Is category creation worth the hype?

This article is based on Jamie Bolland’s brilliant talk at the Amsterdam Product Marketing Summit. As a PMA member, you can enjoy the complete recording here.

As product marketers, we’re always talking about our impact. Truth be told, I think that’s because we’re a little insecure. We don’t generally own any hard numbers; we just contribute to a lot of them, so we tend to shout about how disruptive, successful, and important we are. 

Today, I’m taking a different approach. I want to talk about a project that didn’t succeed. I’m doing this partly because it’s therapeutic (I’m British, so this is as close as I get to processing emotions!) but more importantly, I think there’s a lot to learn from failure – maybe even more than from success.

They say smart people learn from their mistakes, and very smart people learn from other people’s mistakes. So, here’s your chance to be very smart.

What is category creation?

The term “category creation” has been a buzzword in our field for a while now. It’s often seen as the holy grail for companies wanting to be recognized as pioneers in a new space. If you create a category, you get to own it, set the standards, and let everyone else follow your lead. 

There are plenty of case studies to support the value of this approach. Think about Slack and workplace messaging, Airbnb and peer-to-peer accommodation, or Intercom and conversational marketing. Looking at these examples, category creation seems like a strategy that makes sense.

But is category creation worth the hype? That’s the question we’re going to answer today, as I share my misadventures in category creation and the lessons I learned along the way.

The lure of category creation at Uniform

Before I start my story, let me set the scene. In June 2020, after a cheeky little mid-pandemic layoff, I joined Contentful. Contentful had been instrumental in building the headless CMS category, and it was a thrilling time. When I started, there were about 350 people on the team, and by 2022, we’d grown past 800 – a true rocket ship. 

Headless CMS is a bit of an awkward term, so let me clarify. Essentially, “headless” means treating content purely as data, allowing it to be sent quickly through APIs to different digital channels like websites, apps, or kiosks. 

Developers love the flexibility that a headless CMS offers, but there’s a catch – it’s not always friendly for marketers. You lose that crucial context and cohesive visual experience that helps you see things from the customer’s perspective. Everything is just data, which makes it challenging to see the content in the same light as your customer.

Then, a couple of years later, an exciting opportunity came up to be the founding PMM at a new startup called Uniform. This company was deep into solving content editor problems that I’d seen firsthand at Contentful. 

At Uniform, it felt like we were on the cusp of something big. We were tackling a unique problem: bridging the gap between visual content management and the world of headless CMS.

Uniform aimed to bridge this gap by blending design with headless CMS to create a more cohesive content experience. It felt like a new category in itself: digital experience composition or DXC. We were exploring innovative ways for teams to build and assemble digital experiences, making them more seamless and customer-focused.

Successes and failures in category creation at Uniform

As I’ve hinted, this project didn’t go as planned. Let’s look at what worked, what didn’t, and why. Hopefully, you can learn from our missteps.

Success #1: External validation

If this project had been a total flop from the start, this would be a very short story. In fact, we actually had some big wins early on that made us feel like we were really onto something. 

The first big win? External validation. This wasn’t just a concept we were trying to push out into the world on our own. In fact, we didn’t even come up with the term “DXC” – that was Gartner. 

If you’ve ever dealt with analysts, especially at Gartner, you know how validating that is. They’re a big deal. Being recognized by them as a leader in this emerging space was a huge boost. They even named us a “Cool Vendor.” At the time, this felt amazing, though in hindsight, calling a B2B tech vendor “cool” is a bit of a paradox.

Success #2: External buy-in and collaboration

All the books on category creation stress that this isn’t just a product marketing or marketing process. It has to come from the top and involve everyone – the CEO, product team, and sales – all pushing in the same direction. 

Our second big win was getting that buy-in. We had people with incredible skills and ideas, all working to make this new category real. DXC, our precious three-letter acronym, (or TLA if you prefer!) became central to our identity, and we were fully committed to it. We even ran events focused more on the category itself than on us as a company. The goal was to drive real behavior change in the market.