Things I’ve written.

Category Creation: How to Build a Brand that Customers, Employees and Investors Will Love (2019)

Lessons from HubSpot, Salesforce, Gainsight and Other Iconic Brands

Category Creation is the first and only book on the topic written by executives and marketers actively building new categories. It explains how category creation has become the Holy Grail of marketing, and more importantly, how it can be planned and orchestrated. It's not about luck. You can use the same tactics that other category-defining companies have used to delight customers, employees, and investors. There’s no better strategy that results in faster growth and higher valuations for the company on top.

Author Anthony Kennada, former Chief Marketing Officer at Gainsight, explains how he led Gainsight in creating the “customer success” category, and shares success stories from fellow category-creators like Salesforce, HubSpot and others. It requires much more than just having the best product. You have to start and grow a conversation that doesn’t yet exist, positioning a newly discovered problem in addition to your company and product offerings. The book explains the 7 key principles of category creation, including the importance of creating a community of early adopters who will rally around the problem they all share―especially if someone will lead them.

  • Identify the “go” and “no go” signals for category creation in your business

  • Activate customers and influencers as brand ambassadors

  • Grow a community by investing in live events and experiences

  • Prove the impact of category creation investments on growth, customer success, and company culture

Written for entrepreneurs, marketers, and executives from startups to large enterprises, Category Creation is the exclusive playbook for building a category defining brand in the modern economy.

Book cover titled "Category Creation" by Anthony Kennada, with a blue background and a pattern of blue and yellow oval shapes at the top. The subtitle reads "How to build a brand that customers, employees, and investors will love," and it features foreword by Brian Halligan, co-founder and CEO of HubSpot.

What others say about Category Creation

  • Portrait of a smiling man with gray hair and glasses, wearing a light blue shirt against a gray background.

    “In the hierarchy of powers that determines the value of a company, category power is the highest, and if you are the company who creates and leads a new category, that is as good as it gets ever. Category Creation is a game plan for doing just that.”

    Geoffrey Moore, Author, Crossing the Chasm and Zone to Win

  • A smiling young man with short, curly gray hair, wearing a black shirt, standing in front of a bright yellow background.

    “Gainsight is a great modern success story for this emerging business strategy―I'm excited to see Anthony share his playbook with the industry."

    Aaron Levie, CEO, Box

  • A man with short brown hair wearing a gray zip-up jacket smiling indoors with a black curtain and wooden ceiling in the background.

    "The standard 'disruptor' playbook just doesn't work as well. Anthony's incredible tome does just that, for the first time in enterprise software. It gives you the playbook to creating, rather than reinventing, a category.”

    Jason Lemkin, VC & Founder, SaaStr

  • A woman with shoulder-length brown hair, smiling, wearing a dark turtleneck sweater, against a white background.

    "I’m thrilled to see Anthony put pen to paper to demystify category creation and help other executives follow the lead of market makers like Gainsight and others."

    Sue Barsamian, Former Chief Sales and Marketing Officer, Hewlett Packard Enterprise Software

  • A man in a dark suit, white shirt, and purple tie smiling in an indoor setting.

    "Anthony has been a student of this innovative business approach, and in Category Creation, invites other leaders to activate their courage to challenge the status quo.”

    Keith Krach, Chairman & CEO, Ariba and DocuSign

  • A woman with shoulder-length blonde hair smiling, wearing a navy blazer, white shirt, a beaded necklace, and a watch, standing in a modern office building with glass walls and stairs.

    "The tactics that Anthony lays out in Category Creation are just as relevant for today’s Fortune 100 companies as they are for earlier stage businesses."

    Lori Wright, General Manager – Xbox, Microsoft

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