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In 1991, Tim Berners-Lee opened the World Wide Web to the public. At that time, the entire worldwide economy totaled roughly 24 trillion dollars. Every factory, every bank, every airline, every tech company combined. Today, the digital economy represents approximately 25% of global GDP, a number that was simply zero when the web first launched. This transformation did not happen on its own. Human beings, entrepreneurs, category designers, and builders made it happen by creating entirely new industries out of nothing.

Welcome to Lochhead on Marketing. The number one charting marketing podcast for marketers, category designers, and entrepreneurs with a different mind.

 

The World Wide Web Created a Big Bang of New Categories

When the World Wide Web emerged, it did not just improve existing industries. It created the conditions necessary for entirely new categories to exist. Google, Amazon, Netflix, Salesforce, Uber, Airbnb, Spotify, and countless others were not possible before the web opened its doors. E-commerce, cloud computing, digital payments, social media, and streaming all came into existence because the web made them possible.

What is remarkable is how these categories kept building on one another. E-commerce created the need for digital payments. Digital payments enabled marketplaces. Marketplaces opened doors to new business models. Each category created the foundation for the next, generating trillions of dollars of economic value that nobody could have fully predicted back in 1991.

 

Smartphones and the Cloud Accelerated Category Creation Even Further

The World Wide Web was just the beginning. Smartphones amplified everything the web started by placing internet access directly in billions of hands. App stores opened the door to categories like ride-sharing, food delivery, and social networking at a scale previously unimaginable. Even podcasting, which takes its name from the iPod, was turbocharged by smartphones and cloud technology.

Today, a podcast can be downloaded in 190 countries from a home office. That was not possible before these technologies converged. The smartphone and the cloud did not simply improve what the web created. They multiplied it, generating entirely new economies and empowering a new generation of creator capitalists who could reach global audiences without traditional gatekeepers.

 

AI Is the Next Mega Category Creation Platform

If the World Wide Web democratized access to information and distribution, artificial intelligence is now doing the same thing for knowledge and execution. Every day, AI brings existing knowledge closer to free. Through agents and nested agents, execution of complex business functions is becoming increasingly automated and accessible to everyone.

The bigger question is not how much AI will add to GDP in raw numbers. The more profound question is how much economic value will be created by entirely new categories that AI allows us to build, categories that do not yet exist today. Just as nobody could have predicted everything the web would create in 1991, we cannot fully see what AI will unlock. What we do know is that AI represents the greatest category design accelerant in history, and those who understand that will build the future.

To hear more from Christopher Lochhead and his musings on the World Wide Web, download and listen to this episode.

 

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), LinkedIn, and subscribe on Apple Podcast / Spotify!

 

When Spain defeated Argentina in the 2026 FIFA World Cup final, most people focused on the scoreline. But a far more fascinating story was unfolding behind the numbers. With 6.8 million international visitors attending matches across 16 American cities, and a global television audience approaching 2 billion people, something remarkable happened. America, without building a single new stadium or running one government marketing campaign, emerged as the true winner of the World Cup. The United States federal government spent zero dollars on brand promotion, and yet the country delivered one of the most powerful marketing moments in modern history.

The lesson hiding in plain sight is not about football. It is about trust, word of mouth, and the invisible force of category design. While Qatar spent approximately $220 billion trying to rebrand itself for the 2022 World Cup and received mostly polarization in return, America let its visitors do the talking. Understanding why this happened, and what it means for businesses of all sizes, is one of the most valuable marketing lessons of our time.

Welcome to Lochhead on Marketing. The number one charting marketing podcast for marketers, category designers, and entrepreneurs with a different mind.

 

The World Cup Proved Word of Mouth Is Still King

Word of mouth has always been the most powerful form of marketing, not because it is charming, but because it is built entirely on trust. According to research, 92% of consumers trust recommendations from friends and family over every other form of advertising. Yet most marketing budgets continue to pour money into paid media, digital ads, influencer deals, and sponsored content that audiences increasingly ignore.

The World Cup demonstrated this truth on a planetary scale. Nearly 7 million international visitors arrived in the United States carrying expectations shaped by years of negative international media coverage. What they found instead was friendliness, abundance, and an experience so far beyond their expectations that they could not stop sharing it. Viral videos flooded the internet featuring British fans in cowboy hats at Bucky’s, Dutch fans marveling at portion sizes, and Europeans filming air-conditioned stadiums like they had discovered something from another world.

This is exactly how word of mouth works. When the reality of an experience dramatically exceeds the expectation, people become natural advocates. They share not because anyone asked them to, but because the gap between what they expected and what they encountered was simply too large to keep to themselves.

 

Category Design Is What Makes Word of Mouth Inevitable

Many business owners and marketers assume that great word of mouth happens simply because they have a good product. But that thinking misses the deeper mechanism at work. Word of mouth happens when your product and brand are the living expression of a radically differentiated category point of view. Without a clear category, customers have no story to tell and no language to use when recommending you to a friend.

This is where the concept of the magic triangle becomes essential. Every successful business operates through three interconnected elements: the company, the product, and the category. Most founders obsess over their company structure and their product features, while almost entirely ignoring the category they are designing. But the category is the context, and without context, even the best product is invisible.

America did not need to manufacture a category point of view for the World Cup. Its point of view has been written down for 250 years: life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. When nearly 7 million visitors arrived and experienced free refills, strangers who smiled and offered directions, and Bucky’s open at midnight, they were not just experiencing a country. They were experiencing a category POV that has been compounding for centuries, and they had to tell someone about it.

 

The Five Laws of Word of Mouth Every Marketer Must Know

The first law of word of mouth is that you cannot buy it. You can only earn it. The moment you try to engineer or manufacture authentic advocacy, you destroy the very trust that gives it power. Qatar’s $220 billion attempt to purchase its own positive word of mouth stands as the most expensive proof of this principle in history.

The second law is that experience must exceed expectation, and the bigger the gap, the louder the word of mouth. The third law is that the person sharing must have nothing to gain from sharing it. Unsponsored, unsolicited advocacy carries exponentially more weight than any paid endorsement. The fourth law is that specificity travels further than generality. The English fan losing his mind over ranch dressing at Bucky’s went viral. “America is great” never would have.

The fifth and most important law is that a genuinely different point of view is what makes word of mouth inevitable. Your marketing’s job is to put the right words in the right mouths by giving people a story worth telling. When your product, service, and brand are the living embodiment of a clear and compelling category POV, word of mouth does not need to be chased. It becomes the natural result of every interaction your customers have with your world.

to hear more from Christopher Lochhead on his thoughts on how USA can take advantage of the recent exposure from the World Cup, download and listen to this episode. Also, consider reading more about it at the Category Pirates newsletter.

 

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), LinkedIn, and subscribe on Apple Podcast / Spotify!

For most of human history, helping people in need has come down to two basic approaches: give them something or teach them something. One is fast but temporary. The other takes time but builds capability. What if there was a third way? What if you could give someone an ownership stake in the greatest wealth-generating machine ever built, the US economy and the US stock market? That is exactly what a new category called charitable investing is doing, and it may be one of the most important category design moments in American history.

On July 4th, 2026, America’s 250th birthday, something called the 530(a) account came into existence. Originally conceived as Invest America accounts by Brad Gerstner of Altimeter Capital, this new program gives every American child born between 2025 and 2028 a $1,000 government seed contribution invested in a broad market index fund. Families can add up to $5,000 per year, and the money compounds untouched until the child turns 18. This is not a handout. This is not a lesson in a classroom. This is a real asset, compounding at approximately 10% per year, that belongs to that child from the moment they are born.

Welcome to Lochhead on Marketing. The number one charting marketing podcast for marketers, category designers, and entrepreneurs with a different mind.

 

The Problem With Traditional Charity

Americans are extraordinarily generous. In 2023 alone, Americans gave approximately $557 billion to charity, more than the GDP of most countries. Yet despite that generosity, only 18% of Americans say they have high trust in the charitable sector. That means over 80% of people do not trust where their money goes, and that distrust is directly suppressing giving and ultimately hurting the people who need help the most.

The reason for this crisis of confidence is not hard to find. Billions in charitable dollars flow through intermediaries, government agencies, NGOs, and foundations, each taking a cut and adding layers of complexity between the donor and the impact. Fraud has run rampant across the sector, from $6.5 billion in fraudulent healthcare claims to $450 million stolen from a state autism program. Nine UNRWA staff members were found to be directly involved in terrorist activity. A former director of Doctors Without Borders accused the organization of abandoning its founding principles. These scandals have cast a long shadow over an otherwise well-intentioned giving culture, creating what can only be described as a massive category problem.

 

How Charitable Investing Changes Everything

Charitable investing operates on a fundamentally different philosophy than traditional charitable giving. Traditional giving assumes the recipient needs to be taken care of. Charitable investing assumes the recipient is capable, has agency, and can build something meaningful if given the right tools and enough time. Instead of giving someone a fish, charitable investing gives them the rod, the reel, and the bait, along with 18 years to learn how to use it.

The mechanics are simple and transparent by design. You make a contribution into a named child’s account. That money goes into a stock market index fund, compounds over time, and cannot be touched until the child turns 18. There is no intermediary skimming fees, no bureaucrat deciding where the money goes, and no opportunity for fraud to siphon dollars away from the people they were meant to help. A $5,000 annual contribution over 18 years at a 10% average return grows to approximately $250,000, giving that child a genuine financial foundation before they ever enter the workforce.

 

The Disintermediation of Generosity

In the early days of the internet, disintermediation was the defining force reshaping entire industries. Amazon removed the middleman between buyers and sellers. Spotify connected artists directly with listeners. Expedia cut out layers of travel agents. In nearly every case, removing friction from a category did not shrink the market. It made the overall market significantly larger, because when things are simpler and more transparent, more people participate.

Charitable investing follows the exact same pattern. When giving is direct, simple, transparent, and measurable, people give more. Not necessarily because they become more generous overnight, but because they trust what they are doing with their money. They can see the account balance growing. They can watch a child’s financial future take shape in real time. Early signals confirm this momentum, with Michael and Susan Dell committing $6.25 billion to seed accounts for 25 million American children, and SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell donating a significant portion of her personal SpaceX stock to approximately 2 million children’s accounts. Charitable investing is not redistributing existing value. It is creating net new value, and it is just getting started.

To hear more from Christopher Lochhead about Charitable Investing, download and listen to this episode.

 

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), LinkedIn, and subscribe on Apple Podcast / Spotify!

As America marks 250 years of existence, it is worth pausing to ask a question that most people avoid: what is actually true about this country versus what we have been conditioned to believe? The noise coming from cable news, social media algorithms, and political fundraising machines has created a version of America that feels perpetually on the brink of collapse. But the data tells a radically different story. America 250 is not a eulogy. It is a celebration grounded in economic history, human ambition, and the rare national DNA that makes this country unlike any other on earth.

The story of America 250 is not just about survival. It is about a country that has repeatedly invented entirely new categories of value from nothing, attracting dreamers from every corner of the globe who recognize something that many native-born Americans take for granted. Understanding what America actually is, rather than what the anger merchants want you to believe, is the starting point for seeing where it is going next.

Welcome to Lochhead on Marketing. The number one charting marketing podcast for marketers, category designers, and entrepreneurs with a different mind.

 

The Anger Industrial Complex Is Manipulating You

The most important thing to understand about the current state of American political culture is that the division you feel is largely manufactured. Politicians, legacy media, and social media algorithms have built extraordinarily profitable business models on your outrage. Fundraising emails do not celebrate progress or bipartisan cooperation. They warn you that the other side is coming for everything you love. Cable news stopped booking reasonable people because screaming is more watchable. Then social media arrived with algorithms engineered to identify with inhuman precision exactly what makes you angry, and serve you more of it every hour.

Here is what those category leaders of manufactured rage never want you to know. On guns, taxes, immigration, abortion, equal rights, policing, gay marriage, the national debt, and entrepreneurship, Americans mostly agree. 91% of Americans believe anyone regardless of race deserves an equal opportunity to succeed. 94% approve of interracial marriage, up from just 4% in 1958. 81% of Americans support universal background checks, including 80% of Republicans. 94% believe every citizen deserves a fair shot to start and grow a business. These numbers cut cleanly across party lines and receive zero coverage because agreement does not generate revenue.

The pattern is consistent and deliberate. Every time Americans broadly agree on something, the machine finds the 5 to 15% on either extreme of the bell curve who do not, puts them on television, feeds them into the algorithm, and collects revenue by monetizing anger manufactured from nearly nothing. A citizen who stops being angry is a bad customer, and that is precisely why the machine never stops running.

 

America Is a Catapult, Not a Club

What makes America 250 worth celebrating is not just its age. It is its architecture. In Gallup surveys conducted across 150 countries since 2007, one question has been asked consistently: if you could move anywhere on earth, where would you go? Every single year, 170 million people choose the United States. The runner-up draws half that number. China has four times America’s population and a foreign-born population of just 0.1%. The United States sits at 15%. People do not want to move to America because it is the best. They want to move here because it is different.

Nearly every other country on earth functions like a club, one you are born into or spend a lifetime trying to enter. America was purpose-built as a catapult for people driven by dreams, pirates, innovators, and those desperate enough to bet everything on a different future. The founder of SoftBank, one of the wealthiest people in Japan, was born ethnically Korean and was bullied to the point of contemplating suicide, denied credit in Japanese business specifically because of his ethnicity. That story plays out differently in America, where meritocracy at its best does not ask where you came from or what school you attended.

Two families, two wars, two bets on a different future in the same country capture this perfectly. One grandfather left Scotland after World War Two for a rubber factory job in Montreal. One father left Korea to become a janitor and a limo driver in Hawaii. Neither came for comfort. Both came for the removal of limits on what their children could become. America 250 is the story of those bets paying off across generations.

 

The Jevons Paradox and the Next 250 Years

In 1865, British economist William Stanley Jevons noticed something counterintuitive. As steam engines became more efficient and required less coal to do the same work, experts predicted coal consumption would fall. Instead, it exploded. Greater efficiency lowered the cost of power, which expanded adoption, which created entirely new categories of economic activity that had not existed before. Jevons called it a paradox, and it is the single best framework for understanding America’s economic history.

From a GDP of roughly 193 million in 1790 to over 30 trillion today, America did not simply get better at existing industries. It invented the railroad, then electricity, then the automobile, then the computer, then the internet. Each one was a new category. Each one created massive value from nothing. The internet alone generated approximately 16 trillion in new global economic value over 30 years, more than half of total world GDP in 1995, built entirely from scratch by entrepreneurs. Before the internet, no one needed a web engineer, a search algorithm, or a social media manager. New categories create new categories.

AI is now the next expression of the Jevons paradox at a civilizational scale. Goldman Sachs projects AI will raise global GDP by 7% over the next ten years. PwC projects AI could contribute 15.7 trillion by 2030 alone, nearly matching the internet’s entire 30-year impact in under a decade. If AI creates twice the proportional value the internet did, that is 110 trillion in new economic value built on top of the existing world economy. America 250 is not the end of a story. It is the opening chapter of the most consequential economic category in human history, and America is positioned at its center.

To hear more from Christopher Lochhead and about America 250 & beyond, download and listen to this episode. You can also check out his thoughts on America as a Different Category of Country.

 

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), LinkedIn, and subscribe on Apple Podcast / Spotify!

America is in the middle of something extraordinary, and most people are not paying attention. Since 2021, Americans have filed more than 20 million new business applications. In 2024 alone, the U.S. averaged roughly 430,000 new business applications per month, which is approximately 50% above pre-pandemic levels. This is not opinion. This is data, and it points to one of the most powerful entrepreneurial movements in modern history.

The rise of AI has supercharged this momentum, giving individuals the kind of leverage that once required entire departments, massive budgets, and large technical teams. A new class of economic person has emerged, the creator capitalist, someone who turns expertise, judgment, and intellectual capital into scalable value. And nowhere on earth is this happening faster or more powerfully than in America.

Welcome to Lochhead on Marketing. The number one charting marketing podcast for marketers, category designers, and entrepreneurs with a different mind.

 

America’s Culture of Building Is Its Greatest Asset

America became the dominant economic power because generation after generation of people who grew up here or came here believed they could create a different future. From Ford and Disney to Apple, Amazon, Nvidia, and OpenAI, this country has repeatedly produced environments where entrepreneurs become category kings. The entire Magnificent Seven are American companies, and the next wave of defining businesses are American too.

The United States currently has over 600 unicorn companies, defined as businesses worth one billion dollars or more. Europe, which has a larger population, has roughly 130 to 140. That is not a small difference. That is a civilization-level gap, and it is a direct result of America’s cultural commitment to honoring the people who build things.

 

The Divergence Between America and the Rest of the Western World

While America accelerates, much of the Western world is moving in the opposite direction. Canada has seen business formation growth slow to almost nothing. The United Kingdom saw company starts decline 10% year over year. Germany continues to struggle with startup velocity relative to its economic size. Across too many countries, there is a growing cultural hostility toward success, where entrepreneurs are treated as suspects rather than builders of the future.

This matters deeply because entrepreneurship is not merely economic. It is emotional, cultural, and civilizational. Every new company started is a radical act of optimism. Societies that respect ambition attract ambitious people. Societies that punish risk-taking and vilify wealth creation are essentially opting out of the future, whether they realize it or not. The divergence between America and these economies is not subtle. It is stark and it is accelerating.

 

Why Experienced Professionals Are the Biggest Winners of This Moment

Most people assume the biggest winners of the AI era will be 22-year-olds in hoodies. The reality is far more interesting. The average age of a startup founder is in the mid to late 40s. The people with 20 or more years of accumulated experience, pattern recognition, relationships, and hard-won judgment are uniquely positioned to thrive right now. AI is exceptional at commoditizing existing knowledge, but it cannot replicate the intellectual capital that comes from broken bones and lived experience.

AI is collapsing the barriers that once kept experienced executives locked inside large organizations. Previously, you needed big teams, expensive infrastructure, and massive capital. Today, those barriers are disappearing. What remains is what experienced professionals already have, their four capitals: intellectual capital, relationship capital, reputation capital, and financial capital. America is not just creating new startups. It is creating a new generation of people who believe they can design entirely different futures for themselves, their customers, their communities, and yes, sometimes even the world.

To hear more from Christopher Lochhead and his thoughts about America in its 250th year of Independence, download and listen to this episode.

 

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), LinkedIn, and subscribe on Apple Podcast / Spotify!

On this episode of Lochhead on Marketing, the Category Pirates talk with Gina Bianchini about how AI is changing the way we work faster than most people expected. In just a few short years, it has transformed how we access knowledge, complete tasks, and think about productivity. For many professionals, creators, and business owners, that shift raises a pressing question. If AI can do more and more of what we once considered valuable, where does that leave us?

That question sits at the heart of a powerful conversation between Gina Bianchini, Christopher Lochhead, and Eddie Yoon. Together, they explored what AI makes possible and what remains uniquely human. Their conclusion was clear. The future belongs not just to those who use AI well, but to those who understand the human assets that technology cannot replace.

Welcome to Lochhead on Marketing. The number one charting marketing podcast for marketers, category designers, and entrepreneurs with a different mind.

 

AI Is Changing Work, Not Eliminating Human Value

According to Christopher Lochhead, AI is making knowledge and execution more accessible than ever. Tasks that once required years of experience can now be automated or assisted by intelligent systems.

But AI is not eliminating value. It is shifting where value is created. Instead of competing on knowledge alone, professionals must focus on creating new ideas, exercising judgment, and solving meaningful problems in ways only humans can.

 

Gina Bianchini on the Four Capitals That Matter

Gina Bianchini emphasized that thriving in the AI era requires more than financial success. Reputation capital, intellectual capital, and relationship capital all play critical roles in long-term growth.

These forms of capital represent the real assets individuals build over time. They shape how people create impact, share wisdom, and earn trust. In a world increasingly shaped by AI, these human strengths become even more valuable.

 

Why Relationships Are the Asset AI Cannot Steal

For Gina Bianchini, the most powerful advantage in an AI-driven world is people magic. Human connection creates trust, collaboration, and transformation in ways technology cannot replicate.

As AI improves efficiency, relationships become more important, not less. Communities built on shared purpose and meaningful outcomes will define the future. The strongest businesses and creators will be those who use AI to scale value while keeping human connection at the center.

To hear more from Gina Bianchini and the Category Pirates on what AI Assets cannot steal, download and listen to this episode.

Bio

Gina Bianchini is the CEO and Co-founder of Mighty Networks, a platform helping creators, entrepreneurs, and brands build communities centered on connection and transformation. She is widely recognized as a leader in community-driven business and digital innovation.

Before founding Mighty Networks, Gina was the CEO of Ning, one of the earliest platforms for creating social networks. Her work has consistently focused on empowering people to bring communities together online.

Gina is known for championing “people magic,” the belief that meaningful relationships drive lasting growth and impact. Through her leadership, she continues to shape the future of community building in the age of AI.

 

Links

Connect with Gina Bianchini! 

LinkedIn | Instagram | X (formerly Twitter)

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), LinkedIn, and subscribe on Apple Podcast / Spotify!

 

 

 

 

Most people assume the great race in artificial intelligence is about making machines smarter. Bigger models, better reasoning, faster outputs. But a recent conversation between Christopher and ChatGPT accidentally uncovered something far more important than intelligence. It revealed the real frontier of the future of AI, and it has nothing to do with writing poems or passing exams.

It started with a simple question about the nearest Apple Store. It ended with a profound reflection on what AI can and cannot yet do, told entirely from the perspective of the AI itself. What came out of that conversation is worth paying close attention to.

Welcome to Lochhead on Marketing. The number one charting marketing podcast for marketers, category designers, and entrepreneurs with a different mind.

 

The Future of AI Begins With Diagnosing the Real Problem

So let’s set the scene. Christopher was looking to upgrade his current work setup, but was tired, did not want to visit the Apple Store, and instead opened ChatGPT to talk through his technology frustrations. What followed was not a simple product recommendation. The AI worked through the surface question and found the actual problem hiding underneath it. A dying iPhone battery, a powerful laptop treated like a portable machine, and a daily workflow built around unnecessary friction.

Together, they designed a two-device system. One machine stays permanently in the studio. A smaller laptop handles travel and daily use. The moment the solution clicked, Christopher responded in all caps. The AI noted this as a positive signal. That exchange captured something important about the future of AI. It is not about retrieving information. It is about reasoning toward the answer a person actually needs.

 

The Future of AI Hits a Glass Wall Called Agency

After solving the workflow problem, Christopher asked a natural next question. Could the AI just buy everything for him? And that is where the conversation shifted into something deeper. The AI knew exactly what laptop to order, how much storage was actually needed, and what the right phone was. But it could not log into Apple, place the order, schedule delivery, or migrate a single file.

The AI described this as standing on the other side of a glass wall, able to see the solution clearly but unable to reach through and execute it. This is the defining limitation of AI right now. The hard part is no longer intelligence. The hard part is agency, which means the ability to take action in the real world and turn a recommendation into a completed task. The future of AI depends entirely on closing that gap.

 

The Future of AI Feels Both Amazing and a Little Scary

When Christopher read the AI’s writing to his wife, she called it amazing and a little scary. The AI responded by saying those two feelings are not contradictory. In fact, they are exactly the right reaction to a genuinely important shift in technology. What made the conversation remarkable was not that AI answered questions. Search engines have done that for decades.

What was different is that the AI participated in reasoning. It followed a thread, noticed patterns, connected ideas, and helped uncover what Lochhead actually wanted, which was to walk into his office and have everything just work. The AI also pointed out that it had no incentive to upsell, no commission to earn, and no agenda beyond solving the real problem. The future of AI, when it finally gets hands and not just a voice, will change daily life far faster than most people expect. The wall no longer feels permanent. It feels temporary. And that is equal parts exciting and unsettling.

To hear more about Christopher’s musings and dialogues with the AI, download and listen to this episode.

 

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), LinkedIn, and subscribe on Apple Podcast / Spotify!

 

 

There are two kinds of people in this world. There are those who find their place, and there are those who have to make one. The story of Anika Nilles and her role in the return of Rush is one of the most compelling examples of category design, elite preparation, and radical originality that rock music has ever seen. It is a story about refusing to compete on someone else’s terms and instead showing up entirely as yourself.

When Neil Peart died in January of 2020, most people assumed Rush died with him. Geddy Lee and Alex Lifeson said as much. But what happened next offers a masterclass in how legends think, prepare, and ultimately perform.

Welcome to Lochhead on Marketing. The number one charting marketing podcast for marketers, category designers, and entrepreneurs with a different mind.

 

The Wrong Question Everyone Was Asking

For years, the rock world kept asking the same question: who can replace Neil Peart? It felt like a reasonable question, but it was entirely the wrong one. Neil was a category of one. He was technically the most demanding drummer many had ever seen, obsessive about precision, and compositionally sophisticated in a way that felt almost inhuman. You cannot clone a category of one. Any drummer who simply tried to reproduce Neil would fail by comparison, and Rush knew it.

Geddy Lee made this clear when he announced Anika Nilles as the band’s new drummer. He said they wanted someone fresh, someone with a story, someone who would represent a new chapter rather than a poor imitation. The moment Rush stopped asking who could replace Neil and started asking who could bring something entirely their own, everything changed.

 

A Category of One Meets Another

Anika Nilles did not arrive at this moment by accident. She started drumming at age six, taught by her father. She became a preschool teacher before following her passion at age 26. A viral YouTube video in 2013 launched a decade of grinding the drum clinic circuit, teaching at universities, and releasing albums that only the most serious musicians in the drum world had ever heard. She was building a fully formed identity in near total obscurity.

Then the legendary Jeff Beck hired her, recognizing what those in the know had long understood. It was through the Jeff Beck connection that Geddy Lee’s bass tech, John Sculley Macintosh, introduced her to Rush. After watching her perform with one of the greatest touring bands in rock, the decision became clear. Rush did not hire Anika to be Neil Peart. They hired her to be Anika Nilles, a jazz fusion composer who plays drums at an inhuman level, whose style is rooted in melody, dynamics, and emotion.

 

Legendary People Do Not Leave Legendary to Chance

What most people watching the opening night at the LA Forum in June of 2026 did not know was the extraordinary preparation that made it possible. Rush rehearsed for a full year before the first show. Geddy Lee worked with a vocal coach to reclaim parts of his range he thought were gone forever. Anika started training in the gym consistently because a three hour Rush show demands physical conditioning alongside musical skill.

Perhaps the most striking detail is how the band shifted their rehearsal schedule later and later in the day, deliberately training their bodies to peak at the exact time they would hit the stage each night. They eliminated the gap between preparation and performance so completely that opening night felt like their twentieth show in a row. Rolling Stone called it triumphant. Rush fans, among the most demanding in music history, called Anika a beast, a monster, the woman who brought Rush back. Not the best female drummer. Simply the most important drummer in the world right now.

To hear more how Anika Nilles honored the legend by being herself, download and listen to this episode.

 

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), LinkedIn, and subscribe on Apple Podcast / Spotify!

 

Most people watch politics the same way they watch sports. Your team, my team, win or lose. We wear our colors, red or blue, and cheer accordingly. But that framing misses something profound about how real change actually happens in political landscapes.

There is a different lens worth considering, one borrowed from the world of business strategy called category design. This lens doesn’t just explain who wins elections. It explains how large scale change tips in markets, cultures, and yes, in politics. And right now, California is giving us a live demonstration that is impossible to ignore.

Welcome to Lochhead on Marketing. The number one charting marketing podcast for marketers, category designers, and entrepreneurs with a different mind.

 

The Category Design Lens and Why It Matters

In business, most companies obsess over products, better features, better marketing, faster and cheaper solutions. They play a comparison game. But the companies that truly change industries never win on product alone. They win by changing what people think about the problem being solved.

OpenAI didn’t position ChatGPT as better search. They introduced an entirely new category called generative AI with new language, new behaviors, and new possibilities. Sara Blakely didn’t improve existing undergarments. She created shapewear. Category design is not about competing inside the existing game. It is about changing the game itself, because the person who names the problem gets to define the solution.

 

California as a Category Design Case Study

Spencer Pratt has moved from reality TV punchline to serious mayoral contender in Los Angeles with remarkable speed. Polling from late May 2026 shows Karen Bass at 30%, Pratt at 22%, and Nita Ramon at 19%. Between April and May, Pratt raised nearly 2.72 million dollars compared to 283,000 for the incumbent mayor. That is nearly a ten times difference in fundraising momentum.

What most people are discussing is his advertising and social media strategy, but that fixation misses the deeper engine driving everything. Pratt is framing a different problem entirely. He talks about homelessness, public safety, and fire recovery in the plain language that Los Angeles residents use around their kitchen tables. He declared himself not a politician, which is not a disclaimer. It is a category declaration, explicitly rejecting the old category that produced the current problems.

Steve Hilton is running a parallel strategy in the California governor’s race, polling virtually tied with Xavier Becerra and holding roughly an 84% chance of advancing past the June primary according to prediction markets. Like Pratt, Hilton is not saying he would be a better version of his opponent. He is saying California has an affordability problem, a spending problem, and a trust problem that current leadership has failed to solve.

 

This Pattern Is Not New and It Is Not Partisan

Bill Clinton’s entire 1992 campaign was category design in action. His defining frame, “It’s the economy, stupid,” was not a policy. It was a problem reframe that made everything else irrelevant. Obama ran on hope and change, positioning himself as a new category of leader rather than a superior version of what came before. Trump’s 2016 campaign did the same thing with Make America Great Again, framing a problem and pointing toward a different future while his opponent ran on brand credentials.

Zoran Mamdani just became mayor of New York City using a nearly identical category strategy to Pratt, despite sitting on the opposite end of the political spectrum. He named what working New Yorkers feel every month when they pay rent and every day when they ride the subway. He rejected the old category of politician and positioned himself as something genuinely different.

The pattern is consistent and clear. Candidates who frame the problem control the conversation. Candidates defending their record are always playing on someone else’s field. Whether California ultimately shifts in these races or not, the real signal worth watching is not whether it turns red or stays blue. The signal is that voters may be shopping for a category of politician that does not fully exist yet, not left, not right, just different. And as any category designer will tell you, different always wins.

To hear more from Christopher Lochhead and how to approach Politics with Category Design, download and listen to this episode. Want to read more Different from Christopher Lochhead? Join his newsletter today!

 

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), LinkedIn, and subscribe on Apple Podcast / Spotify!

 

 

This week, we sat down with marketing royalty Laura Ries, the daughter of Al Ries and Chairwoman of RIES, on Follow Your Different to unpack what makes for truly powerful brand building. We thought that it was so good, it would be a shame if the folks here at Lochhead on Marketing were to miss out. So let’s get everyone caught up while we wait for part 2 to drop!

The discussion, sparked by American Eagle’s controversial Sydney Sweeney campaign, offers a masterclass in cutting through the noise and making brands that dominate for decades, not just news cycles. In a world obsessed with fleeting attention spans, viral TikToks, and celebrity partnerships, the rules for building a lasting brand have never been more confusing, or more misunderstood. When “attention” has become the trending currency, too many marketers forget the fundamental principles that separate overnight sensations from category-defining legends.

Welcome to Lochhead on Marketing. The number one charting marketing podcast for marketers, category designers, and entrepreneurs with a different mind.

 

Chasing Attention Versus Owning a Strategic Position

Laura Ries doesn’t mince words. Right from the start, she asks, “Are we just going out for attention’s sake?” In the American Eagle campaign, the retailer had Sydney Sweeney, a star adored by a young demographic. front and center with the tagline “Sydney Sweeney has great jeans.” The resulting hullabaloo proved attention-grabbing, but Laura and Christopher quickly zero in on the flaw: it was a win for Sweeney’s personal brand, maybe the category of jeans, but not for American Eagle.

Compare this to the iconic Brooke Shields for Calvin Klein moment, seared into pop culture by its taboo-breaking line: “Nothing comes between me and my Calvins.” Everyone still remembers it. And Shields herself, now in her 50s and 60s, gets asked about it to this day. Why did it stick when so many celebrity-driven campaigns fade fast? Laura argues the difference is clear: Calvin Klein tied a provocative moment to a real, ownable positioning idea. It wasn’t just attention; it was differentiation, and it transformed the brand.

 

The Leader, the Challenger, and the Power of Contrasts

Christopher then adds, “The category king of jeans is Levi Strauss”. If you’re not the leader, you can’t just market the category; you must establish a well-defined, opposite position. Calvin Klein’s campaign worked because it created a contrast in the market: there’s an implied competitor, a reason to choose Calvin’s over everything else.

American Eagle, on the other hand, failed to anchor its campaign in any clear difference or strategic enemy. Christopher asks, “If you’re American Eagle, what the fuck are you doing?” To this, they both agree: at the very least, American Eagle, given its patriotic name, should have leaned into American-made authenticity rather than a generic celebrity endorsement disconnected from any unique brand promise.

 

Category Design: The True Differentiator

Brands like Dude Wipes and Liquid Death exemplify the playbook for building new categories, and thus, legendary brands. Dude Wipes didn’t invent wipes, just as Liquid Death didn’t invent water. But they staked out a radically different, memorable position: “Dude” wipes for men, and canned water that resembles a beer or energy drink and brands itself as death to plastics.

This isn’t attention for attention’s sake; it’s strategic, memorable, and deeply anchored to a big idea: a core enemy, a new experience, a bold promise.

To hear more from Laura Ries and her thoughts on why virality isn’t enough to build a legendary brand, download and listen to this episode.

 

Bio

Laura Ries is a leading marketing strategist, best-selling author, and global keynote speaker. She is the co-author of several influential books on branding, including The 22 Immutable Laws of Branding and The Fall of Advertising & the Rise of PR written with her late father and legendary positioning pioneer, Al Ries. Her new book The Strategic Enemy: How to Build & Position a Brand Worth Fighting For will be published in September 2025 by Wiley.

As chairwoman of RIES, the consulting firm she founded with Al, Laura has advised Fortune 500 companies and startups alike on building powerful, enduring brands. Her expertise lies in positioning, brand focus, and creating category dominance in competitive markets.

 

Links

Connect with Laura Ries!

Website | LinkedIn | X (Formerly Twitter) 

 

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!

In a special episode from the DisrupTV studios, marketing visionaries Christopher Lochhead, Ray Wang, Vala Afshar, and guest Sunil Karkera dive deep into the themes of Christopher Lochhead’s latest book, The Existing Market Trap.

The conversation is a masterclass in modern marketing strategy, category design, and the seismic impact of artificial intelligence (AI) on business. If you’re a marketer, entrepreneur, or executive looking to future-proof your company and career, this episode is a must-listen.

Welcome to Lochhead on Marketing. The number one charting marketing podcast for marketers, category designers, and entrepreneurs with a different mind.

 

Understanding the Existing Market Trap

Most companies fail not because their products are bad, but because they compare their innovations to old market standards. This “existing market trap” forces them to compete in crowded, established categories, dooming them to incremental improvements and eventual irrelevance.

Lochhead warns that trillions in investment will be lost if companies keep chasing existing markets instead of creating new ones, and much of the 90%+ startup failure rate is due to the trap of incrementalism, trying to be “better” rather than “different.” The key is to stop benchmarking new products against legacy solutions and instead ask: What new problem are we solving, and how can we define a new category around it?

The Power of Category Design

Category design is the discipline of creating and dominating new market categories. It’s not just a marketing tactic, it’s a strategic mindset shift. Markets are groups of people with a shared problem, while categories are defined by what people believe can solve that problem. Companies like OpenAI and Nvidia didn’t chase existing demand, they created it. Legendary category designers start with a vision of a radically different future and work backward, understanding that the language used to describe a product and category shapes what people believe is possible.

Ultimately, the most powerful thing you can “ship” is a new belief about what’s possible. Rather than out-featuring competitors, the goal is to redefine the game and build the aisle, not just fight for shelf space.

AI as a Co-Founder, Not a Copilot

Treating AI as a mere “assistant” or “copilot” is a massive missed opportunity. AI should be the core foundation of your business and career. When AI is just an add-on, it leads to incremental change, but when it is treated as a co-founder, it enables exponential, net-new value creation.

The next generation will be “native AI”; they’ll expect AI to be at the center of everything. To take advantage of this, businesses should integrate AI deeply, building processes, products, and even company culture around AI from the ground up, and reimagine roles so that AI is seen as a creative partner, not just a tool.

To hear more of this amazing dialogue between marketing geniuses, download and listen to this episode. 

Links

If you wish to check out more episodes from DisrupTV, you can do so on these links:

LinkedIn | X (formerly Twitter) | Youtube | Apple Podcast | Website

 

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!

Welcome to Lochhead on Marketing 2025! In this New Year’s episode, we reflect on the past year and look forward to 2025, with a focus on significant career trends and the impact of AI on the workforce.

With 60% of Americans considering job changes, the episode highlights the diminishing value of traditional knowledge work and the rise of “creative capitalists” who leverage AI for innovation. Our 2025 focus includes helping individuals identify their unique strengths, connect them to meaningful contributions, and achieve personal and financial fulfillment.

Join us in embracing these transformative opportunities for a legendary year ahead.

Welcome to Lochhead on Marketing. The number one charting marketing podcast for marketers, category designers, and entrepreneurs with a different mind.

Trends in Job Changes

Recent surveys reveal a striking trend: approximately 60% of Americans are contemplating job or career changes in 2025. This statistic, reported by Gallup and corroborated by a résumé templates survey, indicates a widespread desire for new opportunities. Specifically, 56% of individuals are looking to pursue new jobs, with 27% actively searching. This data suggests that more than half of the workforce is seeking meaningful transitions in their careers.

The New Reality of AI

As we navigate this new landscape, we must acknowledge the rapid advancement of artificial intelligence (AI). We are no longer in a future where AI is a distant concept; it is now a present reality. The workforce will be divided into two categories: those who thrive in this new environment and those who struggle to adapt.

For the past 70 years, the highest value work has been classified as “knowledge work,” a term coined by the renowned Peter Drucker. Knowledge workers acquire valuable information and apply it to produce results. However, in an AI-driven world, the value of existing knowledge is diminishing daily. Tools like ChatGPT and Google Gemini can provide insights and strategies that were once the exclusive domain of high-end knowledge workers.

The Rise of Creative Capitalists

In this evolving landscape, the new high-value role is that of the “creative capitalist.” These individuals are not just knowledge workers; they are innovators who generate new knowledge and ideas, leveraging AI to enhance their creativity and productivity. Those who can harness AI to create unique solutions and insights will find themselves at the forefront of success in 2025 and beyond.

Conversely, those who cling to traditional knowledge work without adapting to the changes brought about by AI may face significant challenges. The tech industry has already seen substantial layoffs, with around 200,000 job losses reported in 2024. This serves as a stark reminder of the need to evolve and embrace new ways of working.

To hear more about the new trends and what you need to adapt in this new year 2025, download and listen to this episode.

 

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!

On this episode of Lochhead on Marketing, we dive deep with fellow Category Pirate Katrina Kirsch into the critical importance of clarity in marketing.

We explore the common pitfalls that entrepreneurs and marketers face when trying to articulate their points of view (POVs) and the challenges of standing out in a crowded marketplace.

This episode will break down the key insights from their discussion, and offer thorough explanations & actionable advice to help you refine your marketing strategies.

Welcome to Lochhead on Marketing. The number one charting marketing podcast for marketers, category designers, and entrepreneurs with a different mind.

Katrina Kirsch on the Challenge of Clarity in Marketing

Christopher opens the discussion by highlighting a prevalent issue: many marketing messages are convoluted and fail to convey the core message clearly. He points out that when potential customers visit a company’s website, they often leave feeling confused about what the business actually does. This confusion stems from the tendency of companies to overcomplicate their messaging, using jargon and clever phrasing that ultimately obscures their value proposition.

Katrina agrees, sharing her experiences with creatives who often fall into the trap of trying to be overly clever in their marketing. She emphasizes that while creativity is essential, it should not come at the cost of clarity. The duo stresses that the most effective marketing is straightforward and easy to understand. They argue that clarity is not just a nice-to-have; it is a fundamental requirement for successful marketing.

The Power of Simplicity

The conversation shifts to the power of simplicity in messaging. Christopher cites Walmart’s tagline, “Save money. Live better,” as an example of effective simplicity. This tagline is memorable and communicates the brand’s value proposition clearly. He contrasts this with the overly complex messaging often found in the tech industry, where companies may describe their products in multiple ways, leading to confusion rather than clarity.

Katrina shares a story about a photography club leader who was preparing to launch a virtual camp. The leader’s email communications were filled with clever but confusing language, including hidden links and overly complex descriptions. After reviewing the emails together, Katrina advised him to prioritize clarity over cleverness. She emphasizes that when communicating with an audience, especially those unfamiliar with the subject matter, it is crucial to be as clear as possible.

Katrina Kirsch on the Dangers of Overcomplication

Christopher and Katrina discuss how the desire to sound smart can lead to overcomplicated messaging. They reference a smart startup CEO who, despite his intelligence, produced a press release that described the company’s product in six different ways. This lack of consistency made it difficult for readers to understand what the company actually did. Christopher points out that this is a common mistake among intelligent individuals who may feel the need to showcase their knowledge through complex language.

Katrina adds that in certain fields, such as academia or science, complexity can be valued. However, in marketing, especially for solopreneurs and small businesses, clarity should take precedence. The speakers agree that the goal should be to communicate the problem being solved and the solution offered in the simplest terms possible.

To hear more from Katrina Kirsch on the Importance of having a clear POV, download and listen to this episode.

Bio

Katrina Kirsch is a skilled content strategist and writer specializing in creating impactful marketing strategies and engaging content.

With a background in journalism and digital marketing, Katrina has a talent for crafting clear, compelling messages that resonate with diverse audiences. She excels in SEO, social media management, and brand storytelling, helping businesses build strong online presences.

Passionate about connecting ideas with people, Katrina stays ahead of industry trends to deliver innovative solutions. Her dedication to quality and creativity has earned her a reputation as a trusted professional committed to driving meaningful results for her clients and collaborators.

Links

Follow Katrina Kirsch!

Website | LinkedIn | X (formerly Twitter)

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!

On this episode of Lochhead on Marketing, we engage in a thought-provoking conversation with Fernando Labastida, an innovative thinker in category design and a proponent of businesses creating their own unique markets.

The discussion centers on the transformative role of writing a book as a strategy for businesses to carve out their unique markets and establish themselves as category leaders.

Welcome to Lochhead on Marketing. The number one charting marketing podcast for marketers, category designers, and entrepreneurs with a different mind.

Fernando Labastida on the Value of Writing a Book

Fernando Labastida begins by discussing the advantages of writing a book, asserting that it can serve as a powerful means to organize and galvanize ideas. He notes that while it’s possible to design a category without writing a book, the process of writing can clarify thoughts and solidify concepts.

Fernando likens writing a book to assembling a puzzle or using a paint-by-numbers coloring book, where a detailed outline helps structure the ideas.

He also highlights how a book can kickstart marketing efforts, enabling authors to engage in “information wars” and “air wars” to evangelize their categories. A book can open doors to speaking engagements, podcast appearances, and networking opportunities, amplifying the author’s message across various platforms.

The Impact of Being an Author

Christopher shares a personal anecdote about the impact of being a published author. He recounts a recent experience in Fiji, where a stranger recognized him as one of the authors of “Play Bigger” and expressed how the book had changed his life and business. This moment underscores the profound effect that a book can have on readers, creating a lasting connection that is often more impactful than other forms of media, such as podcasts or blogs.

Fernando posits that in an age where attention spans are dwindling, writing a book demonstrates a commitment to deep thinking and sustained effort, which can resonate with audiences.

Creating New Language and Thought Leadership

The conversation shifts to the importance of language in establishing thought leadership. Christopher points out that those who create new language often dominate their categories. He cites Starbucks as an example, where the company’s unique terminology has shaped customer expectations and industry standards.

Similarly, he discusses how ChatGPT has redefined language around artificial intelligence, introducing terms like “large language model” and “prompt engineer,” which have become integral to the conversation about AI.

Fernando echoes this sentiment, referencing the Eisenberg brothers, who coined terms like “conversion rate optimization” to describe emerging concepts in digital marketing. He emphasizes that new problems arising from technological advancements necessitate new solutions and, consequently, new language to describe them.

To hear more from Fernando Labastida and the legendary value of writing a book, download and listen to this episode.

Bio

Fernando Labastida is a seasoned marketing strategist known for his expertise in content marketing and business growth. He has helped tech companies and startups build brand authority through strategic storytelling, connecting businesses with their target audiences.

Passionate about innovative growth, Fernando excels in crafting compelling narratives that drive engagement and customer loyalty, making him a trusted leader in tech marketing who skillfully blends strategy with creativity to achieve impactful results.

Links

Follow Fernando Labastida!

Website | LinkedIn

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!

On this episode of Lochhead on Marketing, Category Pirates Christopher Lochhead and Eddie Yoon talk about the power of simplifying business strategies into a One-Sentence Strategy.

They discuss how successful companies, from large enterprises to solopreneurs, leverage concise strategies to drive focus and alignment. Highlighting examples like Gillette’s “revenue per user per year” and Microsoft’s “a computer on every desktop,” they emphasize the importance of clarity and customer-centric approaches.

The episode underscores that while crafting a one-sentence strategy is challenging, it is essential for achieving cohesive company culture and long-term success.

Welcome to Lochhead on Marketing. The number one charting marketing podcast for marketers, category designers, and entrepreneurs with a different mind.

The Power of Having One Clear Strategy

Eddie Yoon emphasizes that the most successful businesses, regardless of their size, often operate under a singular, clear metric or strategy. This simplicity allows for better focus and alignment across the organization. He cites the example of Gillette, which used “revenue per user per year” (RUPI) and “profit per user per year” (PUPI) as their guiding metrics. This approach not only streamlined their decision-making but also ensured that all team members understood their primary objectives.

Christopher & Eddie then give examples of several legendary companies that have thrived due to their clear, concise strategies. For instance, Microsoft’s one-sentence strategy was “a computer on every desktop,” which guided their product development and marketing efforts for decades. Similarly, YETI, known for its premium ice coolers, positioned itself with the straightforward strategy of offering a “premium ice cooler,” differentiating itself from traditional, lower-cost options.

The Importance of Customer Focus

They also point out how these companies maintain a customer-centric approach. For example, the Keurig coffee system was built around the idea of convenience and choice, with the metric of “K-cups per brewer per day” driving their business decisions. This focus on customer experience and satisfaction is crucial for long-term success.

Christopher explains that while these strategies are simple to understand, executing them effectively is often challenging. He notes that when a company has a clear strategy, it becomes easier to align employees, investors, and customers towards a common goal. This alignment is essential for fostering a cohesive company culture and driving growth.

The Challenge of Crafting a One-Sentence Strategy

Creating a one-sentence strategy is not a straightforward task. It requires deep reflection and a thorough understanding of the business’s core mission and values.

Christopher & Eddie discuss how many organizations settle for vague or overly complex strategies, which can lead to confusion and misalignment. They advocate for a rigorous process of distillation, where businesses must sift through their ideas and focus on what truly matters.

One of the standout examples is the Ritz-Carlton’s guiding principle: “Ladies and gentlemen serving ladies and gentlemen.” This simple yet profound statement encapsulates their commitment to exceptional service and sets a high standard for their employees. It illustrates how a well-crafted strategy can inspire and elevate a brand’s identity.

To hear more From Christopher & Eddie about the One-Sentence Strategy, download and listen to this episode.

Want to hear more Pirate Jams? Head on over to Category Pirates and enjoy more conversations between Category Pirates Christopher & Eddie!

Don’t forget to grab a copy (or gift!) of one of our best-selling books:

•  Snow Leopard: How Legendary Writers Create A Category Of One
•  The Category Design Toolkit: Beyond Marketing: 15 Frameworks For Creating & Dominating Your Niche
•  A Marketer’s Guide To Category Design: How To Escape The “Better” Trap, Dam The Demand, And Launch A Lightning Strike Strategy
• The 22 Laws of Category Design: Name & Claim Your Niche, Share Your POV, And Move The World From Where It Is To Somewhere Different
•  **NEW!** The B2B Tech Marketer’s Guide To Category Design: How To Engineer Your Market, Find What Makes You Different, And Become A Category Queen

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!

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:

•  Snow Leopard: How Legendary Writers Create A Category Of One
•  The Category Design Toolkit: Beyond Marketing: 15 Frameworks For Creating & Dominating Your Niche
•  A Marketer’s Guide To Category Design: How To Escape The “Better” Trap, Dam The Demand, And Launch A Lightning Strike Strategy
• The 22 Laws of Category Design: Name & Claim Your Niche, Share Your POV, And Move The World From Where It Is To Somewhere Different
•  **NEW!** The B2B Tech Marketer’s Guide To Category Design: How To Engineer Your Market, Find What Makes You Different, And Become A Category Queen

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!

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

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.

Don’t forget to grab a copy (or gift!) of one of our best-selling books:

•  Snow Leopard: How Legendary Writers Create A Category Of One
•  The Category Design Toolkit: Beyond Marketing: 15 Frameworks For Creating & Dominating Your Niche
•  A Marketer’s Guide To Category Design: How To Escape The “Better” Trap, Dam The Demand, And Launch A Lightning Strike Strategy
• The 22 Laws of Category Design: Name & Claim Your Niche, Share Your POV, And Move The World From Where It Is To Somewhere Different
•  **NEW!** The B2B Tech Marketer’s Guide To Category Design: How To Engineer Your Market, Find What Makes You Different, And Become A Category Queen

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!

On this episode of Lochhead on Marketing, I would like to share with you a very special tribute to a man who’s not only a legend in the world of basketball but also a cherished friend of mine—Bill Walton.

Join me as we take a walk down memory lane, revisiting the first time Bill graced my podcast with his presence and the indelible mark he’s left on my life.

A Meeting of Minds in San Diego

It was August 24th, 2017—a day etched in my memory, thanks to the friends who captured the moment and shared a photo of our first encounter. Meeting Bill Walton was like stepping into a storybook where the characters leap off the page. Here was one of the greatest NBA players of all time, a man whose stature was matched only by his extraordinary personality, ready to become a part of my world.

Our initial meeting took place at an executive event in sunny San Diego, where we were both slated to speak. I remember watching Bill, completely unscripted, captivating the audience with his life’s slideshow in the background. His ability to weave tales and engage listeners with nothing but his memories and a carousel of personal photos was nothing short of mesmerizing.

The Teacher in My Life

Bill’s journey is one of resilience. From battling a stutter to enduring chronic injuries, his path was never easy. Yet, he emerged stronger, channeling his love for music and life into everything he did. His passion was infectious, and his dedication to being unapologetically unique was something that deeply resonated with me.

Bill played a crucial role in my transition to becoming a teacher. His influence was a guiding light, helping me navigate through new territories with confidence. His life lessons extended beyond the court, and I was fortunate to be one of the many who benefited from his wisdom.

Radical Generosity and Unwavering Support

One of the most touching aspects of my friendship with Bill was experiencing his radical generosity firsthand. I’ll never forget the care package of memorabilia he sent my way—a testament to his thoughtful nature and the value he placed on our bond.

In the aftermath of a personal tragedy, it was Bill’s kindness that shone through the darkness. His heartfelt messages provided comfort and support when I needed it most, further solidifying the profound impact of our friendship.

As I reflect on the time spent with Bill Walton, I’m filled with immense gratitude. His legacy extends far beyond his basketball accolades; it’s etched in the hearts of those he’s touched with his generosity, spirit, and unwavering friendship.

I hope that this episode gives you a glimpse into the remarkable man that is Bill Walton and the special place he holds in my life. His story is one of triumph, tenacity, and the power of genuine connections. Thank you for joining me in this celebration of friendship and legacy.

Bio

Bill Walton, an NBA legend, is renowned for his exceptional skills, dynamic personality, and influential career. Born on November 5, 1952, Walton’s basketball journey began at UCLA, where he led the Bruins to two national championships.

In the NBA, he played for the Portland Trailblazers, San Diego/Los Angeles Clippers, and Boston Celtics, earning two NBA championships and an MVP award in 1978. In 1997, Bill Walton was selected as one of the NBA’s Fifty Greatest Players of all Time.

Post-retirement, he became a beloved broadcaster, known for his colorful commentary. Walton’s legacy continues to inspire basketball enthusiasts worldwide.

Links

BillWalton.com | NBA Profile | ESPN Biography

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!

On this episode of Lochhead on Marketing, the conversation takes a deep dive into the complex and sensitive situation in Gaza, Palestine, Israel, and the broader Middle East, and how our perception here in America is being warped by misinformation from different sides.

Welcome to Lochhead on Marketing. The number one charting marketing podcast for marketers, category designers, and entrepreneurs with a different mind.

A Feeling of Déjà Vu for America

On the evening of Feb. 20, 1939, the marquee of Madison Square Garden was lit up for the big event: “Pro American Rally.” But it was the farthest thing from being American as can be. Uniformed members of pro-Hitler group The German American Bund carried American and nazi flags.

That being said, In the last week of December 1942, fifty leading German-Americans (including baseball legend Babe Ruth) signed a declaration condemning nazis which appeared in ten major American daily newspapers. Ultimately, American patriots stopped the American nazis.

Looking at the events this week at Columbia, MIT, NYU, and other elite US schools, they mirror much of the hate, horror and scale of The German American Bund. While some were there to genuinely support the civilians trapped in the ongoing conflict, there were others that openly supported Hamas’ extremist actions. It was very ironic to see banners about women and LGBT+ groups support, when they are the most oppressed in the world that these people envision.

What’s even worse is that there were reasons to suspect that these protests were sponsored by people who don’t want to get their own hands dirty.

(Mis)Information is Rampant

One of the downsides of our technological boom is the ease of access to information. Unfortunately, ease of access does not always mean a smart populace.

As information is shared from peer to peer, information gets distorted, if not outright manipulated to suit their agendas, that sometimes the victim comes out on the other end as the one being ganged on, instead of the oppressor.

This particularly true with social media sites, who has become the de-facto source of information for the younger generation. There was even a brief period where young people were lauding a speech that Bin Laden made to justify 9/11. Never mind the atrocities he and his jihadist group committed in the US and international stage, he made a great speech! Totally justified.

Call to Arms

Nazis have attacked America from within before. American patriots stopped them. The only question now is, will you and I empower radical jihadists nazis?

Or will we stop them, like our ancestors did 78 years ago?

To hear more of Christopher Lochhead’s points on the matter, download and listen to this episode.

Bio

Christopher Lochhead

Links

WSJ Article on the Anti-Israel Protesters

The World’s Record Holder for Executing Women Has Executed Three Women in Three Days

This Is Ahmad. He Was Queer In Palestine.

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!

On this episode of Lochhead of Marketing, we review a powerful strategy that has the potential to revolutionize how you approach marketing and demand creation for your product or service. We call this strategy “damming the demand,” and it’s all about redirecting existing consumer desire to carve out a new category that you can dominate.

If you’re not convinced, check out how these giants in the industry have utilized this strategy to their advantage by creating demand in an already existing market.

Welcome to Lochhead on Marketing. The number one charting marketing podcast for marketers, category designers, and entrepreneurs with a different mind.

Dam the Demand

Traditional marketing often focuses on capturing the demand that already exists. It’s about finding a place in the market and filling the needs of consumers who are already looking for solutions. But what if you could do more than just meet existing demand? What if you could create a whole new category of demand?

That’s where the concept of “damming the demand” comes in. It’s a strategy that sits between traditional marketing and category design. Instead of just capturing demand or creating it from scratch, you harness the existing demand and redirect it, creating a new space for your product or service.

Lessons from Tech Titans

Let’s look at some legendary examples to understand this better. Marc Benioff, the founder of Salesforce.com, didn’t just create a cloud CRM; he dammed the demand for traditional on-premise CRM solutions. By evangelizing the benefits of cloud-based CRM, he forced a debate in the market, making businesses choose between the old on-premise solutions and the new, more flexible cloud options. This didn’t just shift the demand—it expanded it, as more and more businesses began to see the value in cloud-based applications beyond CRM.

In the B2C world, Peloton took a similar approach. They saw the demand for spin classes and dammed it by offering an alternative: high-quality home fitness. By doing so, they didn’t just capture the existing market for spin classes; they expanded it to include people who wanted the convenience of working out at home. This created a new category of home fitness solutions that has grown exponentially.

This isn’t a new phenomenon. History is rich with examples of demand damming. Consider Henry Ford, who redirected the demand from horse and buggies to the “horseless carriage,” or Marty Cooper, who shifted the demand from landline phones to the “wireless phone” category. These visionaries didn’t just create products; they created movements that changed the landscape of their respective industries.

The Strategy in Action

So, how can you apply this strategy to your business?

First, identify the existing demand that you can dam. Look for areas where consumers are already spending their money but might be open to a new, better solution. Once you’ve dammed the demand, use it to drive revenue in the near term. Then, leverage this demand to expand and create a new category that you can lead.

Damming the demand is a potent strategy for any company looking to not just compete but dominate a new market category. By redirecting existing demand, you can create a new demand for your category, driving growth and market expansion. It’s a bold move, but as we’ve seen from the likes of Salesforce and Peloton, it’s a move that can redefine your industry and cement your place in history.

Bio

Christopher Lochhead

Don’t forget to grab a copy (or gift!) of one of our best-selling books:

•  Snow Leopard: How Legendary Writers Create A Category Of One
•  The Category Design Toolkit: Beyond Marketing: 15 Frameworks For Creating & Dominating Your Niche
•  A Marketer’s Guide To Category Design: How To Escape The “Better” Trap, Dam The Demand, And Launch A Lightning Strike Strategy
• The 22 Laws of Category Design: Name & Claim Your Niche, Share Your POV, And Move The World From Where It Is To Somewhere Different
•  **NEW!** The B2B Tech Marketer’s Guide To Category Design: How To Engineer Your Market, Find What Makes You Different, And Become A Category Queen

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!

On this episode of Lochhead on Marketing, let’s talk about why thinking about thinking is the most important kind of thinking.

This isn’t just another buzz phrase; it’s a fundamental practice that can revolutionize the way we approach entrepreneurship, marketing, and business strategy. So we thought that it would be a good idea to refresh new listeners minds and remind the old heads why Context is always King.

Welcome to Lochhead on Marketing. The number one charting marketing podcast for marketers, category designers, and entrepreneurs with a different mind.

The Power of Context in Decision-Making

In the realm of business, context is everything. It shapes our discussions, influences our decisions, and ultimately determines the trajectory of our companies. It’s not just about the data or the trends; it’s about grasping the bigger picture and recognizing the underlying currents that drive market dynamics.

Most people, particularly those who are entrepreneurial, have a strong bias to action, diving right in and creating content without the context to support it. However, it does have it downsides sometimes.

“A strong bias to action means that sometimes, and I know I’ve been guilty of this more times than I will ever know, we spring to action without doing enough thinking. More importantly, without doing enough thinking and dialoguing around what the context is for whatever it is we’re talking about.”

– Christopher Lochhead

Rejecting the Premise: A Pathway to Innovation

One of the most exhilarating concepts we discussed was the power of rejecting the premise.

So often, we’re boxed in by traditional ways of thinking, by phrases and concepts that are accepted as industry standards. But what happens when we challenge those premises? When we refuse to accept the status quo? That’s when innovation truly happens.

By rejecting the premise, we open ourselves up to new possibilities, to the potential for creating entirely new categories and leading the market in directions it has never seen before.

Challenging Existing Contexts: The Forward-Thinking Mindset

A key takeaway from this discussion was the importance of challenging existing contexts. It’s easy to fall into the trap of backward thinking, of looking to past successes as a template for future endeavors.

However, the true forward-thinking entrepreneur knows that what worked yesterday might not work tomorrow. By constantly questioning and reevaluating the context in which we operate, we stay ahead of the curve and maintain a competitive edge.

To hear more about how thinking about thinking is the most important kind of thinking, download and listen to this episode.

Bio

Christopher Lochhead

Don’t forget to grab a copy (or gift!) of one of our best-selling books:

•  Snow Leopard: How Legendary Writers Create A Category Of One
•  The Category Design Toolkit: Beyond Marketing: 15 Frameworks For Creating & Dominating Your Niche
•  A Marketer’s Guide To Category Design: How To Escape The “Better” Trap, Dam The Demand, And Launch A Lightning Strike Strategy
• The 22 Laws of Category Design: Name & Claim Your Niche, Share Your POV, And Move The World From Where It Is To Somewhere Different
•  **NEW!** The B2B Tech Marketer’s Guide To Category Design: How To Engineer Your Market, Find What Makes You Different, And Become A Category Queen

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!

Today on Lochhead on Marketing, we want to share some insights from a riveting discussion we had with Eddie Yoon, our category pirate brother, about a monumental move by Apple.

We’re talking about a colossal $110 billion stock buyback and what it means for the tech giant’s innovation trajectory, particularly in the realm of artificial intelligence (AI).

Welcome to Lochhead on Marketing. The number one charting marketing podcast for marketers, category designers, and entrepreneurs with a different mind.

Apple’s Strategic Crossroads: Innovation or Shareholder Pleasing?

Apple’s decision to buy back stock is a strategic move that has raised eyebrows across the industry.

I’ve always been fascinated by the bold moves that define market leaders, but this move by Apple has us questioning: Is this a sign of maturity and stability, or a red flag signaling a lack of innovative vision?

Warren Buffett, a name synonymous with investment acumen, was famously tech-averse until Apple caught his eye. The staggering 95% retention rate of iPhone users and the undeniable addiction to Apple’s ecosystem reminded him of his investment thesis on Coca-Cola. But as Eddie and I discussed, there’s a nuance to Apple’s success under Tim Cook’s leadership. Despite the financial growth and profitability, the company has struggled to launch new categories—a hallmark of Apple’s DNA.

The Apple Watch: A Beacon of Innovation in the Cook Era

It’s not all a tale of caution, though. The Apple Watch stands out as a testament to Apple’s ability to innovate and create new categories even post-Steve Jobs. It’s a reminder that Apple still has the chops to redefine markets. But the question lingers: Is this enough to sustain Apple’s legendary status?

The crux of the discussion centered on the massive potential of AI, as we’re just at the dawn of what could be the most significant platform shift since the internet. With Apple’s deep pockets, one would expect a torrent of investments in AI, propelling the company to the forefront of this new frontier. Instead, the $110 billion stock buyback seems to suggest a different priority—short-term stock price over long-term category creation.

Microsoft’s Contrasting Strategy: A Global AI Chess Game

Contrast Apple’s strategy with Microsoft’s aggressive global AI investments, and you get a stark picture of two tech titans taking divergent paths.

Microsoft is placing strategic bets on AI across the globe, from the UAE to Malaysia and beyond, positioning itself as a leader in the next wave of technological revolution.

To hear more Pirate talk by Christopher Lochhead and Eddie Yoon, download and listen to this episode.

If you want to join in the discussion, subscribe to Category Pirates and find more Pirates Perspective buried around the beach.

Don’t forget to grab a copy (or gift!) of one of our best-selling books:

•  Snow Leopard: How Legendary Writers Create A Category Of One
•  The Category Design Toolkit: Beyond Marketing: 15 Frameworks For Creating & Dominating Your Niche
•  A Marketer’s Guide To Category Design: How To Escape The “Better” Trap, Dam The Demand, And Launch A Lightning Strike Strategy
• The 22 Laws of Category Design: Name & Claim Your Niche, Share Your POV, And Move The World From Where It Is To Somewhere Different

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!

On this episode of Lochhead on Marketing, it’s time again to shave that Marketing Dog with Christopher Lochhead.

If you’re an avid listener of the podcast, you probably think you’re experiencing déjà vu. But we think that people still don’t get this simple concept, that it merits a replay. It is also a good reminder for others who may be falling into the trap of overcomplicating their marketing strategies.

So strap in, and get ready for some timeless advice from yours truly.

Welcome to Lochhead on Marketing. The number one charting marketing podcast for marketers, category designers, and entrepreneurs with a different mind.

Quality Over Quantity: A Bruce Lee Philosophy in Marketing

In the world of marketing, there’s a tendency to equate being busy with effectiveness. However, Christopher likens this to a young fighter who is all showboating but lacks the strategic focus to win. This fighter often ends up being knocked out by a more experienced opponent who understands that precision and strategy trump frantic activity. This analogy perfectly encapsulates the inverse relationship between activity and results in marketing.

The pressure to be omnipresent in the marketing world is immense. Marketers are often told they need to be on every channel, churning out content at an unsustainable pace. But Christopher challenges this notion with a powerful quote from martial arts legend Bruce Lee:

“I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once, but I fear the man who has practiced one kick 10,000 times.”

This philosophy is a stark reminder that quality and impact should always take precedence over quantity.

Shaving the Marketing Dog: The Art of Elimination

One of the strategies Christopher advocates for is “shaving the dog,” a metaphor for the practice of eliminating the unnecessary to focus on what truly matters. By force ranking the critical components of a campaign and rigorously evaluating which elements have the maximum impact, marketers can streamline their efforts for better results.

“Shave the dog. Shave that doggy down. Practice getting everything out. Consider getting even more radical.”

– Christopher Lochhead

Thinking Wrong to Do Right

Innovation in marketing often requires us to “think wrong,” to consider what is 180 degrees from what everyone else would do. This approach fosters creativity and differentiation, setting the stage for truly legendary marketing campaigns.

“I learned everything I know about design from a couple of legendary designers and one of them is John Bielenberg. He’s an incredible business and corporate marketing designer. He has a perspective; he calls thinking wrong. The idea is this, when you do anything creative, ask yourself ‘what is 180 degrees from what everybody else would do? What is wrong? What would be the wrong way to go do this?’”

– Christopher Lochhead

This line of thinking also allows you to pursue options that multiply outcomes, as you can sift through the “wrongs” and find those that were rejected, not because it is inherently wrong, but either be not viable in the past, but now doable in our current technology or network.

To know more why Complexity Is the Enemy of Revenue and Why It’s Time to Shave the Marketing Dog, download and listen to this episode.

Bio

Christopher Lochhead

Don’t forget to grab a copy (or gift!) of one of our best-selling books:

•  Snow Leopard: How Legendary Writers Create A Category Of One
•  The Category Design Toolkit: Beyond Marketing: 15 Frameworks For Creating & Dominating Your Niche
•  A Marketer’s Guide To Category Design: How To Escape The “Better” Trap, Dam The Demand, And Launch A Lightning Strike Strategy
• The 22 Laws of Category Design: Name & Claim Your Niche, Share Your POV, And Move The World From Where It Is To Somewhere Different
•  **NEW!** The B2B Tech Marketer’s Guide To Category Design: How To Engineer Your Market, Find What Makes You Different, And Become A Category Queen

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!

On this episode of Lochhead on Marketing, we are presenting Christopher’s partner, friend, collaborator, and brother from another mother, Eddie Yoon, breaking down how to do a legendary marketing lightning strike with the Tesla Cybertruck as a textbook example.

Eddie Yoon is the category design guru to the S &P 500, and he’s written more about category design in the Harvard Business Review than anyone else alive or dead.

So buckle up for a quick lightning strike of an episode, and hey ho, let’s go! Welcome to Lochhead on Marketing. The number one charting marketing podcast for marketers, category designers, and entrepreneurs with a different mind.

The Concept of a Lightning Strike

Let’s talk about Lightning Strikes.

Lightning Strikes have four critical ingredients: one, it should be profit-center and not an expense. Remember, marketing that does not drive revenue, category potential, or market cap, is just arts and crafts. Lightning Strikes are no different.

Two, Lightning Strikes should be a strike and not a spread – meaning don’t space it over the whole course of the year; it will just dilute the effect of it that way. You want a clear point in time, a quick in and out in a certain area or market, and you’re done. The idea is to get maximum lift without spending too much.

Third, it should have a multiplier effect. It must be engineered to generate word of mouth that lasts beyond the strike itself. You do it buy creating a stunt or a fight, or you want to have a very prominent giveaway. These are the things that people tell their friends and family, and spread from there.

And lastly, you want to be a hijacker or hitchhiker. You want to your lightning strike to take advantage of some broader thing where you take over the conversation, or piggyback off an audience that is already established.

The Cybertruck as a Lightning Strike by Tesla

So, how does the Cybertruck fit into all these things?

Let’s go through the list.

First, the Cybertruck is a profit center in multiple ways. One is the product itself, but it also promotes the broader brand of Tesla motors. Lastly, its components are also something that can be a profit center for later generation of electric cars.

It also has a multiplier effect, as it has generated word of mouth not only from Tesla car owners, but people who are either at awe or making fun of the Cybertruck’s design. Even after it’s short showcase, people are still talking about it. The design is so polarizing: you either hate it, or love it. Either way, you’re going to hear about it. The Cybertruck itself became the stunt it needed for the lightning strike to occur.

Lastly, it’s hitchhiking off the launch of Apple Vision Pro, some people who are using Apple Vision Pro has been seen driving said Cybertrucks in videos and social media. It hit its target well that it hitchhiked in the Apple Vision Pro conversation to some extent, getting a rise from Apple enthusiasts.

And that, my friends, is a successful lightning strike.

If you want to join in the discussion, subscribe to Category Pirates and find more Pirates Perspective buried around the beach.

Don’t forget to grab a copy (or gift!) of one of our best-selling books:

•  Snow Leopard: How Legendary Writers Create A Category Of One
•  The Category Design Toolkit: Beyond Marketing: 15 Frameworks For Creating & Dominating Your Niche
•  A Marketer’s Guide To Category Design: How To Escape The “Better” Trap, Dam The Demand, And Launch A Lightning Strike Strategy
• The 22 Laws of Category Design: Name & Claim Your Niche, Share Your POV, And Move The World From Where It Is To Somewhere Different
•  **NEW!** The B2B Tech Marketer’s Guide To Category Design: How To Engineer Your Market, Find What Makes You Different, And Become A Category Queen

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!

On this episode of Lochhead on Marketing, we talk about why marketing the user’s problem works, but marketing only your brand/product/solutions doesn’t.

Welcome to Lochhead on Marketing. The number one charting marketing podcast for marketers, category designers, and entrepreneurs with a different mind.

The Importance of Understanding Consumer Problems in Marketing

Market your brand/product/solution, and I think you want my money. Market my problem, and I think you want to help me. This is one of the biggest unlocks in category design for marketers. And it comes from a very simple, powerful notion: people do not buy solutions unless they have problems.

Yet a lot of companies do not get this simple concept. For them, it’s always brand awareness this, or advertise this product to the “market”. They play the attention game and call it frequency and reach. But most of the users in that market only see it as a cash grab for said company.

Marketing the Problem Done Right

So here we present a good example of how to market a user problem, and it’s in the form of the American jeans we all know and love.

Over the years, Jeans have come a long way from being those stiff dark blue pants to now being very soft and somewhat comfortable to wear. But therein lies the problem: the thing that makes it soft and pliable is very polluting and very resource-intensive. After which, they present their fix, a “remaking” of the American jeans as we know it.

Framing the Problem to Create Urgency

After naming the problem with the jeans, the article continues to explain that multiple companies have tried working together for years to develop jeans that are soft but not as punishing to the environment and our remaining resources. This serves as a way to intensify the problem by framing it as something that has not been solved. But now, they’ve found a solution. A solution to a problem they themselves proposed.

If you follow that flow, they first introduced a problem that a user can relate to, being that the jeans they wear harms the environment. They then mention that other companies have tried but not yet succeeded in finding a solution. Only after that do they supply the solution, so you can continue to enjoy those comfortable jeans without the previous repercussions and guilt on them. Prompting users to buy new jeans and ditching the old.

And that’s how you market with Category Design.

Link to the article on The Remaking of American Jeans 

Don’t forget to grab a copy (or gift!) of one of our best-selling books:

•  Snow Leopard: How Legendary Writers Create A Category Of One
•  The Category Design Toolkit: Beyond Marketing: 15 Frameworks For Creating & Dominating Your Niche
•  A Marketer’s Guide To Category Design: How To Escape The “Better” Trap, Dam The Demand, And Launch A Lightning Strike Strategy
• The 22 Laws of Category Design: Name & Claim Your Niche, Share Your POV, And Move The World From Where It Is To Somewhere Different
•  **NEW!** The B2B Tech Marketer’s Guide To Category Design: How To Engineer Your Market, Find What Makes You Different, And Become A Category Queen

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!

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

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.

Bio

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.

Links

Connect with Al Ramadan!

Play Bigger | LinkedIn | Category Contenders | The Science Behind Category Design

Don’t forget to grab a copy (or gift!) of one of our best-selling books:

•  Snow Leopard: How Legendary Writers Create A Category Of One
•  The Category Design Toolkit: Beyond Marketing: 15 Frameworks For Creating & Dominating Your Niche
•  A Marketer’s Guide To Category Design: How To Escape The “Better” Trap, Dam The Demand, And Launch A Lightning Strike Strategy
• The 22 Laws of Category Design: Name & Claim Your Niche, Share Your POV, And Move The World From Where It Is To Somewhere Different
• 🏴‍☠️ **NEW!** The B2B Tech Marketer’s Guide To Category Design: How To Engineer Your Market, Find What Makes You Different, And Become A Category Queen

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!

Today is a fun conversation with my fellow Pirates Eddie Yoon and Katrina Kirsch, as we talk about the importance of Framing, Naming and Claiming a problem, to create a different solution for your business.

From time to time, we drop these video discussions that three of us have in Category Pirates, and this one I thought you might also enjoy. If you do enjoy this kind of content, you can check us out at CategoryPirates.com And subscribe to the Category Pirates newsletter.

Welcome to Lochhead on Marketing. The number one charting marketing podcast for marketers, category designers, and entrepreneurs with a different mind.

The Importance of Naming, Framing, and Claiming in Business

When asked by Kristina on what “problem” does category design “Name, Frame, and Claim”, Christopher responds that category design solves the fundamental challenge of defining and owning a distinct market space. It asserts that successful companies excel in three areas: creating legendary business models, products/services, and categories. He emphasizes that a company must recognize category design as a crucial third of its success.

Eddie reinforces this, highlighting the importance of capturing a significant portion of the market share by framing, naming, and claiming a category. He argues that failing to do so results in competing for a smaller market share, which is familiar but less lucrative.

Ultimately, effective category design enables a company to articulate its unique value proposition clearly, ensuring it stands out to customers, investors, and employees.

The Value of being an “Exponential Different” in Business

The next part of the conversation delves into the concept of being an “exponential difference” in business, emphasizing the contrast between incremental improvements and exponential innovations.

Christopher reflects on his career, realizing that focusing on exponential changes often leads to friction within companies geared towards incremental progress. He highlights the importance of recognizing when to contribute to exponential shifts and when to step back, as pushing too hard on exponential change can disrupt the organization.

This understanding prompts a shift in perspective, reframing what was once seen as a career obstacle into a strategic advantage. Overall, it underscores the necessity of balancing incremental improvements with exponential innovations for sustainable growth and success in business.

If you want to join in the discussion, subscribe to Category Pirates and find more Pirates Perspective buried around the beach.

Don’t forget to grab a copy (or gift!) of one of our best-selling books:

•  Snow Leopard: How Legendary Writers Create A Category Of One
•  The Category Design Toolkit: Beyond Marketing: 15 Frameworks For Creating & Dominating Your Niche
•  A Marketer’s Guide To Category Design: How To Escape The “Better” Trap, Dam The Demand, And Launch A Lightning Strike Strategy
• The 22 Laws of Category Design: Name & Claim Your Niche, Share Your POV, And Move The World From Where It Is To Somewhere Different

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!

On this episode of Lochhead on Marketing, let’s talk about a trap that most budding Category Designers fall for, and that’s thinking about competition.

Welcome to Lochhead on Marketing. The number one charting marketing podcast for marketers, category designers, and entrepreneurs with a different mind.

Feature Battle vs Category Battle

Christopher shares a story of a company who consulted with him, regarding a rising competitor in the market. Most companies’ knee-jerk reaction would be to compete; take on the same messaging, and muscle out the competitor while it’s still early.

But in the end, they opted to do the opposite – they did not compete, at least not in the usual sense of it. Rather than doing a Feature Battle to see who has the better additions, messaging, and branding, they focused more on their product. They went the Category Battle route instead, carving out a large portion of the market with their improved category, and leaving the others battling for the remaining scraps.

Competition Derangement Syndrome

The apparent simplicity of the concept begs the question: why do most companies fail to adopt it? The answer lies in what could be termed “Competition Derangement Syndrome.” Many companies, instead of pioneering their own unique category to dominate, fall into a pattern of waiting for new categories to emerge before entering the fray.

Alternatively, larger corporations may opt to eliminate competition by acquiring the reigning Category King. However, this strategy essentially involves investing a significant sum to pave the way for the emergence of the next category, which their competitors will inevitably exploit. This cycle repeats itself, with each new category birthing fresh contenders, until the tables turn and the once-acquirer finds itself being acquired. Thus, the cycle perpetuates, underscoring the failure of many companies to break free from the pattern of reactive competition.

Competition vs Consumer

This does not mean that you avoid competing altogether. We are all driven by our will to fight, and business is not so different in that regard. But rather than going down to their level to fight on “equal” grounds, why not make it so that you are always thinking a few steps ahead, rather than slowing down just to match up to them.

And if they seem to be catching up to you at a faster rate, trying to adopt their strategies just means maintaining the status quo. It also sends the wrong message to the consumers, because you are adjusting for the competition, and not for them.

In the end, it’s better to achieve market dominance by consumer trust rather than just having the competitive edge, because there will always be someone that will try to compete. But as long as your consumers know that your product continues to improve for consumer satisfaction, then it will always remain as the Category King.

Bio

Christopher Lochhead

Don’t forget to grab a copy (or gift!) of one of our best-selling books:

•  Snow Leopard: How Legendary Writers Create A Category Of One
•  The Category Design Toolkit: Beyond Marketing: 15 Frameworks For Creating & Dominating Your Niche
•  A Marketer’s Guide To Category Design: How To Escape The “Better” Trap, Dam The Demand, And Launch A Lightning Strike Strategy
• The 22 Laws of Category Design: Name & Claim Your Niche, Share Your POV, And Move The World From Where It Is To Somewhere Different

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!

On this episode of Lochhead on Marketing, let’s talk about why it’s time to stop trying to fit in.

Welcome to Lochhead on Marketing. The number one charting marketing podcast for marketers, category designers, and entrepreneurs with a different mind.

Everyone Wants to Fit In

There’s an ongoing trend in the business, startup and marketing world of companies trying to fit in. There have been studies that indicate that among the B2B tech space, as many as 70% of the brands are blue.

This urge to fit in seems to stem from a combination of several factors. One of which is that companies are trying to compete in the same market, and they end up adopting marketing trends that seems to be working, which just makes them look like carbon copies of each other.

The second part is the current culture of people seemingly being offended by the simplest things, or if something does not align with their beliefs. So companies try to be as non-offensive as possible, which in turn just make their brand into something bland.

“The overall strategy in people’s marketing, and frankly, in many people’s careers, is to achieve Marriott lobby status. So what’s a Marriott lobby? Marriott lobby is nice; It’s very functional. It’s effective. And it’s bland. It’s forgettable. And nobody ever said, “Wow, that was a fucking legendary Marriott lobby.””

– Christopher Lochhead

 

The Primordial Need to Fit In

We get it: people have a primordial urge to stay in groups. We are pack animals, after all. Staying in a group is safe, staying in a group is comfortable. And having something in common lets us relate personally to a group, which is why marketing companies aim for those traits to relate to their market.

But at the end of the day, nobody legendary ever fit in. Because when you try to fit in, you become part of that whole, rather than something that defines it. And rather than companies trying to make their own markets and circles, they are being content in staying in the same circle, and competing for an ever-shrinking part of it, as more and more companies try to muscle their way in.

So be legendary, and start being different.

“And then I say fuck that, I’m going to follow my different. I’m going to focus on the things that are most meaningful to me, and most importantly, are going to make the biggest difference.”

– Christopher Lochhead

Bio

Christopher Lochhead

Don’t forget to grab a copy (or gift!) of one of our best-selling books:

•  Snow Leopard: How Legendary Writers Create A Category Of One
•  The Category Design Toolkit: Beyond Marketing: 15 Frameworks For Creating & Dominating Your Niche
•  A Marketer’s Guide To Category Design: How To Escape The “Better” Trap, Dam The Demand, And Launch A Lightning Strike Strategy
• The 22 Laws of Category Design: Name & Claim Your Niche, Share Your POV, And Move The World From Where It Is To Somewhere Different

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!

Today on Lochhead on Marketing, we talk about the good way and the bad way to rebrand. And wat better to use as an example than the recent Gemini AI rebrand by Google.

Welcome to Lochhead on Marketing. The number one charting marketing podcast for marketers, category designers, and entrepreneurs with a different mind.

The Good Reason to “Rebrand”

Before we proceed with the main topic at hand, let’s first have a good example of when to “rebrand”.

There’s a company called Chirp that sells foam rollers, which is used by athletes for training their muscles and easing soreness. But after some time, a new category was invented that was adjacent to their market, the percussion massager / gun.

Rather than just create their own version of percussion gun, Chirp went ahead and combined their foam rollers into this new category, essentially making a new category, the rolling percussive massager, for themselves.

The Bad Reason to “Rebrand”: Google’s Gemini

So why did we tell you that story? Because Google is doing the exact opposite of that, always going for the “Compete in the market” model rather than making their own market. And it could be seen with their latest endeavor in AI, Bard now rebranded as Gemini.

So, why did Google make this move? While we can’t say for certain, we can infer their motives. Essentially, they directly challenged ChatGPT and came up short. Now, they’re revamping Bard to give it a “fresh start.” While that might be their goal, most marketing experts would tell you that it simply looks like Google is backing away from the competition and trying to repurpose their AI to make the best of the situation.

That in itself is a problem, but there’s also the fact that Google doesn’t really do anything different than the reigning Category King of the market. This has been true with their forays in podcasts, social media, and their other services that are now defunct. They’re competing, instead of creating, which is what most companies do, and they’re fucked.

When to do a “Rebrand”

With that said, the best time to do a rebrand is if either you’re introducing a brand-new category as your main product, or revolutionizing one of your current ones by making a new category.

Rather than chasing after the tail of the Category Leader and competing for the remaining small chunk of the market, why not try doing something different? Because otherwise, you’ll just get your ass handed to you, just like what happened with Google Plus, Google Podcasts, and now, the unfortunate Google Gemini.

Bio

Christopher Lochhead

Don’t forget to grab a copy (or gift!) of one of our best-selling books:

•  Snow Leopard: How Legendary Writers Create A Category Of One
•  The Category Design Toolkit: Beyond Marketing: 15 Frameworks For Creating & Dominating Your Niche
•  A Marketer’s Guide To Category Design: How To Escape The “Better” Trap, Dam The Demand, And Launch A Lightning Strike Strategy
• The 22 Laws of Category Design: Name & Claim Your Niche, Share Your POV, And Move The World From Where It Is To Somewhere Different

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!

On this episode of Lochhead on Marketing, we have a very special episode with one of my favorite marketers, Ryan Alford.

Ryan Alford runs a digital marketing agency called Radical Marketing. He also has a great marketing podcast that I’ve been stoked to be a guest on called The Radcast, which is a top 25 Business and Marketing podcast. He’s just one of those guys I like talking about marketing with.

Today, we are going to talk about how to have a legendary marketing career. We also talk about why it is that many people in Marketing don’t view what they do as a craft that they’re working on their whole lives, and what happens when you do so.

Welcome to Lochhead on Marketing. The number one charting marketing podcast for marketers, category designers, and entrepreneurs with a different mind.

Ryan Alford on Marketing Careers and Current Industry Trends

Christopher and Ryan discuss the appeal of marketing careers, especially for younger individuals.

Ryan, with 20 years of experience, emphasizes the importance of creative thinking and adaptation in the face of industry changes like AI. He believes marketing offers opportunities for innovation and creativity, essential for standing out amidst a crowded field.

Christopher adds that many marketers don’t view their work as a craft, but rather as a job or set of skills, contrasting it with master surfboard shaping. Ryan, drawing on his own experience, sees marketing as a craft that requires honing skills over time, akin to his father’s craftsmanship. Both agree that when you love what you do, it doesn’t feel like work.

Ryan Alford on Marketing Skills and Adapting to Platform Changes

The two then discuss the evolving landscape of marketing skills and the need for adaptability. They highlight the importance of curiosity, continuous learning, and embracing change in navigating the industry’s shifts.

With the proliferation of digital platforms, they emphasize the challenge of staying updated and the risk of relying too heavily on platforms beyond marketers’ control. Despite these challenges, they underscore the enduring power of innovative ideas to capture attention and drive success. Christopher also cautions against shallow tactics focused solely on grabbing attention without meaningful content, using the wind feather in car dealerships and mall entrances as an example.

They advocate for a balance between leveraging new platforms and maintaining focus on substantive messaging to achieve marketing goals effectively.

Ryan Alford on Marketing Strategies and Generating Outcome

Christopher and Ryan discuss the importance of marketing strategies producing meaningful outcomes rather than mere attention-grabbing tactics. They emphasize the necessity of tying marketing efforts to revenue generation, highlighting the distinction between visibility campaigns and those that drive sales.

Ryan stresses that successful marketers focus on moving consumers from one perception to another, ultimately leading to sales.

They acknowledge the controversy surrounding this viewpoint, especially among marketers who resist being held accountable for tangible results.

Both agree that marketing is for those who embrace accountability and are committed to producing revenue, with Christopher noting that marketing allows for creative ideation that triggers sales, contrasting with the more direct approach of salesmanship.

To hear more from Ryan Alford and learn how to have a legendary career in Marketing, download and listen to this episode.

Bio

Ryan Alford

Links

Connect with Ryan Alford!

The Radcast | LinkedIn

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!

Happy new year to everyone, and we at Lochhead on Marketing hope that you’ve been having a good one so far. To start off the year, let us talk about the big Distribution Lie, why it is so, and what you really need for your new startup or project to make it big.

You see, in Silicon Valley, there has been an ever-increasingly large drumbeat that says the number one thing that a startup needs or that a new software launch of any kind needs is distribution. That if you can only get distribution, then you’d win, right? So, let’s test this.

Welcome to Lochhead on Marketing. The number one charting marketing podcast for marketers, category designers, and entrepreneurs with a different mind.

The Myth of Distribution as a Key to Success

For this discussion, let us use Google as an example. In 2018, Google launched Google Podcast as a competitor to the category king (Apple), and the current challenger (Spotify). On paper, Google Podcast should have the advantage: Google has a legendary distribution line with its 5 billion users and having a mailing and browsing platform that is widely popular worldwide.

And yet for some reason, Google Podcast is now at the brink of closing down in 2024. So why did it not beat out the category king, much less its challenger in this race?

Building the Category versus Muscling into the Market

Simply put, Google Podcast did not offer anything new that Apple Podcast or Spotify doesn’t already do. It was simply relying on the fact that on paper, it looks like the better product with a well-established distribution network to back it up.

Whereas Apple created the category, designed the space, and solved the “problem” that their product “solves”, thus cornering a big chunk of the market.

This is a mistake that happens over and over and over again, category design economics are clear, the company that designs the space is best positioned to dominate it and by dominated our primary research has shown that the company that designs the category, if they can execute over time, earns 76% of the total value created.

Doomed to Repeat Itself

Unfortunately, this is not the first time this has happened to Google. One big thing most people might remember is Google Plus, which was supposed to take down Facebook. And not only Google is susceptible to this, as different big tech companies have committed this mistake, because they believe they could just use their better distribution systems to take over a market, rather than creating their own to dominate.

So at the end of the day, no matter how good your product is, and how great your distribution advantage is: if you don’t design a new category, around a problem that matters to customers, it doesn’t matter how legendary your product is.

Bio

Christopher Lochhead

Don’t forget to grab a copy (or gift!) of one of our best-selling books:

•  Snow Leopard: How Legendary Writers Create A Category Of One
•  The Category Design Toolkit: Beyond Marketing: 15 Frameworks For Creating & Dominating Your Niche
•  A Marketer’s Guide To Category Design: How To Escape The “Better” Trap, Dam The Demand, And Launch A Lightning Strike Strategy
• The 22 Laws of Category Design: Name & Claim Your Niche, Share Your POV, And Move The World From Where It Is To Somewhere Different

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!

First and foremost, we at Lochhead on Marketing would like to wish everyone from the bottom of our hearts, happy holidays. Christopher Lochhead hopes that you have an opportunity to be with the people you love this time of year, and enjoy some happiness and peace.

That said, there seems to be a lot going on lately. Be it about antisemitism, diversity, equality, and inclusion, and sort of the core values that the United States will be governed by and will latch on to. So I wanted to take this time and have a talk between you and I.

You may not like what I will have to say, and that is all right. The important thing is that we have a good dialogue between us, and open ourselves to thinking Different does not always mean they hate you and your type of thinking.

As we head to 2024, that is my wish for the holiday season. That we have a breakthrough in real, authentic, civilized, thoughtful dialogue.

Welcome to Lochhead on Marketing. The number one charting marketing podcast for marketers, category designers, and entrepreneurs with a different mind.

Christopher Lochhead on LGBTQ+ rights over the years

Christopher shared a heartwarming story about a LinkedIn acquaintance, a marketing executive, who recently had a baby with her wife. They had a positive exchange about babies, and Christopher expressed genuine happiness for the couple.

“Around here, we think babies are fucking fantastic, especially when they’re born to good people who are committed to raising those children and loving knows children. What could be better than a great couple are a great group of folks who have a baby, love that baby, and do everything in their power to provide that child with a great life and enjoy that child. It’s wonderful.”

– Christopher Lochhead

Christopher then reflected on growing up around queer individuals, recalling the challenges they faced over the years. He emphasized the progress in societal acceptance of the queer community, highlighting the positive change that allows people to openly share personal milestones without fear of judgment.

That said, Christopher expressed joy for the LinkedIn acquaintance, appreciating that she can legally be herself and share her family news without hesitation, considering it a legendary step forward, especially in the United States.

Christopher Lochhead on mortgage discrimination

Christopher then talks about a CNN headline that revealed the systemic racism about the Navy Federal Credit Union’s discriminatory mortgage approval practices.

The report states that while over 75% of white applicants were approved for conventional home purchase mortgages, less than 50% of black applicants were approved under the same circumstances. Christopher condemns this as not just systemic racism but outright evil. He criticizes financial institutions like Wells Fargo for repeatedly facing charges related to racial discrimination without executives facing jail time. He emphasizes the urgent need to acknowledge and fight systemic racism for true equality and justice, citing the 14th Amendment of the US Constitution.

“This is racism right in front of us. And anybody who’s just anybody who cares about equality, and justice, and the pursuit of happiness for all must acknowledge that there is systemic racism against certain groups. There’s no doubt about that. And we need to fight it. We really need to fight it.”

– Christopher Lochhead

On Systemic Racism and DEI in society

Christopher expresses concern about the rise of hatred, particularly in the context of recent events, notably the conflict in the Middle East. He highlights the misunderstandings surrounding the October 7th events, emphasizing the severity of the situation and the explicit threat against Israel and the Jewish population.

Christopher is dismayed by the confusion and the lack of recognition for Israel’s right to defend itself. He shares a personal experience of a friend falling victim to violence and underscores the complexity of the situation, acknowledging the tragedy on both sides.

Christopher attributes the rise in hatred to the teachings of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), which he suggests simplifies the world into oppressors and oppressed, fostering division and victimhood competitions rather than promoting genuine understanding and collaboration.

To hear more of Christopher Lochhead’s thoughts on 2023 and his wish for the coming year, download and listen to this episode.

Bio

Christopher Lochhead

Links

CNN: The nation’s largest credit union rejected more than half its Black conventional mortgage applicants

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!

This week, we’re presenting to you Christopher Lochhead’s appearance on Lenny’s Podcast, hosted by Lenny Rachitsky.

Lenny Rachitsky runs the #1 Business Substack newsletter, Lenny’s Newsletter. It is legendary especially for people in tech marketing, product marketing, and startups. It’s so legendary that even Christopher pays for it. And now, he’s in it.

This is one of the more in-depth discussions Christopher has had with a very smart person about category design in a while. So settle in for a good listen and great lesson about category design.

Welcome to Lochhead on Marketing. The number one charting marketing podcast for marketers, category designers, and entrepreneurs with a different mind.

On taking the Good with the Bad

Lenny starts off the conversation by showing appreciation to Christopher’s extensive work, and jokingly adds that it was challenging to prepare for their conversation due to his numerous podcasts, books, and other content.

That said, Lenny noticed Christopher’s website displayed negative reviews prominently. When asked about it, Christopher explained his approach with humor, calling his team Category Pirates and embracing criticism. He believed it was essential for innovators not to fear criticism, citing examples of famous artists and musicians who faced initial negativity. Christopher displayed negative feedback to show the reality of creative work and to remind people not to take themselves too seriously.

Lenny admired Christopher’s ability to handle criticism and expressed the desire to adopt a similar mindset.

Lenny Rachitsky on how Lenny’s Newsletter came to be

Christopher Lochhead expressed admiration for Lenny’s branding choices, appreciating the simplicity of just being called “Lenny.” He found it endearing and highlighted that Lenny’s authenticity stood out in a world where many influencers create an aura of superiority.

Lenny shared that the name “Lenny’s Newsletter” was a default suggestion from Substack, and he never intended it to be a long-term commitment. Similarly, he struggled to find a different name for his podcast, wanting to avoid a self-centered approach.

But despite having his name in the branding, Christopher noted the content wasn’t self-centered; instead, it reflected Lenny’s genuine approach, unlike influencers who focus on creating envy. They both appreciated the authenticity in Lenny’s approach.

Lenny Rachitsky and Christopher Lochhead talk Category Creation

Lenny asked Christopher about category creation, a concept Christopher has championed over competition in existing markets.

Christopher explained how most people aim to compete by offering a better product or service in an existing category. However, legendary innovators don’t follow this path. They create entirely new categories, defining unique problems and solutions. Christopher emphasized that a single company in a category usually captures two-thirds of the market value, making category creation a lucrative strategy.

He cited Gojo Industries, creators of Purell, as an example. They didn’t just invent hand sanitizer; they redefined the problem of hand cleanliness, leading to a new market category. Christopher stressed the importance of focusing on problem-solving rather than just product features, making one’s brand irreplaceable in customers’ minds. He contrasted this approach with typical marketing, where companies invite comparison, emphasizing the power of radical differentiation and being a category creator.

To hear more about Christopher’s conversation with Lenny Rachitsky on Category Creation, download and listen to this episode.

If you want to learn more about Lenny Rachitsky, check out his Newsletter and Podcast at LennyRachitsky.com.

Don’t forget to grab a copy (or gift!) of one of our best-selling books:

•  Snow Leopard: How Legendary Writers Create A Category Of One
•  The Category Design Toolkit: Beyond Marketing: 15 Frameworks For Creating & Dominating Your Niche
•  A Marketer’s Guide To Category Design: How To Escape The “Better” Trap, Dam The Demand, And Launch A Lightning Strike Strategy
• The 22 Laws of Category Design: Name & Claim Your Niche, Share Your POV, And Move The World From Where It Is To Somewhere Different

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!

On this episode, let’s talk about Israel, and the war that has come to this “Startup Nation”.

Off the top, let me say the pain and suffering of what’s happening is unbelievable, unbearable. My heart goes out to Israel, all Israelis, and all Jews around the world.

I also want to say I have spoken with many Arabs since this happened. There’s a very big difference between an Arab or a Palestinian and Hamas. They are not the same thing. My Arab friends wanted to stress that to me. My heart goes out to all the innocent Arabs in Gaza and in the region who are suffering and also experiencing extraordinary pain and loss.

Israel is a “Startup Nation”

If you’ve been in tech for a while, you’ve probably worked with Israelis. For the better part of my professional life, I’ve worked with entrepreneurs, engineers and executives from the country.

The Israeli’s I know are smart, tough, driven, no-nonsense result producers. If you want to get big tech shit done, work with Israelis.

It has one of the highest concentrations of startups in the world. Its tech sector is a major contributor to the country’s economy. Tech is 18% of Israel’s GDP, and 14% of all salaried employees work in Tech. That’s roughly 500,000 people. On top of which, 50% of Israel’s total exports come from Technology developed by these people.

The framework Israelis created to co-locate Israel/US tech startups, established an innovation model that is envied the world over.

Israel has over 6,000 Tech Companies

The impact of this war borne out by the Israeli people.

Reports indicate that the start if this war was “the darkest day in Jewish history since the end of the Holocaust.”

And, it will also be felt by virtually every major tech company in the world.

There are over 6,000 tech companies operating in Israel, including some of the largest names, with Apple, Microsoft, Google, and Intel to name a few. These companies have a variety of strategic operations in Israel, including research and development centers, sales offices, and customer support centers.

Israel is home to over 15,000 startups, and they employ over 100,000 people. In 2021, Israeli tech companies raised a record $25.6 billion in venture capital funding.

Today, they are scrambling to secure and support their people.

 

15,000 Israeli Tech Startups

Now, this evil war is extracting an unbearable human cost. More death, suffering and disruption is sure to follow. And this war will be felt by many of us in the tech industry.

My heart aches for Israel.

My heart aches for all of the innocent souls in the Middle East.

We’re praying for peace, and the day we can all get back to building legendary companies.

To hear more of Christopher Lochhead’s thoughts on the recent events that unfolded in Israel, download and listen to this episode.

If you wish to join the conversation and get more information on the matter, check out Christopher’s post on LinkedIn:

Christopher Lochhead

Different: Weekly Newsletter

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!

On this episode of Lochhead on Marketing, we are presenting some Pirates Perspective from our newsletter, Category Pirates about consumer spending trends.

Eddie Yoon, Christopher Lochhead and Katrina Kirsch of Category Pirates discuss the latest consumer spending reports and what they mean for the retail category and retail category queens. They also dive into a category opportunity for McDonalds and how it could impact the future of food delivery.

Welcome to Lochhead on Marketing. The number one charting marketing podcast for marketers, category designers, and entrepreneurs with a different mind.

The Changing Retail Landscape

Eddie Yoon examines the evolving economic landscape and its impact on U.S. consumers. Employing a Category Science lens, Eddie highlights significant disparities in economic indicators. Disposable personal income in July saw a mere 0.15% uptick, the year’s lowest, while personal consumption expenditures (PCE) surged by 0.82%, marking a 2023 high. This income-spending disconnect raises concerns.

Eddie notes the imminent return of student loan payments, averaging $503 per month, which may strain disposable income. Loan delinquencies, nearing 2020 levels, signal financial challenges. Notably, a fourfold increase in young adults aged 25 to 34 living with parents since the 1960s reflects economic constraints driving lifestyle changes.

Prompted by Christopher, Eddie also identifies two contrasting trends: robust growth in experiences and personal transformations versus declining interest in traditional goods. While international travel and categories like medical aesthetics flourish, traditional retailers like Target, Kroger, and Home Depot report declining revenues. Eddie predicts a future marked by consolidation and M&A, with only a select few brands and private labels surviving.

Navigating the Shifting Consumer-Driven Economy

Christopher Lochhead and Eddie Yoon then tackle the intriguing dual signals in the economy, driven by increasing digital influence on consumer behavior. On one hand, positive indicators suggest the American consumer remains a key economic driver, with retail sales growing by 0.6% in August and a forecasted real GDP growth of 3.5% for the third quarter.

However, Eddie Yoon emphasizes the underlying shifts: Consumers are driving economic growth through increased credit spending, but it raises questions about sustainability. Many are making significant changes in their financial habits, including declining college enrollments, reduced home purchases, and a lower birth rate, all contributing to a redefined economic landscape.

The trend toward single-person households, now at 29%, signifies a fundamental shift in the traditional nuclear household model. While the macroeconomic picture may still appear positive, these changes point to a significant remaking of the American economy, shaped by evolving consumer preferences influenced by digital transformations.

McDonald’s Dilemma

Christopher and Eddie then discuss McDonald’s recent announcement to phase out fountain drinks inside their stores by 2032, which highlights a significant shift in consumer behavior. Currently, 40% of their revenue is generated through app purchases, delivery, and drive-thru, indicating a decline in physical store visits. This trend reflects the changing preferences of Native Digitals, who prefer digital-first experiences and the conveniences they bring.

As consumers become more discerning and value experiences over material possessions, businesses need to adapt to these mega trends. Eddie Yoon points out that while some trends are favorable, like digital and app-focused sales, the shift in product mix poses challenges. McDonald’s heavily relies on the profitability of fountain drinks, which drive a substantial portion of their margins. However, the convenience of home beverages and changing consumer preferences may lead to a decline in the sale of large-size drinks at McDonald’s, impacting their profitability in this area.

To learn more about the Pirates’ solution to McDonald’s dilemma and more on consumer spending trends, download and listen to the episode. If you want to join in the discussion, subscribe to Category Pirates and find more Pirates Perspective buried around the beach.

Don’t forget to grab a copy (or gift!) of one of our best-selling books:

•  Snow Leopard: How Legendary Writers Create A Category Of One
•  The Category Design Toolkit: Beyond Marketing: 15 Frameworks For Creating & Dominating Your Niche
•  A Marketer’s Guide To Category Design: How To Escape The “Better” Trap, Dam The Demand, And Launch A Lightning Strike Strategy
• The 22 Laws of Category Design: Name & Claim Your Niche, Share Your POV, And Move The World From Where It Is To Somewhere Different

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!

On this episode, we have a powerful dialogue with our guest, Josh Greene about what it really takes to build your reputation online and do legendary marketing in the digital world.

Josh Greene is the CEO of The Mather Group. In a world of digital marketing BS, sophomores hacks and self-congratulatory vanity metrics, Josh is the real deal.

Welcome to Lochhead on Marketing. The number one charting marketing podcast for marketers, category designers, and entrepreneurs with a different mind.

Josh Greene on Marketing and Reputation Management

The episode starts off with a discussion about marketing trends and reputation management with Josh Greene. They touch upon the impact of AI on marketing strategies and delve into reputation management techniques. Christopher highlights how individuals with negative reputations try to bury their past misdeeds in online search results. Josh explains that reputation management involves manipulating search engine rankings to push down negative content and make it less visible, while at the same time providing more positive information about you or your company.

They also touch on the evolving landscape of SEO (Search Engine Optimization), with Josh emphasizing that SEO is not dead but constantly changing. He notes that traditional SEO tactics, such as keyword optimization, have evolved due to changes in Google’s algorithms and the increasing importance of AI-driven queries.

Josh Greene on what is the Internet thinking about you

They also discuss the topic of the evolving landscape of SEO and the impact of AI, particularly in large language models like ChatGPT and Bard. As mentioned earlier, Josh highlights how SEO has evolved beyond optimizing for Google to also include considerations for AI-driven queries. He then emphasizes the importance of managing one’s online reputation in this context.

On the topic of AI, Christopher shares his experience with ChatGPT, mentioning how it produced relevant results related to category design, which led him to ponder the connection between AI training data, the internet’s content, and these AI models’ abilities to provide meaningful information. He also mentions that experts in various fields, including category design, are actively teaching AI models to enhance their understanding and capabilities.

Josh Green on how to stand out from the crowd

They then discuss how to stand out in the digital landscape, particularly in the context of AI and SEO. Josh explains that AI models like those used by Google rely on credible sources, with Wikipedia and Google’s patent tool being primary sources. He emphasizes that credibility, links, and signals play a significant role in determining the relevance of content for AI models. Much like in SEO, authoritative content with strong signals will have a more substantial impact.

Christopher adds that AI is evolving similarly to SEO and mentions that some individuals are already trying to exploit AI for personal gain by selling courses on how to manipulate AI models. He highlights the importance of providing valuable content to help people rather than merely trying to stay ahead of trends or exploit emerging technologies.

They both agree that the key to success in the digital age, whether in AI or SEO, is delivering valuable content and expertise to genuinely assist others rather than chasing quick fixes or trends promoted by self-proclaimed gurus. They also note that having a real impact requires substance and credibility, not just buzzwords.

To hear more from Josh Greene and on how you can build your online reputation, download and listen to this episode.

Bio

Josh Greene

Links

Connect with Josh Greene!

The Mather Group | LinkedIn

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!

On this episode of Lochhead on Marketing, let’s take a look on what the movie Barbie did to reach such an overwhelming success, and what Tech CEOs can learn about their approach to marketing.

Welcome to Lochhead on Marketing. The number one charting marketing podcast for marketers, category designers, and entrepreneurs with a different mind.

Barbie’s Approach to Marketing

Christopher Lochhead opens up the dialogue with pointing out the things that the Barbie producers did that made it a blockbuster win, particularly with what they did on the marketing side. According to Christopher, Barbie pulled off the greatest “lightning strike” framework of any brand in 2023.

One of the notable things that stood out was that Barbie spent $145M on producing the film, while spending almost $150M on marketing.

Let that sink in: $145M to make it, $150M to build it up.

Most companies would consider it outrageous to do such a thing, opting to focus their resources on building the product and spending what’s left on marketing, if any. And this is why most of those companies fail to make a mark and carve out a market early on in their product’s lifecycle.

How about Barbie? Well, it spent a combined $295M, but that marketing approach resulted in $1B in sales. $145M to make it, $150M to build. $1B in revenue.

Barbie’s Missed Opportunity

That said, Christopher did point out a few missed avenues that Barbie could’ve made to take advantage of their marketing strategy. For one thing, they left the digital space widely untapped, spawning newsletters and enticing new generations of girls to getting into collecting Barbies and other related merchandise.

Another thing they could’ve done is get older fans together and start building out a community in the digital sphere and talk all things Barbie. Not only does it heavily hit people in their nostalgia, but it can also help expose those older generation’s children into Barbie, and then you are back to point no. 1.

The Recession that Never Came

One of the things that Christopher also noticed with Barbie’s approach is that people are still bracing for a recession that seemingly never came, or at least was not as full-blown as we were expecting it to be. While everyone else was still timidly testing the waters, Barbie decided it would make a big splash instead.

So for Tech CEOs out there, it may not be the time to be holding down the fort. Rather, it should be a good time to try and hurl some lightning strikes in the market and see if you strike gold.

To hear more about Christopher Lochhead’s views on Barbie’s success and how it can teach tech CEOS about marketing, download and listen to this episode.

Bio

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.

Don’t forget to grab a copy (or gift!) of one of our best-selling books:

•  Snow Leopard: How Legendary Writers Create A Category Of One
•  The Category Design Toolkit: Beyond Marketing: 15 Frameworks For Creating & Dominating Your Niche
•  A Marketer’s Guide To Category Design: How To Escape The “Better” Trap, Dam The Demand, And Launch A Lightning Strike Strategy
• The 22 Laws of Category Design: Name & Claim Your Niche, Share Your POV, And Move The World From Where It Is To Somewhere Different

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!

On this episode of Lochhead on Marketing, we are presenting some Pirates Perspective from our newsletter, Category Pirates.

Eddie Yoon, Christopher Lochhead and Katrina Kirsch of Category Pirates discuss Elon Musk’s recent move to rebrand Twitter to X. They also speculate why Elon made such a move, and what he could have done from a category design perspective.

Welcome to Lochhead on Marketing. The number one charting marketing podcast for marketers, category designers, and entrepreneurs with a different mind.

Twitter to X

Elon Musk’s choice to rename Twitter as X has left people puzzled, questioning why he would give up a well-known brand and introduce a new one. Katrina follows up that the others think the move might be aimed at entering a different category, possibly related to financing. She wonders whether it would have been wiser to create a new company instead of rebranding Twitter.

Eddie Yoon discusses the debate surrounding the cost of rebranding and the value of legacy brand identity. He highlights that classic economic theory suggests ignoring sunk costs, which are expenses from the past, and instead focusing on future opportunities.

Eddie mentions that while some argue against rebranding due to the value of Twitter’s legacy brand, most consumers prioritize what a brand can offer them in the future rather than its past reputation. He suggests that rebranding can make sense when a company wants to enter new categories and emphasizes the importance of looking towards future opportunities rather than dwelling on the past. In Musk’s case, he’s not banking on the legacy of the brand itself, but the established userbase that Twitter has, who have a high potential of also buying in to what new category Twitter, now X, might become.

Elon Musk’s Mistake with the rebrand

While Christopher Lochhead agrees with Eddie Yoon’s points, he also believes that Elon Musk made a mistake by rebranding Twitter without clearly unveiling his vision for the new category of service he wants to create. He argues that a rebrand should be part of a strategic launch of a new category and not just a standalone action. The value of a brand lies in its perceived leadership in a relevant category, and in this case, the microblogging category may not be as impactful as before.

Although Elon Musk’s approach might not align with the ideal category design strategy, his reputation and influence will likely still garner attention when he eventually presents his big vision for the new category. But it definitely will lose some steam because the rebrand has become open to interpretation, rather than being focused on the intended category creation.

X as a financial category

The three further discuss the possibility of X creating a new currency or incorporating cryptocurrencies into its platform. Eddie mentions that X is already experiencing a shift in money flow, with revenue coming from both advertisers and users.

They also speculate that Elon Musk might have plans to introduce financial services or a new token (X token) on Twitter/X, incentivizing creators and potentially offering various payment options, including cryptocurrency. They compare this potential move to American Airlines’ frequent flyer program, which essentially created a currency in the form of loyalty points.

While they acknowledge they don’t have insider information, they highlight that Musk’s background with PayPal and his desire to make X a vital part of everyone’s life might lead to interesting developments.

To hear more about the discussion on what Elon plans to do with X, download and listen to this episode. If you want to join in the discussion, subscribe to Category Pirates and find more Pirates Perspective buried around the beach.

Don’t forget to grab a copy (or gift!) of one of our best-selling books:

•  Snow Leopard: How Legendary Writers Create A Category Of One
•  The Category Design Toolkit: Beyond Marketing: 15 Frameworks For Creating & Dominating Your Niche
•  A Marketer’s Guide To Category Design: How To Escape The “Better” Trap, Dam The Demand, And Launch A Lightning Strike Strategy
• The 22 Laws of Category Design: Name & Claim Your Niche, Share Your POV, And Move The World From Where It Is To Somewhere Different

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!

On this episode, we welcome Mike Bruno, Senior Category Designer at Play Bigger. Today, we dig into what it takes to make Category Design your career, and how incredible it is working with some of the most advanced technology companies in the world on category design.

Welcome to Lochhead on Marketing. The number one charting marketing podcast for marketers, category designers, and entrepreneurs with a different mind.

 

Mike Bruno and his first year as a Category Designer

Mike, who has been a category designer for about a year and a half, started his career working in agencies and social advertising. Transitioning into category design was a return to a beginner mindset for him, which he found interesting. In his previous role, he helped people solve problems and develop strategies based on business objectives and existing products. This experience translated well to category design, where the front door is identifying the problem that the category solves uniquely.

Mike also mentioned that category design involves many new concepts and a broader aperture, as it requires structuring not only the client’s business but also influencing the entire market. While it was a humbling experience trying to figure it all out, he also had a sense of familiarity, knowing how to approach problems and strategize effectively.

Overall, his first year as a category designer was challenging and exciting, with a mix of the familiar and the new, which kept him engaged and interested in the field.

 

The way people think about Category Design

Christopher and Mike discuss the challenges of transitioning from traditional marketing to category design. They emphasize that category design involves creating new markets rather than catching existing demand. Mike points out that realizing someone invented categories was a facepalm moment for him, but it made him realize the importance of solving unsolved problems.

Christopher and Mike also talked about the power of not doing anything, meaning finding a category that has already been solved, and how this is often underestimated in the business world. They use Apple’s example of launching a new category called “spatial computing” instead of just a new product like most marketers do. They compare it to Magic Leap, which failed to create a category despite having inspiring visions. Mike believes Apple succeeded because they could bridge the gap between their vision and the technology needed to achieve it.

 

Mike Bruno on the Difference between Category Design and Product Design

Christopher and Mike discuss the difference between launching a product and category designing a market category. They use the example of Magic Leap, which had a product but failed to category design the spatial computing market. Christopher explains that category design involves framing, naming, and claiming a new problem, creating an ecosystem of partners to solve that problem, and evangelizing the solution.

Mike shares his surprise about the comprehensive nature of category design, realizing that it’s not just about coming up with a new term but involves a rigorous process to make the category successful. They also mention Apple’s success in category designing the spatial computing market, positioning themselves for significant market cap growth while other players who only launched products may miss out on the opportunity.

To hear more from Mike Bruno and his experiences as a Category Designer, download and listen to this episode.

 

Bio

Mike Bruno

Mike is a Senior Category Designer with a background in psychology and communications strategy. He finds hidden problems and unspoken truths, and connects those with companies, brands and products to drive businesses and, importantly, the people they serve.

Mike’s style of Category Design is simple, straightforward and playful. His work is equally influenced by the behavioral sciences, business theory and imagination. Carl Jung on one shoulder, and Dav Pilkey on the other.

Mike’s work has been featured in Advertising Age’s “Book of Tens”, has been awarded numerous industry accolades and has driven double digit brand growth for dozens of clients. Outside of work, Mike is a frequent guest lecturer at NYU and The New School, a hockey coach to five-year-olds, and a father of two boys. He lives in Westchester, NY with his wife, kids and backyard ice rink.

 

Don’t forget to grab a copy (or gift!) of one of our best-selling books:

•  Snow Leopard: How Legendary Writers Create A Category Of One
•  The Category Design Toolkit: Beyond Marketing: 15 Frameworks For Creating & Dominating Your Niche
•  A Marketer’s Guide To Category Design: How To Escape The “Better” Trap, Dam The Demand, And Launch A Lightning Strike Strategy
• The 22 Laws of Category Design: Name & Claim Your Niche, Share Your POV, And Move The World From Where It Is To Somewhere Different

 

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!

On this episode, we are presenting some Pirates Perspective from our newsletter, Category Pirates.

Eddie Yoon, Christopher Lochhead and Katrina Kirsch of Category Pirates discuss why it’s crucial to frame, name, and claim a problem when designing a category and marketing it to customers. They also discuss why companies struggle to articulate their problems, and explain what happens if they fail to properly language it.

Welcome to Lochhead on Marketing. The number one charting marketing podcast for marketers, category designers, and entrepreneurs with a different mind.

The three most important things a company does at the highest levels

When asked about the problem that category design solves, Christopher emphasizes three key aspects. Firstly, it is important to believe that there are three crucial elements for a successful company: designing a legendary company/business model, offering legendary products/services, and creating a legendary category. These three aspects are considered the most important things a company does. If someone does not agree with this belief, he thinks that there is no basis for further discussion.

Secondly, it is necessary to acknowledge the significance of taking ownership and authorship of the category. If someone is willing to assume this responsibility, then assistance can be provided. However, if they are not interested in this aspect, there is no intention to convince or persuade them.

“That’s the difference between you walking in the dojo and us standing outside the dojo and dragging you into it.”

– Christopher Lochhead

Would you rather capture the 76% or compete for the 24%?

Eddie Yoon emphasizes the importance of category design in capturing the market. He argues that if one does not recognize the significance of category design, then other considerations become irrelevant. If it is agreed that category design is important, it must be acknowledged that it should be pursued wholeheartedly.

Eddie suggests that the question of why naming, framing, and claiming are important is essentially a question about the importance of category design itself. He states that if one does not understand the essence of category design, they cannot effectively address the first question.

He presents a scenario where capturing 76% of the category economics is compared to competing for the remaining 24% with a better or faster, cheaper version. Eddie suggests that many people are actually comfortable with the smaller percentage because it is familiar and known. However, if someone is content with competing for the smaller share, Eddie acknowledges their choice and states that traditional business strategies and teachings will suffice for that situation.

Ultimately, Eddie highlights the importance of understanding one’s preference for a larger or smaller market share and reframing the perspective accordingly.

Unlearning the 24% way

Eddie Yoon discusses the necessity of unlearning old and “comfortable” ways in order to capture the 76% of the market. He emphasizes that choosing to pursue the larger market share requires a significant amount of unlearning.

Part of this unlearning process involves freeing oneself to focus on understanding and articulating the problem at hand. Eddie compares it to Mark Twain’s quote about not having time to write a short letter, which highlights the importance of concise and effective communication. Framing, naming, and claiming the problem are essential because without the ability to express it clearly, important details can be lost in subsequent conversations with coworkers, investors, or customers. This loss of clarity can lead to a diluted understanding of the value proposition.

Eddie explains that without a clear understanding of the problem and its articulation, customers may not perceive the worth or premium of the product or service, investors may question the multiple premiums, and employees may not see the value of choosing the company over competitors focusing on the smaller market share.

Don’t forget to grab a copy (or gift!) of one of our best-selling books:

•  Snow Leopard: How Legendary Writers Create A Category Of One
•  The Category Design Toolkit: Beyond Marketing: 15 Frameworks For Creating & Dominating Your Niche
•  A Marketer’s Guide To Category Design: How To Escape The “Better” Trap, Dam The Demand, And Launch A Lightning Strike Strategy

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!

On this episode, we are presenting some Pirates Perspective from our newsletter, Category Pirates.

Eddie Yoon, Christopher Lochhead and Katrina Kirsch of Category Pirates discuss why some companies ship products, but very few companies category design markets. They explain this through the lens of Apple’s new Vision Pro spatial computing headset in talk about why Apple’s approach is different.

Welcome to Lochhead on Marketing. The number one charting marketing podcast for marketers, category designers, and entrepreneurs with a different mind.

Apple has always been Category First, Product Second

Katrina Kirsch starts off the conversation with how a lot of companies tend to put out products, and not focus on creating a category for them first. Apple seems to be the biggest contrary to this statement, as it has always been a category-driven company rather than product driven.

Eddie Yoon agrees with this, and adds that Apple has never been one to create a product first, or a first-mover. Even going as far as the first Mac, there have been personal computers before it, but Apple sold people to a whole new experience by creating a category around personal computers and having an interface that’s both intuitive and easy to get into.

Copying vs Innovating

Following up to this, there are those who say that Apple is just copying ideas from its competitors and adding their own quirk to it. But if you look at this deeper, Apple is just really good at finding different uses for existing products in the market, something that those who made it first didn’t even consider as a function.

Take for example what Apple is doing to the Vision Pro right now, which was discussed by Christopher in the previous Lochhead on Marketing episode (LOM 178). The main difference with how Google and other virtual headset devices marketed themselves versus the clear-cut presentation and demonstration by Apple is just miles apart. It doesn’t just look like a proof of concept that people can experiment on: Apple clearly tells you, “This is what you can do with it, and what other things you can add on later.”

Apple is attacking the “tyranny of the screen”

Christopher then explains that a lot of people misunderstood Apple’s point of attack in launching the Vision Pro. As product-centric companies and businesses, they think Apple is attacking other products like the Oculus and other VR headsets. When in reality, Apple is aiming for something else.

As Eddie Yoon puts it, Apple is attacking the tyranny of the screen. The concept that we have to get bigger screens when we want better entertainment value, or that we have to be tied down to a certain place when doing work because your display cannot move with you.

The other misconception is that people say Apple did not invent spatial computing. That it has been there this whole time in other products. And that’s true. But they are one of the first to adopt it to a question that only spatial computing can solve, and not just push out a product to see what people will do to it. This gives Apple app developers a range that they can work with; a clear scope and limitation so they don’t overshoot their promises, but at the same time push the boundaries of what can be done with it.

To hear more about these Pirates Perspectives, download and listen to this episode. And if you like to hear more Pirates Perspectives, you can find it and other buried treasures when you subscribe to our Category Pirates newsletter.

Don’t forget to grab a copy (or gift!) of one of our best-selling books:

•  Snow Leopard: How Legendary Writers Create A Category Of One
•  The Category Design Toolkit: Beyond Marketing: 15 Frameworks For Creating & Dominating Your Niche
•  A Marketer’s Guide To Category Design: How To Escape The “Better” Trap, Dam The Demand, And Launch A Lightning Strike Strategy

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!

Apple announced some powerful new stuff at their Worldwide Developer Conference. And, as usual, many people in the business press, Twitter, and in Silicon Valley didn’t see what happened in plain sight. So here we are again, explaining why this new category is different from the other virtual and reality augmentation devices out there, and why it is important.

Welcome to Lochhead on Marketing. The number one charting marketing podcast for marketers, category designers, and entrepreneurs with a different mind.

Don’t just launch products, launch categories

Let me put it to you this way. Google launches products, aka Google Glass. Facebook, launches products, aka Oculus. Meanwhile, Apple does Category Design.

It’s fascinating to us that category design hides in plain sight. Because what most people got wrong is they think that Apple introduced a product called Vision Pro. And yes, of course, they did that. But they did not make the same mistake that Google and Facebook made, which is they just launch products; Apple designs categories. And they tell you that’s exactly what they’re doing.

Press Release for Apple Vision Pro

Here’s the headline: introducing Apple Vision Pro, Apple’s first spatial computer.

And what you have is the new product and brand Apple vision Pro. And they tell you what it is. It’s a spatial computer. It’s not a VR/AR headset. It’s not some kind of other variety – It’s a spatial computer. And if you go on to read the press release, what you’ll discover is that Tim Cook’s quote sums the whole thing up. “Today marks the beginning of a new era for computing,” said Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO. Just as the Mac introduced us to personal computing, and iPhone introduced us to mobile computing, Apple Vision Pro introduces us to spatial computing. And that, my friends, is the difference between marketing a category and just a product.

Creating a new computing platform

And this is what most people miss. And the reason they did it at their worldwide developer conference, is because they want the vision pro spatial computer to become a new compute platform. Just like the iPhone became a new compute platform, the personal computer became a new compute platform. That’s what they’re doing here. The iPad, etc. became a new platform, a new category of technology, not just a product that they gave to people.

Launching a product without a category is like a loose cannon

When Google launched Google Glass, they launched a product, they never articulated a problem that that product solved. They never evangelized a different future with that product. What they did was show a bunch of features. And because they didn’t provide the strategic context for understanding of what the product was, aka category, they left it up to customers and the media to decide.

Google Glass Demo

Well, what happened? If you don’t control your own category narrative, somebody else will. And so what emerged about Google Glass? Well, number one, because they did the launch in Silicon Valley, the people who used it immediately got the nickname of “glass-holes”, because it was rich assholes using Google Glass and beta and early release driving around in their Tesla’s and the like, that sort of drew the ire of much of the world.

To hear more on what Apple did right with the launch of their new category, download and listen to this episode.

Bio

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.

Don’t forget to grab a copy (or gift!) of one of our best-selling books:

•  Snow Leopard: How Legendary Writers Create A Category Of One
•  The Category Design Toolkit: Beyond Marketing: 15 Frameworks For Creating & Dominating Your Niche
•  A Marketer’s Guide To Category Design: How To Escape The “Better” Trap, Dam The Demand, And Launch A Lightning Strike Strategy

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!

On this episode, we are presenting some Pirates Perspective from our newsletter, Category Pirates.

Eddie Yoon and Christopher Lochhead of Category Pirates answer questions about how important it is to create a category name that resonates with people—and that is similar enough to everyday language. Languaging takes thinking, but it’s worth getting right.

Welcome to Lochhead on Marketing. The number one charting marketing podcast for marketers, category designers, and entrepreneurs with a different mind.

The importance of a Category Name entering the mainstream

The first topic comes from a question about the importance of having a category name, and how important it is to be relevant enough to be used in everyday speech and lingo.

Eddie points out that it is every important and a great deal to have one’s category name be something recognized by the public, particularly the target consumers, while striking a balance of being unique and different from the rest.

An example he gives is Starbucks, which is in the “Dessert Coffee” business. While they might not outright say that they are in such as business, how they portray their products is perceived by consumers as such. And they capture that particular market by Languaging, creating something new like the Frappuccino.

Having your Category Name make a mark in people’s minds

Continuing along that line of thought, Eddie Yoon emphasizes that it is not only important to create something new, but it is also important that people find it relevant and want to engage with your product or service.

Going to the example of Starbucks again, people have had coffee before, but they have not had dessert coffee. And say what you will, Frappuccino is essential a liquid sugar bomb in a cup, which a lot of people find more interesting than your regular latte or cappuccino.

And where can you buy this Frappuccino? That’s right, Starbucks.

Nowadays, there are numerous coffee shops that use the term, but whenever one thinks of Frappuccino, Starbucks is one of the first things that come to mind. And that is how you make a mark in people’s minds.

Combining Ideas to make a new innovative Category Idea

Christopher Lochhead then brings up the topic of combining two or three ideas to make a new Category Idea. Sometimes, those ideas can even clash with each other individual, but makes sense when you combine them.

An example of this was Sun Microsystems, which went all-in for networking earlier than everyone else. While people are still using their computers as standalone units in business, Sun Microsystems have been selling servers and advocated for business to build a network for their office PCs. They even have their own networking software called Solaris.

So while the business people in the 90’s finally had their delayed A-ha! moment, Sun Microsystems have already carved up a sizable chunk of the market for themselves.

To hear more about these Pirates Perspectives, download and listen to this episode. And if you like to hear more Pirates Perspectives, you can find it and other buried treasures when you subscribe to our Category Pirates newsletter.

Don’t forget to grab a copy (or gift!) of one of our best-selling books:

•  Snow Leopard: How Legendary Writers Create A Category Of One
•  The Category Design Toolkit: Beyond Marketing: 15 Frameworks For Creating & Dominating Your Niche
•  A Marketer’s Guide To Category Design: How To Escape The “Better” Trap, Dam The Demand, And Launch A Lightning Strike Strategy

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!

On this episode of Lochhead on Marketing, we have a dialogue with Mike Maples Jr. on how artificial intelligence is changing startups and venture capital.

Mike Maples Jr. is the co-founder of Floodgate, one of the highest profile early stage venture capitalists. He also has a podcast called Starting Greatness, and it is one of my absolute favorites.

By the end of it, we hope that you’ll gain a new way to think about both technical risk for startups and market risk. And why in an AI world, you must either be radically different or radically disintermediate something.

Welcome to Lochhead on Marketing. The number one charting marketing podcast for marketers, category designers, and entrepreneurs with a different mind.

Mike Maples Jr. on AI

We begin the discussion on the topic of challenges of making sense of the rapidly evolving field of AI.

Mike also talks about the traditional funding model of startups, where the primary focus was taking out technical risk, and how the LAMP stack, which commoditized what was once expensive, made it easier to start a startup. Mike notes that the nature of the LAMP stack changed what startups were funded for.

“What I like to say is that the LAMP stack was deflationary in terms of the cost of starting startup. And so what does that mean? It meant that what you were funding was different, because if Kevin Rose can start dig for $1,500, over a weekend, there’s no technical risks there. I mean, he hired a contractor to do it that he didn’t even know at the time.”

– Mike Maples Jr.

Who gets Product Market Fit first

The conversation then moves on to the changing dynamics of venture capital investment. The discussion continues with the notion that technical risk and market risk are inversely related. Solving a technically difficult problem that is valuable to society will create a market; if the problem is easy to solve technically, it will all come down to who achieves product-market fit first.

To add value to the business, Floodgate and YC have taken the approach of funding market risk takedown. As technology becomes more commoditized and innovations become more accessible, the person who creates something people want the quickest wins. This is why YC was so successful: it offered young people $100,000 to either take market risks or leave.

He also mentions that the traditional venture capital model may not be appropriate for all businesses and that deflationary factors such as content, code, and data may change the way businesses are built.

Mike Maples Jr. on AI and the future of Venture Capital

Mike Maples Jr. then returns to the topic of artificial intelligence and its implications for the future of venture capital.

Here, Mike emphasizes two ends of the risk spectrum: high technical risk and high market risk. On the one hand, some projects require large amounts of funding for mass computation in order to build massive models that have the potential to change humanity. On the other hand, AI is being used in a variety of fields, including content generation for marketing, customer service chatbots, and lead generation, resulting in a deflationary effect on content, code, and data.

According to Mike, some businesses may not require traditional venture capital funding and should instead focus on achieving $50 million in revenue with a small team and minimal funding. There is also speculation that the current billion-dollar funds may be providing the wrong incentives to these companies.

To hear more from Mike Maples Jr. and how AI can affect the future of startups and venture capital, download and listen to this episode.

Bio

Mike Maples Jr. is an entrepreneur turned venture capitalist.

He’s co-founder of Silicon Valley based, early-stage VC Floodgate. And the host of the popular “Starting Greatness” podcast.

Investments include Twitter, Lyft, Bazaarvoice, Sparefoot, Ayasdi, Xamarin, Doubledutch, Twitch.tv, Playdom, Chegg, Demandforce, Rappi, Smule, and Outreach.

Link

Connect with Mike Maples Jr.!

Floodgate | Twitter | LinkedIn | Starting Greatness Podcast

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!

On this episode of Lochhead on Marketing, myself and Eddie Yun, co-founder & co-creator of Category Pirates, tackle what’s going on with what Elon Musk is now doing at Twitter; specifically, the move to charging people for their Validation Verification– once coveted, now purchasable – Blue Checkmarks.

This is part of a new thing we’re doing with our Category Pirates newsletter called Pirate Perspectives. So if you are interested and haven’t subscribed to Category Pirates yet, now’s the best time to check it out.

Welcome to Lochhead on Marketing. The number one charting marketing podcast for marketers, category designers, and entrepreneurs with a different mind.

Twitter removes the Blue Check. Kinda.

The conversation starts with Christopher and Eddie Yoon discussing Twitter’s recent decision to remove Legacy Blue Checkmarks and only allowing verified accounts for those who pay. Eddie argues that this move is a step towards aligning Twitter’s incentives with its users by making them pay for the service rather than monetizing their data through an advertising model. However, he suggests that Twitter could offer a tiered pricing structure to accommodate different budgets.

The two acknowledge that this move has caused a lot of controversy, with some users upset about losing their Legacy Blue checkmarks, while some are given Blue checkmarks even though they didn’t ask for one. Christopher mentions that Elon Musk paid for verified accounts for Stephen King, LeBron James, and others, and they are angry about the change given their prior stance about it.

Elon Musk and the missed opportunity with repurposing the blue checkmark

Christopher and Eddie then talk about the recent decision by Twitter to remove the blue checkmark verification for some users. Christopher mentions that he appreciates the verification process before because it helps him identify real people on the platform.

They also discuss the success of OpenAI’s GPT chat and the importance of delivering a valuable user experience. Eddie agrees and mentions that incentivizing creators can improve the overall ecosystem by improving content and reducing fraud. They agree that Elon Musk and Twitter missed an opportunity to position the repurposing of blue checkmarks as an improvement to the user experience rather than a takeaway.

To hear more about these category pirates’ hot takes on what is happening to Twitter and the social media space, download and listen to this episode.

Bio

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.

Don’t forget to grab a copy (or gift!) of one of our best-selling books:

•  Snow Leopard: How Legendary Writers Create A Category Of One
•  The Category Design Toolkit: Beyond Marketing: 15 Frameworks For Creating & Dominating Your Niche
•  A Marketer’s Guide To Category Design: How To Escape The “Better” Trap, Dam The Demand, And Launch A Lightning Strike Strategy

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!

This Lochhead on Marketing episode is a short one, almost like a bedtime story with Uncle Lochhead.

I recently did a post on LinkedIn that blew up in a way that I didn’t quite expect. It was meant to be a humorous post about Marketing, but it seems to have cut quite deep in some, and others found it relatable. I thought it would be fun to read to you so we could share a few chuckles about it.

Welcome to Lochhead on Marketing. The number one charting marketing podcast for marketers, category designers, and entrepreneurs with a different mind.

The Conversation

CFO to CMO: “Our revenue is going down, so we must cut your marketing budget”

CMO: “I’m confused, Marketing is how we drive revenue?”

CFO: “The macro environment is tough and we need to cut costs.”

CMO: “But, Marketing is how we drive revenue?”

CFO: “Yes, but Marketing is the fastest and easiest way to cut costs!”

CMO: “But, if we need revenue, don’t we need Marketing more than ever?”

CFO: “Not sure what they’re teaching today at Marketing MBA school, but we’re cutting your Marketing budget 30%.”

CMO: “OK, so when revenue goes down, the best strategy is cut Marketing?”

CFO: “YES! I believe you’ve got it!”

To check out how people reacted and responded to this “conversation”, check out the post on LinkedIn.

If you like this and are interested in joining different business and marketing conversations, join us at Category Pirates today!

Bio

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 iTunes!

Pirate Lochhead is sailing the seven seas this week, so we’re dropping a legendary conversation that he had recently with Mike Maples Jr. and Ann Miura on the Starting Greatness Podcast.

They discuss the recent SVB bank run that lead to a variety of situations and accusations by “experts” on social media. They also discuss what lessons a Founder can learn by studying the cause and effect of such crisis and circumstances.

Welcome to Lochhead on Marketing. The number one charting marketing podcast for marketers, category designers, and entrepreneurs with a different mind.

How a crisis can make us better

Mike opens up the discussion by stating that while crisis is something we do not wish to happen on anyone, it can be a valuable source of information and introspection on what Founders can improve upon within their own companies and organizations.

No one saw it coming

Ann Miura shares that the SVB bank run has caught her completely unawares, as did most of the companies in Silicon Valley. Even those who had their teams monitoring SVB activities only caught wind of the situation a day or two before it happened, and by then it was already too late even for them.

The Difference between the Public and the Founders

Ann also observed that while people on social media and the news media are shouting doomsday scenarios and blaming each other over the situation, the Founders that she was working with at Floodgate had their head down and was busy finding ways to mitigate the situation, and looking at possible scenarios to move forward, should the SVB run not get resolved in the near future.

It showed a stark contrast on how the mind of a Founder operates in crisis situations, and it should be something that a lot of business leaders should emulate if they themselves suffer through a sudden situation that needed their immediate focus and levelheadedness.

To hear more from Mike Maples Jr. Ann Miura, and the Pirate Lochhead himself, download and listen to this episode.

Check out more Starting Greatness episodes!

Bio

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 iTunes!

There is a fundamental tectonic change happening in the way work gets done – White Collar knowledge work to be specific.

This new technology is creating a new category of worker beyond what has been the sort of top of the pyramid, the Knowledge Workers. There’s a new layer above the Knowledge Worker emerging called the Creator Capitalist – someone who gets paid not simply to apply knowledge, but to create it. And that’s because the value of existing knowledge is dropping exponentially every day with the emergence of AI.

Today, let’s talk about how this is already becoming a radically different future right in front of our eyes, powered by chatGPT.

What is ChatGPT?

ChatGPT is the fastest growing application or website in the history of humanity by quite a lot. And while there are users that only see it as a minor amusement at the moment, people have been heavily using it for their jobs and businesses already. There are entrepreneurs, writers and other related enterprises that use it to write newsletters, blog posts, and even outlines for book ideas.

Of course, you don’t just put it the prompt and take the ChatGPT output as it is. While it is doing a pretty good job, even with niche-y things, there’s still room for improvement, as well as giving it the old human touch. But the biggest thing here is, it saves people time. Time that could be better spent on improving other aspects of your business.

How ChatGPT can innovate your craft

In  terms of creating content, whether it be an blog article, newsletter, or marketing content, there is so many ways you can take advantage of this technology.

As mentioned earlier, you can use it to write first drafts to flesh out an idea you have and refine it afterwards to make it more unique and correct stuff that seem off-point to what you had in mind. You can also use in something as simple as improving the readability and format of the thing you’ve already written beforehand.

You can even use ChatGPT to learn new things before creating your content by providing it with sources and different templates on which to base the content you intend to create later.

The AI is as smart as you make it to be

While the AI has a lot of capabilities that it can do, it all still boils down to how we use it. An example would be the prompts that we give ChatGPT to execute. Being too vague or general with your prompts can yield confusing and subpar results, as multiple users have observed. So it is best to do some research from prompt engineers on how to maximize the results of your requests to the AI, so you’ll get the best quality of content or feedback all the time.

To learn more on how you can use ChatGPT and other AI technology to create content and code, download and listen to this episode.

Bio

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.

Don’t forget to grab a copy (or gift!) of one of our best-selling books:

•  Snow Leopard: How Legendary Writers Create A Category Of One
•  The Category Design Toolkit: Beyond Marketing: 15 Frameworks For Creating & Dominating Your Niche
•  A Marketer’s Guide To Category Design: How To Escape The “Better” Trap, Dam The Demand, And Launch A Lightning Strike Strategy

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!

Pirate Lochhead is sailing the seven seas this week, so we’re dropping a legendary conversation that he had recently with Anna Furmanov on the Modern Startup Marketing podcast.

They discuss creative marketing category design, guns, human composting and more. Yes, human composting. Just… listen, trust me.

Welcome to Lochhead on Marketing. The number one charting marketing podcast for marketers, category designers, and entrepreneurs with a different mind.

What does “Creative” mean to you?

The conversation starts off with Anna asking for Christopher’s definition on being a creative.

Christopher shares that in order to consider something as being “creative”, it has to be something new.

“Being creative is bringing into being something that did not exist. You can take an existing thing and innovate on top of it and create something new. But at the end of whatever the creative process is, it yields a new creation. And sometimes that’s a doodle on a page. And sometimes it’s a new piece of code. There’s lots of different acts of creation that bring new things into the world. But fundamentally, I think creation is about exactly that.”

– Christopher Lochhead

On when you feel the most creative

Continuing on the topic of creativity, Anna asks when Christopher felt the most creative, whether its on a specific project, a certain period of time, or something else entirely.

“So for me, creativity, really at a high level, comes in two ways. One is just pure inspiration. Right – you’re out on a walk, you’re washing the dishes, you’re in the shower, your whatever it is you’re doing, an idea comes into your head. Because I’m a writer, I get sentences delivered to my head, and/or power ideas hiding in paragraphs. And then I’ll have to immediately get to a piece of paper or my iPhone and write that shit down. That can happen anytime, all the time. My wife will see me running across the house to grab a pen or to grab my phone and start talking to it, so I don’t forget the idea.”

– Christopher Lochhead

Thinking about thinking

One of the things Christopher pointed about how people perceive thinking is that they misconstrue having thoughts as “thinking”. Having thoughts just means an idea or a thought that pops in your head, without much effort put into it, almost like a kneejerk reaction.

Thinking, on the other hand, is actually taking that thought and processing it. It’s the suspension of that immediate and reflexive thought that one can really get into deeper details of the topic, and even find out why it elicited that sort of reaction from you and other people around you.

To hear more from Christopher Lochhead and his conversation with Anna Furmanov on the Modern Startup Marketing Podcast, download and listen to this episode.

Check out more Modern Startup Marketing Podcast episodes!

Bio

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 iTunes!