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Welcome to Cutting Through The Fog.
Each week I share the thinking and frameworks I’ve used (and learned the hard way) to help you build with more clarity, more momentum, and fewer avoidable mistakes.
This week it's category creation.
Specifically, what it means to build something that doesn't exist yet. And why conventional wisdom is the enemy of the best brand positions available to you.
KEY INSIGHTS THIS WEEK
Entering an existing category means competing. Creating a new one means owning.
Conventional wisdom exists to protect the status quo. It has nothing to say about what's possible.
The biggest risk isn't being first. It's being second after someone else has done the hard work.
You don't need everyone to believe in it. You need the right few to try it.
Fresh soup in a carton. What could go wrong?
It's 1987. The soup market in the UK is owned by Heinz and Baxters. Tinned soup. Shelf-stable, ambient, cheap, ubiquitous. Nobody, and I mean nobody, is selling fresh soup in a chilled carton sitting in a refrigerated section of a supermarket.
We proposed doing exactly that.
The response from the establishment was immediate and unanimous. The retailers weren't sure where to put it, as there was no chilled soup section because chilled soup didn't exist. The food safety experts said fresh soup in a carton at ambient temperature would be a public health risk. The buyers said the consumer didn't want it. The industry said it couldn't be done safely.
Everyone, in other words, was pointing at every reason it wouldn't work.
We thought they were pointing at the gap. And we believed in our product.
(We also knew it completely safe after a lot of work - see below)
What conventional wisdom actually is
Conventional wisdom isn't wisdom. It's an accumulation of assumptions, most of which are made by people who have a stake in things staying the way they are.
The retailers who said there was no chilled soup section were right. There wasn't one. But that's not a reason not to create it. That's the entire opportunity.
The buyers who said the consumer didn't want fresh soup were making an assumption based on a product that didn't exist yet. Of course consumers didn't want it. They had never tried it before. They didn't know it was possible. Give people something genuinely better than what they have, and they will want it. That's not optimism. That's how markets work.
The food safety concern was the only legitimate one, and we took it seriously. We solved it. We worked with chilled distribution specialists, we developed the right packaging, we got the shelf life right. It took time and it cost money. But it was a problem to be solved, not a wall to stop at.
THE THREE CONVENTIONAL WISDOM TAKES
1) "There's no market for it."
Translation: nobody has created the market yet. That's your job.
2) "The consumer doesn't want it."
Translation: the consumer hasn't been offered it yet. Let them decide.
3)"It can't be done."
Translation: nobody has figured out how to do it yet. Figure it out.
What you actually get by being first
When New Covent Garden Soup Co launched, we didn't just launch a product. We launched a category. And that distinction matters enormously because the brand that launches a category gets to define what that category means.
We got to decide what chilled soup looked like. What it cost. What the packaging said. What quality meant. What the consumer occasion was: lunch, not dinner at home.
All of that was ours to define, because there was nobody else in the room.
By the time competitors arrived (and they did arrive, quickly, once we'd proven the market) we had the head start, the distribution, the consumer loyalty, and the brand equity that comes from being the original.
We were the category.
Everything else was a challenger.
That's the prize for going first. You get to write the rules.
WHAT CATEGORY CREATION GIVES YOU
1) You define the standards. Quality, price, format, occasion. All yours to set.
2) You build the consumer habit. The first brand to create a behaviour owns that behaviour.
3) You get the head start. By the time competitors arrive, you have distribution, loyalty, and a story they can't copy.
4) You become the reference point. Every competitor that follows will be compared to you. Not the other way around.
The cost of being first. And why it's worth it.
I'm not going to pretend it's easy. Being first is harder than entering an existing category. The path is less clear. There's no blueprint. You have to create the consumer habit as well as the product, which means more education, more sampling, more patience.
The retailers need convincing before there's proof. The buyers need a category argument for a category that doesn't exist yet. The food press needs to understand something new. All of that takes time and energy that a brand entering an established market doesn't have to spend.
But here's the thing. Entering an established category has its own costs - costs that are just as real and far less rewarding. You spend your entire marketing budget trying to take share from an incumbent who has more money, more distribution, and more consumer loyalty than you. Every pound you spend is a pound spent fighting. Every pound spent as a category pioneer is a pound spent building.
I know which I'd rather do.
THE TAKE
Before you decide which category you're entering, ask yourself this:
Am I entering this category because it's the right place for what I'm building or because it's the easiest place to explain what I'm building?
Those are very different answers. And they lead to very different businesses.
The most powerful brand positions are the ones nobody has taken yet.
Conventional wisdom will tell you they're available because they're impossible.
Sometimes that's true. But more often, they're available because nobody has had the conviction to go first.
Final thought
New Covent Garden Soup Co sold for £25 million in 1998.
The category we were told didn't exist became one of the most valuable sections in the UK chilled aisle.
Nobody ever got rich by listening to the people who said it couldn't be done.
