Being first to market is useful.
It does not guarantee you will own the category.
Consumer technology is full of companies that introduced something genuinely new, spent a great deal of money teaching people what it was, and then watched another company become the name most closely associated with it.
Sometimes the second company had a better product.
Quite often, it had a better explanation.
Category creation requires a brand to establish a clear answer to a handful of basic questions:
What is this thing?
What problem does it solve?
Why does this problem matter now?
How is this different from what already exists?
What should people look for when evaluating products in the category?
Those questions sound like messaging.
They are considerably more important than that.
They determine how customers, journalists, retailers, reviewers and eventually AI systems understand a new market.
For consumer technology companies, category creation is the process of establishing the language, problem definition, positioning and evaluation criteria through which a new type of product becomes understood.
PR plays a major role because categories are ultimately defined in public.
You can invent the terminology internally.
The market decides whether it sticks.
What does it mean to create a new product category?
A category exists when people share a reasonably common understanding of what a group of products is, what those products do and why somebody might want one.
Established categories make this easy.
Nobody launching a new laptop needs to spend six months explaining what a laptop is.
A company creating something genuinely unfamiliar has a much larger job.
It may need to establish:
- the category name
- the customer problem
- the use case
- the comparison set
- the product expectations
- the important features
- the trade-offs
- the reasons the category deserves to exist
This is why new-category launches often struggle.
The company begins by explaining the product.
The customer is still trying to understand the category.
That gap creates friction everywhere.
Journalists struggle to place the story.
Consumers do not know why they need the thing.
Retailers do not know where it belongs.
Search demand may barely exist because nobody knows what to search for.
AI systems encounter several competing descriptions and produce inconsistent answers.
The first job in category creation is therefore fairly basic.
Give the market a useful mental model.
Category creation starts with a problem worth caring about
Companies naturally become excited about a new solution.
The market usually needs to understand the problem first.
That sounds obvious, but it is regularly skipped.
If consumers do not recognize the problem, the company has to teach them why it matters before the product has much meaning.
A good category narrative therefore begins with something already happening in the customer’s life.
Consider a hypothetical device that automatically captures, organizes and surfaces important family memories using AI.
The company could lead with:
“An AI-powered ambient multimodal memory platform.”
Technically accurate, perhaps.
Commercially pretty useless.
A more useful starting point might be:
We take thousands of photos and videos of our families and almost never see most of them again.
Now there is a recognizable problem.
The technology has somewhere to go.
This is the basic narrative pattern we use throughout our brand work. The customer has something they are trying to accomplish. A problem sits in the way. The product helps.
When a category is genuinely new, this problem definition becomes particularly important because it can shape the entire market conversation.
The Category Narrative Framework
We use a simple framework for thinking about category creation:
Existing problem → Market change → New category → New approach → Brand point of view → Product proof
Each layer has a specific job.
| Layer | Question |
|---|---|
| Existing problem | What problem already exists in the customer’s life? |
| Market change | What has changed to make a new solution possible or necessary? |
| New category | What type of product now exists to address it? |
| New approach | How does this category solve the problem differently? |
| Brand point of view | What does the company believe about how the problem should be solved? |
| Product proof | What evidence shows the approach actually works? |
This sequence matters.
Jump directly to product proof and you may have a technically impressive product nobody knows how to place.
Establish the larger logic first and the product becomes easier to understand.
Step 1: Define the existing problem
Every useful category starts with tension.
Something is inefficient.
Something is frustrating.
Something has changed.
Something people want has become newly possible.
The problem should be understandable without mentioning your product.
That is a useful test.
If you cannot explain why the category should exist without discussing your particular solution, you may still be writing a product pitch.
The problem also needs a hierarchy.
There may be ten benefits attached to a new technology, but there should usually be one primary problem around which the category is organized.
For a robot mower, that might be maintaining a lawn without manually cutting it.
For a sleep technology product, it might be understanding and improving sleep without a clinical environment.
For a new smart-home device, it might be removing a repetitive household task.
Simple problems travel.
Step 2: Explain what changed
New categories rarely appear from nowhere.
Something made them possible.
That change might be:
- a technical breakthrough
- lower component costs
- new consumer behaviour
- an aging population
- a regulatory shift
- improvements in AI
- better batteries
- widespread smartphone adoption
- a change in how people work
- the collapse of an old distribution model
This is often where the media story lives.
Journalists are generally more interested in why a market is changing than in the existence of another new product.
The product can become evidence of that change.
This framing also helps avoid one of the most common category-creation mistakes: acting as though the company appeared in a vacuum and invented an entire human need.
Usually it did not.
It identified a need that had become newly solvable.
Step 3: Name and define the category
Language matters enormously here.
The category name needs to do several things reasonably well:
- describe what the product is
- give people some clue about what it does
- separate it from existing alternatives
- remain broad enough to support a market larger than one company
Companies often go too far in one of two directions.
They choose language so generic that the product disappears into an existing category.
Or they invent a proprietary label that means absolutely nothing to anyone outside the company.
The best category terminology usually offers enough familiarity to create recognition and enough difference to signal something new.
This is why analogies can be so useful in early positioning.
When we positioned Velotric as the Honda Civic of e-bikes, the analogy gave journalists an instant mental shortcut. Reliable, accessible, good value.
It allowed them to place the brand quickly.
New categories often need a similar bridge.
You are giving people somewhere familiar to stand while they learn something unfamiliar.
Step 4: Define the new approach
Once people understand the problem and category, explain what has changed in the solution.
This is where technical differentiation becomes useful.
A new robot mower category might remove boundary wires.
A new camera might remove the need for a separate operator.
A new health device might move a formerly clinical measurement into the home.
A new AI tool might collapse several workflows into one.
The useful question is:
What can people do differently because this category exists?
That keeps the explanation attached to behaviour rather than disappearing into engineering language.
Step 5: Establish a point of view
Strong categories tend to contain an argument.
The company believes something about the way the market should work.
Perhaps:
Home robotics should disappear into everyday life rather than requiring constant management.
High-quality mechanical keyboards should be accessible to normal computer users, rather than remaining enthusiast products.
Personal health information should be available continuously rather than only during occasional clinical visits.
A useful point of view gives the category direction.
It also gives the founder something substantive to talk about.
This matters because the company should be able to explain more than what the product currently does.
It should be able to explain where the market is heading.
The founder can become the interpreter of the category
Founder thought leadership is particularly valuable during category creation because journalists need people who can explain unfamiliar markets clearly.
The founder’s job is not to mention the product every chance they get.
It is to become useful.
What is changing?
Why is it changing?
What misconceptions exist?
Which developments actually matter?
What should consumers be paying attention to?
What will this category look like in three years?
A founder who can answer those questions clearly becomes easier for journalists to use.
That creates a powerful feedback loop.
The founder’s explanations appear in media.
Those explanations become associated with the category.
Other people encounter and reuse the framing.
Over time, the founder can become one of the people journalists call when the subject comes up again.
Founder authority is built through repeated, usable expertise. The same framing showing up across outlets creates a recognizable pattern and gives both journalists and AI systems a clearer understanding of what that person represents.
Step 6: Build the proof
A new category requires a fairly high burden of proof.
Consumers may need evidence that the category works at all.
Journalists may need evidence that the market is real.
Retailers may need evidence that people will buy.
Investors may need evidence that the category can become large enough to matter.
Useful proof can include:
- independent product reviews
- customer adoption
- sales data
- market research
- original consumer research
- technical testing
- expert validation
- retailer adoption
- repeat purchase
- usage data
- credible customer case studies
This is where PR moves from explanation into validation.
Coverage can introduce the category.
Reviews can prove the product works.
Buying guides can establish where it sits relative to alternatives.
Retail inclusion can signal commercial legitimacy.
Customer evidence can show the problem is real.
The strongest category-building programs use all of these layers together.
PR’s role in category creation
PR is particularly useful in category creation because the company cannot declare a category established by itself.
Other people have to use the language.
Journalists need to describe it.
Reviewers need to evaluate it.
Retailers need to place it.
Customers need to discuss it.
Analysts may need to measure it.
The role of PR is therefore broader than generating attention.
PR helps distribute an explanation until credible third parties begin carrying parts of that explanation themselves.
The progression generally looks something like this:
1. Coverage creates understanding
Early stories answer:
- What is this?
- Why does it exist?
- Who created it?
- Why does it matter now?
2. Reviews create validation
Reviewers test:
- Does it work?
- Is it useful?
- How does it compare with alternatives?
- Who should buy it?
3. Comparisons establish the evaluation criteria
As the category develops, people begin asking:
- Which product is best?
- Which features matter?
- What should buyers avoid?
- What are the trade-offs?
This is an incredibly important stage.
Whoever helps establish the evaluation criteria can have a significant influence over how the category develops.
4. Buying guides normalize the category
When products begin appearing regularly in “best” lists, buying guides and commerce coverage, something has changed.
The category is becoming understandable enough to shop.
5. Ongoing commentary keeps shaping the conversation
The founder and brand should continue contributing ideas, data and commentary as the category evolves.
That repetition helps preserve the company’s role in explaining the market.
Category creation requires repetition
One clever launch campaign will rarely create a category.
People need to encounter the explanation repeatedly.
This is where the Brand Narrative Stack becomes useful.
The category definition should appear consistently across:
- the company website
- product pages
- press materials
- founder commentary
- earned media
- reviews
- educational content
- comparison content
- retailer pages
- community discussions
The wording can change.
The underlying logic should remain stable.
That means recurring agreement around:
What the category is
What problem it solves
Who it is for
What makes it different
Which criteria matter
What evidence supports it
Every new credible source that reinforces those ideas adds another piece to the category’s information environment.
Over time, a description starts becoming a pattern.
Patterns are much harder for competitors to dislodge than slogans.
Category creation and Share of Explanation
This is where category creation becomes particularly interesting in the age of AI search.
Most GEO discussion currently focuses on whether a company appears in an AI-generated answer.
We measure that through things such as Share of Answer.
That is useful.
But category creators should also ask another question:
Whose logic is the answer built on?
We refer to this as Share of Explanation.
Share of Explanation looks at whether a brand’s framing, problem definition and evaluation logic are being used when the category itself is explained.
You can look for signs of this in several places.
Are journalists using the problem definition you helped establish?
Are reviewers evaluating products according to criteria your company has emphasized?
Are competitors positioning themselves against terminology you introduced?
Are AI systems explaining the category using a structure that resembles yours?
This gets at a deeper form of market influence.
The brand may not appear in every piece of content.
Its worldview can still be everywhere.
The most valuable part of category creation may be defining the evaluation criteria
This is something I think brands underestimate.
Naming the category gets attention.
Defining how people judge the category can be considerably more valuable.
Suppose your product performs exceptionally well on three dimensions:
- ease of installation
- reliability
- battery life
If you can credibly help establish those three things as important category criteria, the entire competitive conversation starts moving toward your strengths.
Buying guides begin discussing them.
Reviewers test them.
Customers ask about them.
Competitors respond.
AI answers begin comparing products using those dimensions.
At that point, the company has influenced the rules of the game.
This is one of the clearest manifestations of Share of Explanation.
The brand has helped determine which questions the market asks before anyone starts answering them.
A Category Ownership Framework
For practical purposes, I would evaluate category-building work across six areas:
| Category ownership element | What good looks like |
|---|---|
| Definition | The market uses a recognizable category description |
| Problem | A consistent primary customer problem is associated with it |
| Language | Important terminology is repeated across credible sources |
| Evaluation | Reviews and comparisons use stable purchase criteria |
| Authority | Founders, experts and third parties reinforce the explanation |
| Retrieval | Search and AI systems reproduce a coherent category understanding |
A brand does not need to control every row.
It should influence several of them.
The closer the market gets to using your category logic without requiring your brand name to be present, the stronger your narrative position has become.
How should a consumer tech brand launch a new category?
The sequence matters.
I would generally approach it this way:
Phase 1: Research the market
Understand:
- the customer problem
- existing terminology
- adjacent categories
- consumer language
- competitor narratives
- media interests
- obvious objections
Do this before locking the category story.
Phase 2: Establish the explanatory logic
Define:
- category
- problem hierarchy
- market change
- point of view
- evaluation criteria
- differentiators
- proof
This becomes the strategic foundation.
Phase 3: Build owned explanation
Create clear resources answering the obvious questions.
What is the category?
How does it work?
Who is it for?
What should people look for?
How is it different from the old solution?
Why does it matter now?
These resources become useful references for media, customers and search systems.
Phase 4: Earn third-party validation
Secure:
- category coverage
- product reviews
- founder commentary
- comparison stories
- research coverage
- expert validation
Independent sources help move the narrative beyond company claims.
Phase 5: Create repeated authority
Keep supplying useful explanations.
Do not abandon the category story after launch week because the marketing calendar says it is time for something new.
Categories take time to become familiar.
Keep teaching.
Phase 6: Measure narrative adoption
Look beyond mentions.
Track:
- category terminology
- repeated problem framing
- media descriptions
- comparison criteria
- founder citation
- AI category explanations
- Share of Answer
- Share of Explanation
The important question becomes:
Is the wider market beginning to explain the category the way we do?
How do you know whether you are beginning to own a category?
There are several useful signs.
Journalists start contacting the company for commentary about the category rather than only for product news.
Reviewers use terminology the company helped popularize.
Competitors begin responding to your claims or framing.
Buying guides use evaluation criteria that favour the way you have defined the market.
Customers begin searching using the category language.
Retailers create dedicated category placement.
AI systems provide more consistent explanations of what the category is and how products should be compared.
None of these signals proves ownership individually.
Together, they tell you that the explanation is spreading.
Keychron and the power of category expansion
Keychron is a useful example from our own work.
When we began working with the company, mechanical keyboards were still considerably more niche than they are today.
The opportunity wasn’t simply to sell Keychron keyboards.
There was a larger education job around why somebody outside the enthusiast community might care about a mechanical keyboard in the first place.
Over several years, sustained media coverage, reviews and product storytelling helped Keychron become closely associated with the mainstreaming of the category.
That matters because category growth and brand growth can reinforce each other.
If you are one of the companies helping people understand why a category matters, you have a better chance of being remembered when they eventually decide to buy.
The same principle applies to far newer categories.
Sometimes the biggest opportunity available to a challenger brand is to grow the conversation rather than fight over the existing one.
Common category creation mistakes
Inventing terminology nobody understands
Novelty is not automatically useful.
A category name needs to help people place the product.
Explaining technology before the problem
Technical novelty means little until people understand why they should care.
Trying to own too many problems
Categories become easier to understand when they have a clear central purpose.
Making unsupported category claims
Saying you invented a category does not make it true.
Third-party adoption matters.
Changing the narrative every three months
Familiarity requires repetition.
Constant repositioning prevents the market from forming a stable understanding.
Treating the founder as a promotional mouthpiece
Founders create more authority when they explain the market than when they repeatedly praise their own products.
Measuring only coverage volume
One hundred articles can produce very little category influence if they describe the company in completely different ways.
Look at what the coverage teaches.
Frequently asked questions about consumer tech category creation
How do consumer tech brands create and own a new product category through PR?
Start by defining the customer problem, market change, category language, new approach and evaluation criteria. PR then distributes that explanation through earned media, reviews, founder commentary, comparisons and other credible third-party sources. Category ownership begins to emerge when the wider market starts using similar language and logic without requiring the company to explain it every time.
What role does storytelling play when a consumer tech brand is first to market?
Storytelling gives people a mental model for understanding an unfamiliar product. A useful category story connects the technology to an existing customer problem, explains what has changed, defines the new approach and gives people clear language for describing it.
How do you position a product that consumers have never seen before?
Begin with something they already understand. Define the existing problem and connect the new product to a familiar behaviour, category or analogy. Once that reference point exists, explain what the new approach changes and why the difference matters.
What role does PR play in category creation?
PR helps move the category explanation from an owned company claim into credible third-party environments. Media coverage creates understanding, reviews create validation, comparisons establish evaluation criteria and sustained commentary helps normalize the category over time.
How do brands become associated with a product category?
Association develops through repeated category placement, clear explanatory language, third-party validation, product performance and sustained presence. The goal is for customers, journalists, reviewers and other sources to repeatedly connect the brand with the category and the problem it solves.
Can a smaller consumer tech company create a category?
Yes. Challenger brands can have an advantage when an emerging market lacks a dominant explanation. A smaller company that provides clear terminology, useful research, strong founder expertise and consistent third-party validation can influence how the category is understood before larger competitors pay attention.
What is Share of Explanation?
Share of Explanation is a qualitative way of assessing how much a brand’s framing, problem definition and evaluation logic influence how a category is described. A brand can have strong Share of Explanation when journalists, reviewers, analysts or AI systems use its conceptual structure even when the brand itself is not mentioned.
How does category positioning affect AI search visibility?
AI systems synthesize information found across many sources. When credible sources repeatedly use similar category definitions, problem framing, terminology and evaluation criteria, AI systems have a clearer information pattern from which to construct answers. Strong category positioning can therefore support both brand visibility and more consistent understanding in AI search.
The larger point
Companies like to say they are creating categories.
Most are launching products.
There is a meaningful difference.
A category starts taking shape when other people understand the problem, use the terminology and begin judging products according to a recognizable set of criteria.
That requires explanation.
Then validation.
Then repetition.
PR has an unusually important role in that process because much of the category eventually lives outside the company’s own website.
It lives in the review somebody reads before buying.
The article explaining why the market is changing.
The quote from a founder who has become useful to journalists.
The retailer deciding where the product belongs.
The Reddit discussion where consumers develop their own shorthand.
The comparison guide establishing what buyers should look for.
And now the AI answer pulling those signals together.
The company with the biggest voice does not automatically own that conversation.
The company that helps make the market understandable has a much better chance.
That is the real opportunity in category creation.
Define the problem clearly enough that people recognize it.
Give the new solution language they can actually use.
Establish the criteria by which the market should judge it.
Then spend enough time reinforcing that explanation that the wider category begins carrying it for you.
At that point, you have moved beyond telling your own story.
You have started shaping the story everyone else tells about the market.