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Welcome to a special episode of Lochhead of Marketing. What you’re about to hear are the thoughts of one of the smartest people in Silicon Valley on Category Design. He is the entrepreneur turned venture capitalist Mike Maples, Jr.

Mike Maples, Jr. Is the co-founder of Floodgate Capital. Floodgate has led early-stage investments in companies like Twitter, Lyft, and much more.

Recently, I had the pleasure of showing up as a guest on Mike’s podcast. Usually after the guest podcast, he does a shorter episode where he synthesizes what he thinks he has learned from the guest.

Today’s episode is just that. Listen to Mike Maples, Jr. as he shares his thoughts on category design for entrepreneurs. With that said, let’s get into it.

Being a Legendary Entrepreneur

“Why do I, as an entrepreneur, want to begin category design at the beginning? Because you want to be 80 percent of a multi-billion dollar market that you created, that you design. And that makes you almost impossible to catch.” – Christopher Lochhead

Mike starts off by quoting a quote from the episode. This quote pretty much sums up why someone aiming to be a legend should do category design right from the onset. Legendary companies are born from extraordinary startups building breakthrough products that change the future.

Though you don’t always have to start from scratch. Few entrepreneurs and businesses realize that there’s a third lever to pull on the path to greatness: creating a category to add to the confusion.

Category Design vs Branding

Mike is aware that a lot of people are still not clear as to what Category Design is. Some confuse it with branding; some marketing ploy that can help your product resonate without actually changing the product.

“Category design could be confused with getting the right marketing slogan or the right three letter acronym like CRM or ERP or some other type of message that will hopefully resonate. Or we make the mistake of believing it’s a message you use to describe your business after you’ve achieved product market fit. But it’s far more than that.” – Mike Maples, Jr.

Traditional Marketing vs Breakthrough Startup

Mike gives a brief explanation of how Traditional Marketing works. Simply put, they are more concerned on fighting for market share of their current category. Think marketing battles between Pepsi and Coke. Conventional Startups tend to think along the same lines.

Whereas Breakthrough Startups try to create new categories to dominate in, making sure that they are the Kings of the Category before anyone else grabs a share of the market.

In a world of marketing slogans blaring at you left and right, having your own category lets you avoid the need to seek attention to compete. All you have to do is to show people that your new category is worth it, and the market will do the rest.

“All of us, including your future customers, employees and any potential believers, live in a very confusing and noisy world. Your startup won’t have a chance to get people to remember much about you and why you matter. So you have to be really clear on what you want people to know about you and only you, why it matters and why they should join your cause. The way to do this is not to talk about jargon, buzz words, or what Christopher Lochhead calls why my carbondigulator is better. Category design is about avoiding the comparison game. It’s not about being the best, it’s about being the only one in the category.” – Mike Maples, jr.

To hear more from Mike Maples, Jr. and his insights on category design for entrepreneurs, download and listen to this episode.

Bio

Mike Maples, Jr. is the Co-Founder and Partner at Floodgate, the host of the Starting Greatness podcast and a Co-conspirator with awesome Startup Founders.

Links

Connect with Mike!

Twitter: @m2jr

LinkedIn: in/Maples

Podcast: Starting Greatness

Website: Floodgate

We hope you enjoyed this episode of Lochhead on Marketing™! Christopher loves hearing from his listeners. Feel free to email him, connect on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and subscribe on Apple Podcast! You may also subscribe to his newsletter, The Difference, for some amazing content.

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With Category Design or Category Creation strategy, we often talk about the distinction between capturing existing demand, and creating new demand.

In this episode of Lochhead on Marketing, let’s talk about an in-between strategy that category designers use as a powerful tool in creating demand. That is to dam existing demand and redirect it in their own way, like the way a dam redirects water.

Damming the Demand

Marc Benioff, found of Salesforce.com, used this approach when marketing his new category. Bear in mind that when he launched Salesforce Automation as a CRM, CRM was already an established category. What made Benioff legendary is how he redirected the CRM traffic to Salesforce.

All it took was an idea: Sure, you want CRM, but you don’t want one that’s only available on-premise. Cloud CRM is where it’s at.

By adding a modifier to CRM, he dammed the demand for the old category and redirected it to his own. He’s creating a difference that did not exist in the minds of the market. Most importantly, he creates a new choice for them.

Expanding Your Reach

Much like Salesforce, Peloton did the exact same thing and ran away with it. They offered an alternative to boutique fitness in the form of home fitness. Yet again, it’s a choice that the market did not anticipate would have a demand. Peloton harnessed that demand and redirected it to their new category.

From there, they expanded it from Spin classes to treads. Eventually, they added home classes for Yoga, Pilates, and other activities usually reserved for group boutique fitness.

The use of the term Home Fitness created a demand that wasn’t there before. It’s like creating the void yourself and filling it up with your own category creation.

Tried and Tested in Category Creation

It turns out damming demand has been around for a long time. Henry Ford did the same thing with his new category back then. He dammed the demand for a horse and buggy with his new category name.

His new innovative category? It was the horseless carriage.

The same could be said for Marty Cooper and his wireless phone, which lead to the mobile phone category.

“Sometimes, new categories are named by what they are not. And when a category is named by what it is not, the category designer is purposely trying to dam demand.” – Christopher Lochhead

While Microsoft did not follow this model, they nonetheless created a new demand from existing categories. They did so by combining their word processor, presentation, and spreadsheet application into a bigger category that is Microsoft Office. Now, you don’t have to buy each software separately, and most consumers expect other companies that offer the same services to also have everything in one whole bundle.

So when you’re designing a new category, ask yourself: Where is existing demand that we can dam to drive revenue in the near term? Afterwards, how do we leverage the demand in the existing category to expand the demand of our own category design?

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 Apple Podcast! You may also subscribe to his newsletter, The Difference, for some amazing content.

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In this episode of Lochhead on Marketing, let’s talk about how to stand out. In many ways, if you want to do legendary marketing, you need to do what the opposite of what most people do.

Doing the Opposite

As part of the mega category people refer to as Creators, there was something that we’ve noticed:

People spend a lot of time telling other people how awesome they are.

When you start looking at creator marketing, what you’ll see is a lot of creators just touting their best achievements and how great they are. Ergo, you should consume the content they create so you can share in his glory, or something.

So what did we do? First of all, we do very little paid advertising. Recently, our friends at Podcast Magazine ran their annual edition that has a directory of all the top podcasts. What we did was buy a full-page ad in it. Though rather than your usual positive reviews and highlights, we ran it featuring negative reviews.

“We ran an ad featuring negative reviews: “Off-putting to some” from The Economist and The Fall. “Annoying host uses profanity needlessly”, and “Very disappointing”. So imagine a photo of myself with those big headlines next to me.” – Christopher Lochhead

Follow Your Different

You might be asking: Why do this?

John Bielenberg talks about how he’s always looking for the dog with the red hat. In other words, he’s looking for ways in order to stand out.

At a time where people are bombarded with information from all sides, people have learned to tune things out. So if they see something that’s pretty much the same as any other information they’ve seen before, they pay less attention to it.

Yet if something different suddenly comes along, say a dog with a red hat, you’d immediately notice it. Because it’s new and it’s not something you see every day.

So I would encourage people to do the opposite of everyone else and stand out amongst the crowd.

“In our case here with this ad, the creator industry is stuffed with what I would call self-congratulatory influencers and hustle porn stars. They are all very busy breaking their arms, patting themselves on the back. So we said, what’s the opposite? Well, the opposite is running an ad with negative reviews in it.” – Christopher Lochhead

Things that Drive Us

If you’re not convinced or still wondering why we did all this, here are seven key things that were driving us… sort of.

1. It was Funny
2. It’s Different
3. It’s Provocative
4. This is a first in #podcasting
5. Category designers force a choice, not a comparison
6. Knowing who is NOT your customer, is more important than know who IS your customer
7. I want to empower all creators to say “fuck the haters!”

We share that story with you to encourage you to think in broad and unconventional ways before you’re going to take on any marketing or advertising.

Ask yourself: “what’s the opposite of what everyone else would do here? What’s provocative? What’s funny?”  You ask yourself, “what is everybody in our industry doing? What is the exact opposite of that?”

You don’t have to do exactly the opposite. Just map it out and see what others are not doing, and eventually new ideas will probably emerge. As you’re looking for those new ideas, start with what’s the opposite. Do what John Bielenberg suggests, and go find your dog with a red hat.

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 Apple Podcast! You may also subscribe to his newsletter, The Difference, for some amazing content.

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In this episode of Lochhead on Marketing, let us talk about some advice for 30 year old marketers.

I have been asked this question a bunch of times, so I just put together my response as a LinkedIn post. A lot of people though it was a great list, so I thought I’d share it with you.

Making the List

As said earlier, this list was originally a LinkedIn post, and it’s a list of practical advice for 30 year old marketers. There were some who asked if it was in a certain order, and one outright challenged me to do so.

I did not want to do that because I wanted to present them as ideas. Because what might be important for me might not be for others.

Sure enough in the comments, different things on the list resonated with different people.

Though there is an argument to be made about creating lists in certain order, so as to elicit something close to a call to action.

“It seems we live in a world of prescriptions, where people want to do lists and more and more inane sort of business and marketing advice. You know, the seven things Elon Musk does before breakfast. And we’ve gotten to a place where a lot of content about business, about self-help, about marketing is very pablumatic and sort of at a prescription level, do this, do that, etc.” – Christopher Lochhead

While we do create prescription type articles, mostly on what you should and shouldn’t do, that’s not how we work most of the time. Our job is to give people ideas, and with those ideas, they can come up with different combinations or new ways to approach things. We feel that having something close to a to-do list hinders that process.

The Advice for 30 Year Old Marketers

That said, here’s the list of Advice for 30 Year Old Marketers, in no particular order:

• Do legendary work
• Position yourself or be positioned
• You’re not too young to be a CMO, or start a company
• Stop giving a shit about what other people think of you, it’s a trap
• Thinking about thinking is the most important thinking
• Most marketers have been recruited into the cult of the brand
• Categories make brands, not the other way around
• Marketers who create new demand, are most in demand
• They are called category designers
• Nobody legendary is working on their “personal brand”
• The most influential people in the world are not “influencers”
• Only work on legendary teams
• If your company is not going to be a category queen, quit
• Be very careful who’s content you consume
• 90% of what we get taught about marketing is BS
• Learn to write
• Make friends with other Superstar 30 year old’s
• One day, you might rule the world together
• It goes by fast, soak up every second

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 Apple Podcast! You may also subscribe to his newsletter, The Difference, for some amazing content.

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Welcome to the second of a special two-part series here on Lochhead on Marketing called, “Did the Roaring 2020s Just Start?” In this episode, we talk about the Economy.

We believe there is a chance we could be heading into a time of unprecedented economic growth. For a year now, a Categorynado of newness has been gaining momentum. There has never been a higher receptivity to new “stuff”.

Now of course I’m no economist, but I thought it would be powerful to connect some dots on some critical data points in our economy through the category lens.

This two-part series is based on a recent letter published in Category Pirates, my newsletter with co-pirates Eddie Yoon and Nicolas Cole. Go check it out today!

Drawing Parallels

Before we get to the 2020s, let’s talk about the roaring 1920s, and the parallels to what we are experiencing today. At the time it was the end of a pandemic, there was an explosion of new technology, and there was a rocking and raging stock market as well as an explosion of new categories. There were also political and international tensions on proving who was the best that drove development.

Fast forward to today, and we are experiencing the same thing. Only instead of television and vacuum cleaners, our new categories involve AI, Robotics, and information technology.

“That’s what was going on in the 1920s. So for example, electric blenders televisions and vacuum cleaners were categories that took off. Now let’s think about what’s going on in the 2020s. Same thing with the pandemic. Of course, same thing with technology and new categories. Only this time around the new categories are things like AI, video communications, robots, self-learning, robot vacuums, citizen space travel, the electrification of everything and digital Education, telemedicine.” – Christopher Lochhead

Bannister Breakthroughs are Everywhere

We’ve talked about Bannister Breakthroughs in part one of the Roaring 2020s, and how we see it all around us nowadays. Strangely enough, the 1920s also had a lot of Bannister Breakthrough moments. There was an explosion of new categories and ideas brought about by the limitation of the pandemic.

Electricity became widespread to households, new innovations in the automobile industry drove down prices, which brought about various lifestyle and economic impacts. Mail order became a booming category, and companies like Sears. Roebuck and Co. became category kings in this regard.

If you look at how things are today, it is eerily similar yet slightly different at the same time. E-Commerce is booming, and there has been a drive for more efficient electric devices like e-bikes and robo-vacuums. Of course, there’s also Tesla paving the way for developing electronic hybrid cars.

Experts are predicting that another ‘roaring 20s’ is in the making. The Wall Street Journal reported that analysts have increased their economic growth forecast for 2021 to 5.95%

The last time the U.S. economy hit a growth rate anything like that was in 1984.

Looking at the Tailwinds

Let’s take a look at some major tailwinds that we can see on the horizon. First of all, cash. The Wall Street Journal recently reported that, “US companies are sitting on the largest pile of cash ever”.

Furthermore, according to Investor’s Business Daily, “Nine companies in the S&P 500, including Goggle, Apple, and Microsoft, each hold a net cash of 5 Billion apiece or more. Together, these companies hold a total of $325 billion”.

Simply put, there’s a lot of cash in corporations sitting on the sidelines waiting to get deployed.

On the consumer side of things, consumer spending, which accounts for more than two-thirds of U.S. economic activity, jumped 2.4% last month, according to Reuters. The Wall Street Journal reports, “consumer spending has nearly returned to pre COVID-19 levels. The average personal incomes of US households, surpassed pre pandemic levels in September.”

Not to mention all the money being pumped back to the economy via the new Biden Administration’s infrastructure plan.

So what does this all mean?

It means we could be heading into a new golden age of opportunity. As we’ve talked about before, now’s not the time to be focused on the incremental.

“Legendary companies jam the throttle hard coming out recession’s now might be the time to consider investing in innovation in new product development, in marketing, in expansion, and in new category design, and to do that ahead of the curve. Because all the research shows us that the companies who do the best coming out of recessions hit that throttle early in the recovery.” – Christopher Lochhead

To learn more about the Roaring 20s, be it in 1920 or 2020 and its effects on the economy, 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. We hope you enjoyed this episode of Lochhead on Marketing™! Christopher loves hearing from his listeners. Feel free to email him, connect on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and subscribe on Apple Podcast! You may also subscribe to his newsletter, The Difference, for some amazing content.

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Welcome to a special two-part series on Lochhead on Marketing called, “Did the Roaring 2020s Just Start?” In this episode, we talk about the Bannister Breakthroughs, and how its influence can be seen everywhere today.

We believe there is a chance we could be heading into a time of unprecedented economic growth. We’ll get to the specifics of it in part 2, but for this episode, let’s talk about how category breakthroughs can lead to even more category breakthroughs. If we play our cards right, we might be living at the greatest time for new innovation in history!

This two-part series is based on a recent letter published in Category Pirates, my newsletter with the legendary co-pirates Eddie Yoon and Nicolas Cole.

Breaking Through the Limits

On May 6th 1954, a young British land named Roger Bannister broke the four-minute mile. Before the feat was achieved, this was deemed impossible or only doable under the right circumstances. Yet Bannister broke records and expectations by doing it his way.

The Harvard Business Review published a terrific summary of the story:

“The four-minute barrier stood for decades — and when it fell, the circumstances defied the confident predictions of the best minds in the sport. Experts believed they knew the precise conditions under which the mark would fall. It would have to be in perfect weather — 68 degrees and no wind. On a particular kind of track — hard, dry clay, and in front of a huge, boisterous crowd urging the runner on to his best-ever performance. But Bannister did it on a cold day, on a wet track, at a small meet in Oxford, England, before a crowd of just a few thousand people.”

Roger Bannister’s achievement served as the breakthrough that led to more breakthroughs in the world of competitive running. Only 46 days later, the “impossible” record was broken again. A year after that, three runners broke the four-minute mile in a single race.

Much like Bannister, legendary innovators and category designers make the impossible possible. While it may seem mundane now — like Bannister’s four-minute breakthrough, it still serves as a catalyst for others to believe that something impossible could be done. It makes people receptive to the idea that there is a possibility that they can explore which leads to a different future.

Creating a Before and After

The results of a Bannister Breakthrough or creating a revolutionary category always creates a before and after. People who bear witness to both sides are changed as a result. They either embrace it, or find new ways and breakthroughs themselves.

“Category designers, innovators, entrepreneurs, that’s what they do. They create a before and after they change reality, they make new possibilities into new realities.” – Christopher Lochhead

Category designers create a before and after they change reality, they make new possibilities into new realities.

In Rogers’ case, he smashed an imaginary what seemed like an immovable milestone. His breakthrough, like all legendary breakthroughs, opened up others to ask, “What else is possible?”

Bannister Breakthroughs Everywhere

Fast forward to today, where you can see Bannister breakthroughs happening everywhere. With information at our fingertips, you’ll see people come up with new categories to solve things others didn’t know they even needed up until today.

For a more relatable example, having a large-scale remote workforce wasn’t deemed possible before. It was always a means for emergency access to work for some, and usually only available for managerial roles. Yet within the span of a year, we’ve seen businesses thrive in full-remote or hybrid setups worldwide.

As these breakthroughs continue to happen, just like back in Roger’s days, there are three categories of people:

“There are the people who make the change. There are the people who sit there and go, “oh look, something just changed”. And there are people who say, “What the fuck, did something happen?” – Christopher Lochhead

At this unique moment in history where almost everything about the way we work, live and play is at least potentially up for change, the question we all have to ask ourselves is what kind of person am I?

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 Apple Podcast! You may also subscribe to his newsletter, The Difference, for some amazing content.

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In this episode, Christopher Lochhead talks about value, and how it is 100% dependent on people’s perception. That is to say, nothing has any intrinsic value until someone believes it has value.

You can also learn about one of the greatest stories about how an entrepreneur and category designer created value, that is to say, the perception of value for a product that left a lot of people scratching their heads.

Gary’s Pet Rock

Gary Dahl and his pet rock is an amazing study on how people assign value to something based on their perception.

In 1975, Gary Dahl thought it would be funny to sell pet rocks. He never would’ve thought that this funny running gag would sweep the nation, selling roughly 1.5 million pet rocks at $3.95 a pop.

Christopher remembers his sister wanting to join in the fad, so he offered to catch her a pet rock himself.

“I remember this well. I was a kid at the time and my sister wanted one, and I remember exactly what I said at the time: “Well, if you like, I’ll go outside and catch you a wild one.” “- Christopher Lochhead

Was it a weird fad? Probably. Yet it wasn’t the first of its kind, and certainly not the last crazy fad people subscribed to.

Value is in the Perception

While it may seem silly that Gary Dahl managed to sell that many pet rocks, but how he marketed it was nothing short of genius.

He packaged it in a colorful box that even had holes so your pet rock can “breathe”. There was even a comprehensive manual on how you can take care of your pet rock, which just adds to the hilarity of it all.

Basically, Gary Dahl assigned a value to his pet rocks. As a Category Designer and some brilliant marketing, he made people perceive the Pet Rock as something of value. All due to the story he weaved to back it up.

So what does this teach us? For Christopher it means that nothing is intrinsically valuable. That value is 100 percent a perception.

“If you’re a regular listener, you’ve heard me and you’ve heard Jason talking about these new NFTs in the digital space: people selling digital products at extraordinary prices. Jason made the comment that his dad is in the art business and he grew up in that business. In his words, what sells a painting is a story. And so what makes something valuable is that people perceive it as valuable.” – Christopher Lochhead

Creating Value Out of Nothing

Legendary category designers are legendary because they create new perceptions of value. They establish the belief that something is valuable when that belief did not exist before.

So as category designers, the challenge is to change people’s perception about your product or services. If you are successful, you can create something valuable… out of nothing.

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 Apple Podcast! You may also subscribe to his newsletter, The Difference, for some amazing content.

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In this episode, Christopher Lochhead talks about language. Specifically, a concept that most entrepreneurs and marketers don’t know much about: Languaging.

Languaging and Creating Context

Languaging is the strategic use of words and language to change and create the future.

As any category designer worth their salt should know, how you frame a category could make or break them. Having a great context for your category is a must if you want to be ahead of the pack.

What better way to add a strategic context than to use statements that will make customers relate to your category. If you do it right, even just one sentence can propel you to the top.

Language and Differentiation

Christopher uses MP3s and Apple iPods to make his point. In the early 2000s, MP3 players had already been in the market for almost half a decade. Yet a lot of people were not using them, and a bigger portion of the population doesn’t even know what it was.

So when Apple launched the iPod in 2001, they had to find a way to get people to switch from their Walkmans to their new product.

To do this, Apple used strategic languaging to distinguish iPod from other MP3 players by calling it a digital music player. That’s differentiation.

To drive it all home, they have this one-sentence slogan that resonates with consumers.

One thousand songs in your pocket.

On his first Apple iPod press release, Steve Jobs made it very, very clear that Apple was absolutely designing a new category with its new product. It wasn’t just another MP3 player. He said:

“With iPod Apple has reinvented a whole new category of digital music player that lets you put your entire music collection in your pocket and listen to it wherever you go. With iPod listening to music will never be the same again.” – Steve Jobs

Apple redesigned the category and ran away with it by putting the technology in a context people could understand.

Frame it and Name it

It is important to note that language we use to describe something changes the thing, the way people see and value the thing.

So what does this mean for category designers? Legendary category designers frame it and name it. Legendary category designers can and do change the future with one sentence.

If you start listening for languaging, which you could think of as the strategic use of words and language to change thinking, you’ll start to notice it more often.

“Remember, a demarcation point in language creates a demarcation point in thinking which creates a demarcation point in perceived value, and action.” – Christopher Lochhead

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 Apple Podcast! You may also subscribe to his newsletter, The Difference, for some amazing content.

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In the last episode, Christopher popped the hood on digital products, more specifically about NFTs or Non-Fungible Tokens. As you may know, a 10-second GIF recently just sold for $6.6M. This was due to NFTs.

Now, there are other companies and celebrities jumping in on it. Jack Dorsey, the founder of Twitter, is now auctioning off the first tweet for $2.5M, as of this taping. Rock band Kings of Leon is set to be the first band releasing a record as an NFT. These cyber collectibles are taking off and having a profound impact.

Yet our producer, Jason DeFillippo, has some questions.  Jason is the greatest of all time in podcast producers, and he’s worked with Tim Ferriss, Jordan Harbinger and many others. He also hosts one of the greatest podcasts ever, Grumpy Old Geeks. He also has a lot of experience in the art world, as he worked with his dad for a long time.  Jason has an opinion about NFTs, and he and Christopher talk about that, Clubhouse, and a bunch of other fun things.

Digital Products have been Here Forever

Jason DeFillippo comments about Christopher’s statement about digital products and NFTs being a category-defining moment. For someone who has played online games like Jason, digital products have been around since the early 2000s. People have been buying and selling digital items to use in-game, and there’s even a whole industry built on farming in-game currency for it.

As for NFTs, Jason doesn’t see the purpose to all of it other than being a rich man’s game. It’s like buying a pet rock, but at least with the pet rock you get a rock for your troubles.

“We had this kind of shit back in the day, 10 years ago, and we would buy digital items, we would buy digital clothes, we would mine gold. It was Bitcoin before there was Bitcoin, and it was just a bunch of nerds sitting around killing orcs. There was a purpose to the NF T’s back then, because it was all in-game. Now we have all of the crap that you know was the digital stuff, but no game to play. Today’s NF T is one of those things that to somebody like myself with a highly tuned bullshit detector made my head explode.” – Jason DeFilliippo

On Digital Natives Buying Digital Products

Christopher asks if it makes sense that native digital people are buying more digital products than physical ones. Jason thinks it is, but it again depends on the purpose of the purchase. It depends on the context of why they bought the item, either to make their digital home look better, or have the best weapon for a game they’re playing.

Again, NFTs miss the mark in this regard. Jason thinks that this $6.6M purchase just got overhyped because people are looking for excitement. That, and because it is attached to blockchain. So people who are looking for the next big thing are suddenly scrambling to see if NFTs fit the bill. According to Jason, it doesn’t.

“That’s the problem with it. It doesn’t make any sense. I think it’s a fad. This has all of the hallmarks of us being stuck inside for far too long. We need something to excite us. It’s on the blockchain. You know, if they could just sprinkle in some AI, we would have like a BS trifecta here.” – Jason DeFillippo

Why is Clubhouse a Thing?

Christopher and Jason discuss the app Clubhouse, and why it’s even a thing. For one thing, the features it has is already present in various other apps, like Discord and other online voice chat software. What makes it weirder is that it is trying to bring back the feeling of radio, something that podcasts have killed a long time ago.

The appeal to some comes from the fact that it is invite-only. Though that in itself is not a unique feature, as Jason points out. There are a lot of apps that can just integrate such features into their own well-established ones. It’s why Jason thinks that Clubhouse will come to a quick demise soon.

“My buddy John Wall of Marketing Over Coffee was quick to point out that as a creator, there’s no value here. First of all, I got to be Live. So it’s just like radio. Instead of podcasting, where we do it now and release it later, you got to be live. So as a creator, you’re fucked on that. So you have to be there, you have to do a radio show, and as a user you have to be there for that specific time.” – Christopher Lochhead

“I’ve been invited to like two dozen clubhouse chats. I’m like, it’s 3:30 in the afternoon on a Tuesday, I have a job. They want to do it at like 10:30 at night, I’m like, I gotta sleep. It doesn’t make any sense.

The other side is there’s no discoverability, finding a room is terribly hard, and the audio quality sucks. They say you’re not allowed to record it, but everybody records it. And you know, there’s, there’s so many things wrong with it, it’s hard to begin to figure out where the most wrong thing is wrong with it” – Jason DeFillippo

To hear more about Christopher and Jason’s thoughts on digital products, NFTs, and Clubhouse, download and listen to this episode.

Bio

Jason DeFillippo

Jason has been building websites since the early days in 1994 for clients that range from small businesses to million-dollar websites for blockbuster films to his own start-ups.

In 1995 a new media company in Santa Monica moved him out to Los Angeles to build the first website for Epson America.

Since then, Jason has launched over 250 websites for major corporations like Paramount Pictures, Sony, Warner Brothers, and Disney.

He also created the two-time SXSW Weblog Award-winning Blogrolling.com as well as co-founded the global blog network Metroblogging.

He has worked at several startups in San Francisco including Technorati.com and 8020 Media, the publishers of JPGMagazine.com and statistical aggregator Metricly.com.

Currently, Jason is a full-time podcast producer and editor.

Links

Grumpy Old Geeks

We hope you enjoyed this episode of Lochhead on Marketing™! Christopher loves hearing from his listeners. Feel free to email him, connect on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and subscribe on iTunes! You may also subscribe to his newsletter, The Difference, for some amazing content.