Category design vs a positioning consultant
Category design teaches buyers a new market. A positioning consultant helps you choose a frame they already understand.
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What category design sets out to do
Play Bigger calls category design the discipline of creating, naming, and dominating new markets. Their book, by Al Ramadan, Dave Peterson, Christopher Lochhead, and Kevin Maney, describes designing the category, the product, and the company together. The work starts from a problem buyers do not already have a budget line for. You then need a category name, a point of view, and a company lined up behind that problem. The what is category design page is the longer definition. Read their account on Play Bigger and in the book.
What a positioning consultant sets out to do
A positioning consultant helps you choose the frame that makes your value obvious. April Dunford’s exercise ends on that choice, after the alternatives, the unique attributes, the value, and the customers who care. One style of the choice is a new category. She calls that the most difficult style, because you teach the frame before the value can land. The other styles use a market buyers already understand, either head to head or as a slice you can own. The market category page walks through those styles. Her exercise is on aprildunford.com.
Who to call
Category design fits when the plan is to teach buyers a problem they do not already budget for. Play Bigger publishes that discipline. A positioning consultant fits when buyers already have a place to put you and they are putting you in the wrong one. Boundset is in the second group. The positioning sprint is two weeks of positioning, messaging, and homepage copy for seed-stage startups and beyond. Stake is $7,500. Stronghold is $12,000. It is a positioning project, and it assumes a frame you can explain to a buyer who already has the problem. Who can help a startup with positioning lists the other files you can buy.
Fictional walkthrough
Fictional. Acme Signal is not a client. It flags risky clauses in vendor contracts for finance teams at software companies. One founder wants the homepage to say "contract intelligence," a phrase none of their buyers use. The buyers say they read contracts in Word and miss renewal dates. A category design project would spend its time teaching the market to want "contract intelligence." A positioning project names the job they already have. An illustrative line: "Contract review for finance teams who still miss renewal dates in Word." The category is one they can place. The new phrase can wait until buyers ask for it. Positioning for AI startups is the same caution when the new phrase is an AI label.
FAQs
Should a seed startup hire a category design firm?
Usually the buyers already have a way to describe the job. Spend the scarce time winning that frame. Category design asks you to teach a market before you can sell into it.
Is a new category name the same as category design?
A name is one piece. Category design, in Play Bigger’s account, also lines up the product and the company behind a problem buyers do not already budget for. A qualifier on a known category is ordinary positioning.
Can a positioning project end in a new category?
Yes, when no existing frame makes the value clear. Dunford treats that path as the hardest one. Write down the cost of teaching the frame before you print it on the homepage.
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