3 Lessons On How To Create A Category Defining Brand

Forbes

20-07-2025

Aerial view on green pine forest
There are more than 70,0000 tree species and some of them taste delicious. This bold, contrasting statement is exactly the kind of provocative observation that category-defining brands use to make you stop and think. For business leaders, a whole realm of market possibilities, previously ignored, might suddenly come into focus as the category emerges. Defining a category often involves bringing together two or more established elements in a new context. Think Airbnb, which merged residential space with the lodging industry. Or Netflix with its blend of video rental and digital streaming. Even more recently advances in AI where models like ChatGPT clearly define a new domain for operational and agentic AI, weaving together deep research, language, and reasoning.
Category-defining brands can catapult a business to exponential growth, but there are key elements they must possess for growth to occur. A comprehensive analysis by Kantar BrandZ and Oxford University's Saïd Business School measured 872 brands between 2006-2022 across multiple categories, and found that consumer-perceived difference is the most important brand attribute for outperforming share price. Thus, how can both established and new businesses build products that outshine the market through their distinctiveness? Ben Branson, founder of non-alcoholic spirit brand Seedlip, acquired by Diageo, and now founder of Sylva, recently shared his insights on creating an entirely new category of non-alcoholic drinks crafted from trees.
Identifying Market Gaps
Gathering public data and conducting research into your intended market is only the start. To truly identify gaps, Ben Branson advises diving deeper: engaging in direct conversations, conducting interviews, and seeking out the professionals embedded in adjacent markets. These qualitative markers give clues as to why a gap exists and whether it's truly untapped.
Ben methodically called the top bars and hospitality businesses in the UK, asking what they needed behind the bar for non-alcoholic drinks. He found out that most non-alcoholic options were sweet sodas and juices, which provided plenty of sugary flavors, but no ritual or complexity. Ben's relentless inquiry surfaced a fundamental insight: there was demand for grown-up, complex, non-alcoholic options. Acting on this, Ben built Seedlip, the first distilled non-alcoholic spirit, ushering a new market category. Today, Ben is applying the same obsessive curiosity to his latest venture focused on harnessing the flavors of wood.
Nothing Is Original Everything Is A Remix
For new ideas to catch on, it helps if there's something recognizable for consumers to hold onto. Successful product adoption often hinges on consumers seeing a next logical step from what they already know, it's a familiar framework remixed into something novel.
Consider how Steve Jobs transformed the market with the iPod, not just by making existing MP3 players better, but by reimagining their potential. He famously stated, '1,000 songs in your pocket,' which represented a significant expansion from the capabilities of earlier MP3 players. Later, the iPhone combined the functionalities of a phone, an iPod, and the internet into one groundbreaking device. Similarly, companies like Tesla, Uber, and Lyft have succeeded by educating their audiences about the possibilities of new technologies, helping people understand the connection between existing technologies and the innovations that follow.
Apple CEO Steve Jobs introduces a new online music service along with the new IPOD players and ... More IMusic software. (Photo by Kim Kulish/Corbis via Getty Images)
Create A Unique Story and Experience
Creating a new product or category requires a compelling narrative to engage a curious audience. It is essential to have a clear and persuasive message, Branson adds that is equally important to specify what your product and brand is not. By clearly distinguishing the offering from existing alternatives, the brand is positioned around a unique value proposition that creates its own demand, rather than merely competing within the existing market.
Yet, to carve out and defend a new category, businesses need more than a good idea, you'll need to shape how people think about it. Branson focused relentlessly on every detail: from the design of each product's label to its presentation at events and in stores, and the careful crafting of brand messaging. Together, these elements created a rich, cohesive brand experience that deeply engaged consumers. In order to craft a narrative consider to:
Bringing A Category-Defining Solution To The Market
No genuine innovation arrives without critics. Shaping new consumption habits, whether it's building digital signature confidence with DocuSign or rallying behind skateboarding as a professional sport, it often means challenging the status quo. The path isn't always clear, but commitment to the new category and ongoing consumer education build the credibility and momentum necessary for adoption.
Category creation recognizes what already exists in fragmented form and brings those elements together in ways that feel inevitable in hindsight. The brands that achieve this transformation share three fundamental practices: they listen more deeply than their competitors, they connect familiar concepts in unfamiliar ways, and they persist through the inevitable resistance that accompanies genuine innovation. This approach creates a clear path to meaningful differentiation, exponential growth, and the opportunity to build a pioneer brand in a space that was previously overlooked.