how to do category creation for branding? where to start? how to promote? i.e. gainsight did with customer success

Category creation is bloody hard. I’ve tried it multiple times, and the only time it worked was when three things happened:

1. There was a clear market problem.

2. The problem was big enough that users felt the pain.

3. I built a community around that pain.

Too often, companies start with a category name and try to force it onto the market. That almost never work. Users don’t care about category names—they care about their pain. Instead of focusing on coining a new term, focus on selling the problem and rallying the right audience around it.

Examples from our industry:

• Marketo – Early on, they didn’t sell “marketing automation.” They sold the idea that marketers needed a system of record—a way to prove their worth, measure contribution, and scale campaigns in an email-driven world. The category followed.

• Pinecone – They didn’t just push “vector databases.” They made the case that a model alone doesn’t make a great AI system. AI needs long-term memory to prevent hallucinations, and that memory must scale—hence, a purpose-built vector database was necessary.

Where to start with category creation:

1. Start with the pain. What problem is urgent, unsolved, and growing?

2. Make the pain undeniable. Find the right narrative, show how it impacts users, and make it clear why existing solutions fall short.

3. Gather a community around that problem. Thought leadership, meetups, Slack groups, open-source contributions—whatever fits your audience. Let users be part of the conversation.

4. Let the category emerge naturally. If you do the first three things right, your customers may even name it for you.

Category creation isn’t about forcing a new term into the market. It’s about making the problem so obvious that the solution needs a new name. Get the problem right, and the category follows. This process is especially works for technical audiences.