There is an easier way to create a first. (Creativity is required but not genius.) Find an existing product or category and carve out an extension or subset of the category that is new or “first” in some way. What you are doing is creating a new category that diverges from the main category in an important way. And, most important as a brander, you give your new category a name that your product is first in.
This type of first can be a game changer, too. On a business trip to Thailand in 1982, Austrian entrepreneur Dietrich Mateschitz discovered a local drink called Krating Daeng that miraculously cured his jet lag With his Thai partner, Mateschitz decided to introduce the drink in the West with one important modification—he added carbonation. He named the drink Red Bull, which is a close translation of its Thai name (Daeng means “red” and Krating means “water buffalo” in Thai).
Mateschitz’s real branding genius was in positioning the brand. He didn’t position Red Bull as refreshing or energizing (attribute positioning) or for young men (target market positioning) or as a Thai beverage (heritage positioning). Mateschitz took the “first” route. He didn’t simply introduce a new beverage brand—he invented a new category he called “energy drinks.”
Mateschitz hired an Austrian ad agency, which came up with fifty different designs for Red Bull before he found breakthrough branding he liked: the distinctive tall, slim, eight-ounce blue-and-silver can with the logo of two muscular bulls smashing heads in front of a yellow sun. The can is smaller than a typical soda can so people immediately got the idea that this energy drink was strong stuff!
When Mateschitz first tested the Red Bull name and the concept, people didn’t like the taste, the logo, or the name. Based on the research, it didn’t look like a breakthrough brand but a broken brand. But he ignored the research and went ahead with his energy drink and branding anyway, launching first in Austria and then expanding globally. Today Mateschitz has a net worth in the billions.
The interesting thing about the firsts that are subsets is that new ones are being created every day. You just have to see the need for something new in an existing category that you carve out and own as the first, like Procter & Gamble did when it introduced the Swiffer, creating the quick-surface-clean category.
Another entrepreneur who saw a fresh way of looking at a well-established category is London-based Natalie Massenet. When she approached investors, Massenet was told that women wouldn’t buy high-end fashion online. Massenet proved them wrong, launching Net-a-Porter, the first ultra-high-end online fashion business, which has changed the way women shop for high fashion.
And there’s Sara Blakely, who reinvented women’s foundations. Her invention came about in 1998, when she chopped the feet off a pair of control-top pantyhose and created a new category of foundation garments—shapewear.
Blakely just wanted to look svelte with no telltale seams or stockings protruding from her pants legs. A part-time fax machine saleswoman and a part-time stand-up comic, Blakely called her first invention “Footless pantyhose” and launched her business, Spanx, in 2000 with $5,000 in savings. Since then she’s sold more than nine million pairs and spawned the industry of bodyshaper foundations.
Sources: from the book “Break Through Brands”, Magazine “my branding”.
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