When Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton released her book, “It Takes a Village: And Other Lessons Children Teach Us” in 1996, it was met with rave reviews and became a modern classic. The book centers around the impact individuals and groups outside the family have, for better or worse, on a child’s well-being, and advocates for a society which meets all of a child’s needs. Much the same can be said for an organization looking to build a new category within an established industry. It takes many people including visionaries, industry analysts, partners and customers, and proven products to drive awareness and demonstrate success around an emerging category.
In a Fast Company article, Kahain Krippendorf outlines thoughts on creating a new category saying, “When a new category is created, innovators take advantage of that new niche’s competitive advantage.” So, ask yourself these questions to see if you can find a new category that you can own:
- What category does my business fit in?
- Is there a way to blend two or more categories to offer something new?
- Do I see a demand and a market that isn’t being served, and if so, how can I create a new category and gain a competitive edge?”
One of our clients, Opscode, is working to build a new category within the cloud computing and infrastructure management market called, cloud infrastructure automation. Their approach of automating infrastructure management via the cloud is changing the way enterprises tackle systems configuration enabling them to cost-effectively improve infrastructure management efficiency and quickly scale infrastructure to meet business needs.
To help elevate this shift in the industry, we worked with Opscode to develop a strategy and plan that leveraged a combination of internal survey data, customer case studies and new products to demonstrate how Opscode’s approach to cost-effectively improve infrastructure management efficiency and quickly scale its infrastructure to meet the needs of the business.
Next, we bundled three key announcements to help underscore the need for cloud infrastructure automation in the enterprise amid the widespread shift to cloud computing. These announcements included the general availability of Hosted Chef, a new product called Private Chef, and an umbrella release that outlined the key drivers behind this trend and included key proof points including survey data as well as analyst, customer and partner quotes.
We also pre-briefed media and analysts to introduce them to Opscode and garner support for the launch.
As a result of our efforts, we secured more than 20 briefings with key technology media and industry analysts such as The 451 Group, IDC, Forrester, Gartner, RedMonk and more. We also garnered more than 17 pieces of original coverage including Network World, Light Reading, Enterprise Systems Journal, ReadWriteCloud, GigaOm, SearchCloudComputing, Data Center Knowledge, among others .
We have discussed how to launch a new product in a new category, but in order for media, analysts and potential customers to get on board with a new category and help build credibility, it is critical to outline and demonstrate how the new product, approach or solution is disruptive to the existing landscape (vis-à-vis case studies, data, third-party validation, etc.).