher it means that nothing is intrinsically valuable. That value is 100 percent a perception.
“If you’re a regular listener, you’ve heard me and you’ve heard Jason talking about these new NFTs in the digital space: people selling digital products at extraordinary prices. Jason made the comment that his dad is in the art business and he grew up in that business. In his words, what sells a painting is a story. And so what makes something valuable is that people perceive it as valuable.” – Christopher Lochhead
Legendary category designers are legendary because they create new perceptions of value. They establish the belief that something is valuable when that belief did not exist before.
So as category designers, the challenge is to change people’s perception about your product or services. If you are successful, you can create something valuable… out of nothing.
Christopher Lochhead is a #1 Apple podcaster and #1 Amazon bestselling co-author of books: Niche Down and Play Bigger.
He has been an advisor to over 50 venture-backed startups; a former three-time Silicon Valley public company CMO and an entrepreneur.
Furthermore, he has been called “one of the best minds in marketing” by The Marketing Journal, a “Human Exclamation Point” by Fast Company, a “quasar” by NBA legend Bill Walton and “off-putting to some” by The Economist.
In addition, he served as a chief marketing officer of software juggernaut Mercury Interactive. Hewlett-Packard acquired the company in 2006, for $4.5 billion.
He also co-founded the marketing consulting firm LOCHHEAD; the founding CMO of Internet consulting firm Scient, and served as head of marketing at the CRM software firm Vantive.We hope you enjoyed this episode of Lochhead on Marketing™! Christopher loves hearing from his listeners. Feel free to email him, connect on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and subscribe on Apple Podcast! You may also subscribe to his newsletter, The Difference, for some amazing content.
Apple redesigned the category and ran away with it by putting the technology in a context people could understand.
It is important to note that language we use to describe something changes the thing, the way people see and value the thing.
So what does this mean for category designers? Legendary category designers frame it and name it. Legendary category designers can and do change the future with one sentence.
If you start listening for languaging, which you could think of as the strategic use of words and language to change thinking, you’ll start to notice it more often.
“Remember, a demarcation point in language creates a demarcation point in thinking which creates a demarcation point in perceived value, and action.” – Christopher Lochhead
Christopher Lochhead is a #1 Apple podcaster and #1 Amazon bestselling co-author of books: Niche Down and Play Bigger.
He has been an advisor to over 50 venture-backed startups; a former three-time Silicon Valley public company CMO and an entrepreneur.
Furthermore, he has been called “one of the best minds in marketing” by The Marketing Journal, a “Human Exclamation Point” by Fast Company, a “quasar” by NBA legend Bill Walton and “off-putting to some” by The Economist.
In addition, he served as a chief marketing officer of software juggernaut Mercury Interactive. Hewlett-Packard acquired the company in 2006, for $4.5 billion.
He also co-founded the marketing consulting firm LOCHHEAD; the founding CMO of Internet consulting firm Scient, and served as head of marketing at the CRM software firm Vantive.
Christopher asks if it makes sense that native digital people are buying more digital products than physical ones. Jason thinks it is, but it again depends on the purpose of the purchase. It depends on the context of why they bought the item, either to make their digital home look better, or have the best weapon for a game they’re playing.
Again, NFTs miss the mark in this regard. Jason thinks that this $6.6M purchase just got overhyped because people are looking for excitement. That, and because it is attached to blockchain. So people who are looking for the next big thing are suddenly scrambling to see if NFTs fit the bill. According to Jason, it doesn’t.
“That’s the problem with it. It doesn’t make any sense. I think it’s a fad. This has all of the hallmarks of us being stuck inside for far too long. We need something to excite us. It’s on the blockchain. You know, if they could just sprinkle in some AI, we would have like a BS trifecta here.” – Jason DeFillippo
Christopher and Jason discuss the app Clubhouse, and why it’s even a thing. For one thing, the features it has is already present in various other apps, like Discord and other online voice chat software. What makes it weirder is that it is trying to bring back the feeling of radio, something that podcasts have killed a long time ago.
The appeal to some comes from the fact that it is invite-only. Though that in itself is not a unique feature, as Jason points out. There are a lot of apps that can just integrate such features into their own well-established ones. It’s why Jason thinks that Clubhouse will come to a quick demise soon.
“My buddy John Wall of Marketing Over Coffee was quick to point out that as a creator, there’s no value here. First of all, I got to be Live. So it’s just like radio. Instead of podcasting, where we do it now and release it later, you got to be live. So as a creator, you’re fucked on that. So you have to be there, you have to do a radio show, and as a user you have to be there for that specific time.” – Christopher Lochhead
“I’ve been invited to like two dozen clubhouse chats. I’m like, it’s 3:30 in the afternoon on a Tuesday, I have a job. They want to do it at like 10:30 at night, I’m like, I gotta sleep. It doesn’t make any sense.
The other side is there’s no discoverability, finding a room is terribly hard, and the audio quality sucks. They say you’re not allowed to record it, but everybody records it. And you know, there’s, there’s so many things wrong with it, it’s hard to begin to figure out where the most wrong thing is wrong with it” – Jason DeFillippo
To hear more about Christopher and Jason’s thoughts on digital products, NFTs, and Clubhouse, download and listen to this episode.
Jason DeFillippo
Jason has been building websites since the early days in 1994 for clients that range from small businesses to million-dollar websites for blockbuster films to his own start-ups.
In 1995 a new media company in Santa Monica moved him out to Los Angeles to build the first website for Epson America.
Since then, Jason has launched over 250 websites for major corporations like Paramount Pictures, Sony, Warner Brothers, and Disney.
He also created the two-time SXSW Weblog Award-winning Blogrolling.com as well as co-founded the global blog network Metroblogging.
He has worked at several startups in San Francisco including Technorati.com and 8020 Media, the publishers of JPGMagazine.com and statistical aggregator Metricly.com.
Currently, Jason is a full-time podcast producer and editor.
We hope you enjoyed this episode of Lochhead on Marketing™! Christopher loves hearing from his listeners. Feel free to email him, connect on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and subscribe on iTunes! You may also subscribe to his newsletter, The Difference, for some amazing content.
This new art category design is changing the definition of the category of what it means to be an artist and what a piece of art means in the digital age. Art is now a new digital category; it’s not only physical anymore. Who’s to say that other products won’t follow suit in the future?
“In the past, people would pay six point six million dollars for a painting, not a bunch of zeros and ones. This is a way bigger development than somebody paying a few dollars to buy a digital tractor or a rifle in a video game. Someone paid over six fucking million dollars for some zeros and ones, and those zeros and ones are artificially being restricted. In this case, they paid that money so they’d be the only people in the world to have those zeros and ones.” – Christopher Lochhead
All of these circle back to digital natives and how they prioritize things. It is why you see people being reluctant to buy a car but willingly fork over money for a digital vehicle in an app. They want to live out their best lives in their perceived “real life”.
“If you’re a digital native, your digital life by default is more important and more valuable to you than your physical life. If that’s true, it stands to reason that digital native’s want to buy shit for their digital native selves and they’ll buy things in their digital world that they wouldn’t buy in their physical world.” – Christopher Lochhead
So what does that mean for companies and their corresponding categories and brands? Well, if you want to stay ahead of the pack, you need to step back and think about the increasing role of people’s digital lives in the market. Especially in the new marketing landscape that COVID has wrought, where people live in a digital workplace in a way that they didn’t before.
“I think we have to ask ourselves: is there an opportunity and or threat for our categories, brands and businesses in a world where people’s digital life is their primary experience and their physical life is their secondary experience?” – Christopher Lochhead
To know more on digital-exclusive products as a new mega-category, download and listen to this episode.
Christopher Lochhead is a #1 Apple podcaster and #1 Amazon bestselling co-author of books: Niche Down and Play Bigger.
He has been an advisor to over 50 venture-backed startups; a former three-time Silicon Valley public company CMO and an entrepreneur.
Furthermore, he has been called “one of the best minds in marketing” by The Marketing Journal, a “Human Exclamation Point” by Fast Company, a “quasar” by NBA legend Bill Walton and “off-putting to some” by The Economist.
In addition, he served as a chief marketing officer of software juggernaut Mercury Interactive. Hewlett-Packard acquired the company in 2006, for $4.5 billion.
He also co-founded the marketing consulting firm LOCHHEAD; the founding CMO of Internet consulting firm Scient, and served as head of marketing at the CRM software firm Vantive.
Does the company cast a compelling future — free of any fundamental problems, compromises, and trade-offs inherent to the category as it is today?
We’ve learned a lot from our friend Joe Pine, who is one of the co-authors of The Experience Economy. One of the things that he teaches us is that companies that are successful in doing this transform their customers, transform their partners, and as a result of bringing new things to the world, they generate a tremendous amount of abundance. So the second criteria is, are they articulating a future category in a reimagined way without compromise? If they do, can the future category break new grounds and get us an exponential kind of future? – Christopher Lochhead
How does this new category get delivered to the customer? Is it both through a breakthrough product/service/offer, but also through a breakthrough business model?
How does product innovation and business model innovation come together in a way where 1 + 1 = 11?
There has to be something radically different about either the product offer, the business model, or both. – Christopher Lochhead
Does the company generate data about customer/consumer with demand/preferences that creates a unique opportunity and advantage to anticipate the future of consumer demand and any category shifts?
Will this Data Flywheel provide insight into not only how to improve company offerings, but predict where demand for this new category will unfold next?
One of the big insights in Superconsumers is a relatively small percentage of the most enthusiastic consumers are customers that drive any category change. So another thing to think about is, does the flywheel produce insights into Superconsumers, and not just everyday customers? This allows a company to be very predictive about going forward. – Christopher Lochhead
Does the company generate satisfied customers/consumers?
Are customers so happy and satisfied they evangelize the product/service to others? Better yet, do customers want to tell their own stories where the customer’s life is truly different after engaging with the company?
The degree to which a customer has a massive outcome, particularly an outcome that drives massive word of mouth. When your outcome drives word of mouth, and you have a compelling category point of view, you’re actually telling your customers what to say as they go share it with their friends.– Christopher Lochhead
To know more on how the 100 fastest-growing companies fare in the Category Design Scorecard, download this episode.
Christopher Lochhead is a #1 Apple podcaster and #1 Amazon bestselling co-author of books: Niche Down and Play Bigger.
He has been an advisor to over 50 venture-backed startups; a former three-time Silicon Valley public company CMO and an entrepreneur.
Furthermore, he has been called “one of the best minds in marketing” by The Marketing Journal, a “Human Exclamation Point” by Fast Company, a “quasar” by NBA legend Bill Walton and “off-putting to some” by The Economist.
In addition, he served as a chief marketing officer of software juggernaut Mercury Interactive. Hewlett-Packard acquired the company in 2006, for $4.5 billion.
He also co-founded the marketing consulting firm LOCHHEAD; the founding CMO of Internet consulting firm Scient, and served as head of marketing at the CRM software firm Vantive.
“A good story can kill a bad product quicker than anything. If you’ve got a great founder story, well told that has nothing to do with the product or offering, you create a disconnect there. There are a ton of those stories out there that have gone untold, and they are like gold sitting below your feet. You just have to unearth them and tell them well, but it has to tie to your why it is you do and what you do in your business. Huge believer in that.” – Park Howell
Christopher and Park discuss how to create legendary stories in context to the use of category design. Park comments one can do this by getting the ABT super focused so nobody can share the same ABT. Along with a little shadow on the category design, this little algorithm tool can help separate and differentiate from the competitors.
Park also discusses how the Gettysburg address and nursery rhymes all used ABT in their brilliant storytelling.
“If you go to the Gettysburg address, you’ll see the Gettysburg address is a perfect and, but, therefore. Lincoln steps on stage and addresses the GRA crowd. Exactly two minutes, 272 words. Yet it’s one of the most iconic, legendary leader addresses of all time. If you look at it, it’s set up in a perfect and, but, and therefore for him to give. He was just a brilliant storyteller. He knew the power of contradiction and consequence, and that’s what he was delivering that day. If you look at any nursery rhymer, most 90% of all nursery rhymes are an ABT.” – Park Howell
To know more about Park Howell and how to construct legendary marketing stories, download and listen to this episode.
Bio:
Park Howell is a 30+ year veteran of the advertising industry who has guided hundreds of purpose-driven brands and thousands of people who support them to substantial growth.
But everything changed in 2006. That’s when he realized the advertising paradigm was being disrupted by the internet. Brands used to own the influence of mass media, but the masses had become the media creating a cacophony of communication.
Park learned that an anecdote is the antidote to help you stand out.
He now consults, teaches, coaches, and speaks internationally helping leaders and communicators rise above the noise of the Attention Economy and be heard using the power of the brand and business storytelling.
Many so-called storytelling experts tell you why story is important in business. Park actually shows you how to storytell.
Audiences are bewitched by his interactive keynotes, panel discussions and workshops.
We hope you enjoyed this episode of Lochhead on Marketing™! Christopher loves hearing from his listeners. Feel free to email him, connect on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and subscribe on iTunes! You may also subscribe to his newsletter, The Difference, for some amazing content.
***
Following an exercise out of Lochhead’s playbook (we’re always on the lookout for new ways to make our Story Cycle system more powerful for brands that choose to leverage it), we arrived at the ideal market category design for their new product.
Here is the script we created to design their new category:
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