The “Smartphone” category already existed when Steve Jobs transformed its meaning by telling a new story about what it really meant for a phone to be smart. “Conversational marketing” sounds perplexing until you hear Drift associate it with a story about how marketers put gates (forms) in front of customers, inhibiting engagement. “Cloud CRM” meant little until Marc Benioff associated it with Salesforce’s story about the end of software. Similarly, no compact phrase will instantly express the value you bring to customers’ lives- until you do the hard work of associating it with a story. Same with AirBnB’s logo, until AirBnB associated it with a story about “living there.” The Nike logo conveyed little meaning until Nike associated it with a story about perseverance. It is an empty vessel awaiting the meaning that will be poured into it by history and experience.” As a result, people forget that a brand new logo seldom means a thing. “When we look at a well-known logo, what we perceive isn’t just a word or an image or an abstract form, but a world of associations that have accrued over time. As Beirut writes in his 2015 manifesto, How To Use Graphic Design.:

It’s just that I’ve come to think about them the way legendary graphic designer Michael Beirut thinks about logos-not as fully-functional out of the gate, but as “empty vessels” that you fill with meaning. In fact, my strategic messaging and positioning engagements typically yield one. That’s not to say I’m against category names. (By the way, I believe the authors of the books I cited above would wholeheartedly agree.) The reason? A category name, by itself, is worth very little.

They’ve gotten the idea that, by coining a new two- to four-word label for what their products do, they can define a new market niche over which they’ll reign supreme. Usually it’s because they’ve read about the benefits of category dominance in books like Crossing the Chasm or, more recently, Play Bigger. Every so often, a CEO asks me for help coming up with a new category name.

Andy raskin books