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Category Creation: How to Build a Brand That Customers, Employees, and Investors Will Love book club questions
Here are 11 book club questions for Category Creation: How to Build a Brand That Customers, Employees, and Investors Will Love by Anthony Kennada, ordered to open easily and end somewhere worth arguing about. Copy them, print them, or bring them up one at a time.
Category Creation is Anthony Kennada's account of how Gainsight, where he served as chief marketing officer, built the customer success management category from scratch — and the broader argument that this approach to marketing, creating a new market category rather than competing within an existing one, produces compounding advantages that conventional brand-building rarely matches.
Anthony Kennada · 2019 · 3h 45m
Full summary and key takeaways →The 11 questions
- 1.
Kennada argues that naming a category is the first act of category creation. What unmet need in your industry or profession is real but doesn't yet have a name?
- 2.
He distinguishes between competing in an existing category and creating a new one. What are the conditions that make category creation the right strategy versus competing on features in an existing market?
- 3.
Gainsight built Pulse, a conference that became the industry gathering for customer success practitioners. What would the equivalent community infrastructure look like in your market?
- 4.
The category brand and company brand argument is counterintuitive — you invest in making the category credible even for non-customers. What's the risk of this approach, and when does it break down?
- 5.
Kennada says customer success as a job function barely existed when Gainsight started. Can you identify a job function or professional role that is emerging in your industry but hasn't crystallized yet?
- 6.
Category creation requires patience. How do you make the case to investors or executives for a multi-year marketing investment when the commercial return is hard to measure early?
- 7.
He emphasizes customer advocacy as a pillar of category creation. What does it actually take to convert satisfied customers into advocates who actively recruit peers?
- 8.
What categories have been created in the last decade in your industry? Who created them and what was the first-mover advantage worth?
- 9.
Kennada admits the strategy can fail if the problem doesn't resonate widely enough. How do you test whether a problem is big enough to support a category before committing fully?
- 10.
How does category creation differ from simply being good at content marketing and community building? Is there a meaningful distinction, or is the category framing mostly rhetorical?
- 11.
If you applied Kennada's four pillars — point of view, community, category brand, customer advocacy — to a product you work on, which pillar would be hardest to build and why?
How to run the discussion
- Pick six to eight, not all of them. An hour of real discussion covers fewer questions than anyone expects, and racing the list is what makes a book club feel like homework.
- Open with what people noticed, not what they concluded. Asking for a verdict first hardens opinions before anyone has heard each other.
- Let the disagreement run. The questions below that split a room are the ones worth the time; the ones everyone answers the same way can be skipped.
- Ask the quiet person a specific question. A direct, narrow question is far easier to answer than an open invitation to contribute.
Themes worth steering toward
If the conversation stalls, these are the threads that usually restart it.
Common questions
What are good book club questions for Category Creation: How to Build a Brand That Customers, Employees, and Investors Will Love?
Here are 11 book club questions for Category Creation: How to Build a Brand That Customers, Employees, and Investors Will Love by Anthony Kennada, ordered to open easily and end somewhere worth arguing about. The strongest openers ask what each reader noticed rather than what they concluded, and the discussion usually turns on category design, brand strategy, marketing.
How long should a book club discussion of Category Creation: How to Build a Brand That Customers, Employees, and Investors Will Love last?
Most groups run 60 to 90 minutes of actual discussion. That is roughly six to eight questions, not all of them, so pick the ones that suit your group rather than working down the list in order.
What are the main themes in Category Creation: How to Build a Brand That Customers, Employees, and Investors Will Love?
Category design, Brand strategy, Marketing, Growth, Community. Those are the threads most likely to divide a room, which makes them the useful places to steer a discussion that has gone quiet.
Picking the next one? See books like Category Creation: How to Build a Brand That Customers, Employees, and Investors Will Love or questions for other book club picks.
