
Category Creation and Market Leadership with the CMO of 1Password, Melton Littlepage
The Exit Five CMO Podcast (Hosted by Dave Gerhardt)
Balancing Art and Science in Marketing Strategies
This chapter explores the interplay between creativity and data-driven strategies in marketing. It addresses the significance of emotional branding and brand perception while navigating the challenges of marketing attribution.
In this episode, Dave sits down with Melton Littlepage, CMO at 1Password, to discuss how he’s transforming a well-known consumer brand into a B2B category leader in cybersecurity. With decades of experience in SaaS marketing, Melton shares insights on category creation, demand generation, and the intersection of brand and product marketing—and why being the leader in your space matters more than perfect attribution.
Dave and Melton cover:
- Why category leadership is critical and how to position your company as #1
- How enterprise marketing, brand-building, and demand gen work together to drive growth
- How 1Password is expanding beyond password management to create a new category
Timestamps
- (00:00) - – Intro to Melton
- (06:39) - – The evolution of marketing from demand gen to category creation
- (09:48) - – The balance between data-driven marketing and brand-building
- (11:22) - – Why attribution alone won’t make your company “hot”
- (11:55) - – The importance of category leadership and market perception
- (14:07) - – How 1Password is shifting from password management to Extended Access Management (XAM)
- (16:31) - – How COVID changed the cybersecurity landscape
- (18:44) - – Why legacy security tools aren’t enough for modern businesses
- (21:14) - – The role of category creation in defining 1Password’s future
- (22:29) - – Naming and positioning a new category (Extended Access Management)
- (24:08) - – The risks and rewards of category creation vs. competing in an existing space
- (26:12) - – Why CISOs are hesitant to be early adopters—and how to shift buyer perception
- (29:28) - – The strategy behind creating demand for a new category
- (31:25) - – Lightning strike moments and big brand plays for category awareness
- (34:04) - – Structuring a marketing team to support both enterprise and self-service growth
- (37:58) - – Balancing B2B and consumer marketing
- (41:23) - – Why 1Password invested in sports sponsorships
- (44:20) - – The power of emotional marketing and brand trust in enterprise sales
- (47:07) - – Thought leadership and analyst relations in shaping a category
- (48:29) - – Final takeaways
Send guest pitches and ideas to hi@exitfive.com
Join the Exit Five Newsletter here: https://www.exitfive.com/newsletter
Check out the Exit Five job board: https://jobs.exitfive.com/
Become an Exit Five member: https://community.exitfive.com/checkout/exit-five-membership
***
Today’s episode is brought to you by Walnut.
Why are we pouring all this effort into marketing just to push buyers to a “request a demo” or “contact sales” button?
Come on, today’s buyers don’t want to talk to sales right away. They want to explore your product themselves, see how it works, and understand its value before booking a meeting.
That’s where Walnut comes in.
Walnut empowers marketers and GTM teams to create interactive, self-guided product experiences in minutes. Embed these experiences on your site, in emails, or anywhere in your funnel to let buyers engage on their terms, from awareness to close and beyond.
That's the beauty of Walnut - you're getting a platform that your sales and CS colleagues can use to showcase the product too.
And the best part? You get real intent data—see which features prospects love, where they drop off, and what’s actually driving pipeline. Demo Qualified Leads are the new MQL.
Over 500 companies, like Adobe and NetApp, use Walnut to drive 2-3x higher website conversion rates and 7 figures in pipeline on a yearly basis. So do you want to drive more leads, shorten sales cycles, and actually show your product instead of hiding it behind another typical B2B CTA?
Go check out Walnut.io. And if you tell them Dave from Exit 5 sent you, they'll build out your first demo for free!