Lochhead on Marketing

In this episode. Christopher Lochhead talks about what your real product or real service is. He discusses why product development and marketing should team because the perception of your product is your product. Marketing Defined One CEO, who is also a good friend of Christopher, once stated that “Marketing is what you do when you have a shitty product.” He was telling Christopher about their competitor who had a significantly inferior product but is, at that time, out-marketing them. Additionally, quite a lot of people in Silicon Valley also think this way. Wikipedia defines marketing and product as such: “In marketing, a product is an object or system made available for consumer use; it is everything that can be offered to a market to satisfy the desire or need of a customer." “I actually don’t want to disagree with Wikipedia, but I do want to propose a different perspective. Your real product, your real service, is people’s perception of your product and service." - Christopher Lochhead The People’s Perception of Your Products Christopher asserts that your product and service is not your product, but what people say it is, think it is and feel about it. He thinks that what other people say about the product or the service, is the truth, regardless if we think of it as true or not. He cites examples such as Harley Davidson and Jack Daniels. These brands may not be the most efficient in performance or the most premium whiskey available, but they have made a mark in the minds and the hearts of consumers. In fact, they are considered category kings. However, Christopher also cited instances when people's perceptions of product change, such as that of Facebook and Boeing 737 MAX. They can fix their products but the perceptions will take forever to change. The “Perception Manufacturing Business” Christopher believes that we are in the “perception manufacturing business.” Further, he mentions that not only does the perception of the product more important than the product itself, but it is also actually what the developer is building when he builds and market the products. "You don’t make products, you make perceptions about products. That is why legendary marketing is equally important to building legendary products.” - Christopher Lochhead In conclusion, Christopher says that product engineering, product development, and marketing need to come together. They must realize that they are in the “perception manufacturing business.” “It is ludicrous to say marketing is what you do when you have a shitty product. Marketing is what you do when you have a legendary product and you want people to perceive it as such.” - Christopher Lochhead To hear more about the Perception of Your Product is Your Product and more relevant information from Christopher Lochhead, download and listen to the episode. Bio: Christopher advised over 50 venture-backed startups. He is a venture capital limited partner and a former three-time Silicon Valley public company CMO, entrepreneur. In addition, he co-authored two bestsellers: Niche Down and Play Bigger. After he flunked school, with few other options, Christopher started his first company at the age of 18. He was a chief marketing officer of software juggernaut Mercury Interactive. Hewlett-Packard, in 2006, acquired that company for $4.5 billion. Further, he also co-founded the marketing consulting firm LOCHHEAD. Christopher was the founder/CMO of Internet consulting firm Scient. He also served as head of marketing at the CRM software firm Vantive. Christopher loves his family and friends. He thinks the Ramones are legendary and loves riding the mountains and waves of Northern California. We hope you enjoyed this episode of Lochhead on Marketing™! Christopher loves hearing from his listeners. Feel free to email him, connect on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and subscribe on iTunes!

In this episode, Christopher Lochhead shares two eye-opening stories about Artificial Intelligence in Marketing. First is about Nike buying an AI marketing analytics company and second, Chase Bank using AI to write marketing copies. He further discusses how these two leverages technology to produce massive results. Nike Acquires AI Startup Tech Crunch reported that Nike announced its acquisition of the Boston-area startup Celect. This is to help Nike beef up its predictive analytics strengths. The startup’s tech focuses on delivering data insights based on structured and unstructured retail data. "What we do know is Nike spent a lot of money to get their hands on a company that specializes in crunching a shit ton of data, of many thousands of customers, to anticipate their needs going forward." - Christopher Lochhead Christopher noted that this move of a giant brand has never happened in the past. In conclusion, this proves that analytics plays a huge role in Marketing. AI provides marketers data on customer’s wants and needs — even before they do. "What kind of big data analytics and AI are we using to understand our market categories and what might we do in this area?"  - Christopher Lochhead AI Machines Outperforming Humans AdAge published an experiment that they conducted about the bank company Chase. They compared the advertising copies written by humans versus that of AI technology. The result is: AI outperformed humans — with higher consumers clicking on the copy written by an AI machine. “The folks at Chase Bank entered a five-year agreement with this company Persado to use machine learning to write their ad copy.” - Christopher Lochhead The Implications of AI Marketing  Legendary marketers should always be experimenting with both the art and the science of marketing. “We're gonna see more companies benchmarking the two — whether ad headlines and copy, logo design and a lot of other creative things. What many of us in marketing thought technology wouldn't touch — are now being touch by that.” - Christopher Lochhead As the lines of Science and Art blur, Christopher calls out to fellow Creative professionals to stay in tune with technology. Never be complacent about our jobs because AI is coming to replace everything. The best action to do at the moment is to leverage this technology and not to resist it. “Leverage the science and be super strategically creative at the same time.” - Christopher Lochhead To hear more about Artificial Intelligence Marketing and more relevant information from Christopher Lochhead, download and listen to the episode. Bio: Christopher advised over 50 venture-backed startups. He is a venture capital limited partner and a former three-time Silicon Valley public company CMO, entrepreneur. In addition, he co-authored two bestsellers: Niche Down and Play Bigger. After he flunked school, with few other options, Christopher started his first company at the age of 18. He was a chief marketing officer of software juggernaut Mercury Interactive. Hewlett-Packard, in 2006, acquired that company for $4.5 billion. Further, he also co-founded the marketing consulting firm LOCHHEAD. Christopher was the founder/CMO of Internet consulting firm Scient. He also served as head of marketing at the CRM software firm Vantive. Christopher loves his family and friends. He thinks the Ramones are legendary and loves riding the mountains and waves of Northern California. Link: Nike buys an AI startup that predicts what consumers want Chase Commits To Ai After Machines Outperform Humans In Copywriting Trials We hope you enjoyed this episode of Lochhead on Marketing™! Christopher loves hearing from his listeners. Feel free to email him, connect on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and subscribe on iTunes!

The difference between Marketing Strategy and Tactics, oftentimes, confuses most people. In this episode of Lochhead on Marketing, Christopher Lochhead talks about some of the pressing questions people have on strategy and tactics. Quoting Dushka Zappata  A good friend of Lochhead, Senior Communication and PR Executive Dushka Zappata⁠ helps shine a light on this confusion marketers have about strategy and tactics. She has 20 years experience in the tech industry and she amassed 140 million views in Q&A site Quora with her writing⁠. Strategy Dushka Zappata answered the distinction between strategy and tactics. According to her, strategy answers the question “why?” To give an example for this, one may ask, "why are we doing this, why do we think it's a good idea?” “For strategy, the answer should be a blend of data, understanding of trends and creativity.” - Dushka Zappata Tactics She further continued that tactics, on the other hand, answers the question “how.” This pertains to questions such as, “how will we get this done," "what are the actions needed" and "what will get executed⁠." Working on your marketing strategy and tactics need not be confusing. To be clear, strategy answers, “why,” and tactics answers, “how.” To hear more about Marketing Strategy vs. Tactics and more relevant information from Christopher Lochhead, download and listen to the episode. Bio: Christopher Lochhead is a Top 25 podcaster and #1 Amazon bestselling co-author of books: Niche Down and Play Bigger. He has been an advisor to over 50 venture-backed startups; a former three-time Silicon Valley public company CMO and an entrepreneur. Furthermore, he has been called “one of the best minds in marketing” by The Marketing Journal, a “Human Exclamation Point” by Fast Company, a “quasar” by NBA legend Bill Walton and “off-putting to some” by The Economist. In addition, he served as a chief marketing officer of software juggernaut Mercury Interactive. Hewlett-Packard acquired the company in 2006, for $4.5 billion. He also co-founded the marketing consulting firm LOCHHEAD; was the founding CMO of Internet consulting firm Scient, and served as head of marketing at the CRM software firm Vantive. Link: Lochhead.com We hope you enjoyed this episode of Lochhead on Marketing™! Christopher loves hearing from his listeners. Feel free to email him, connect on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and subscribe on iTunes!

Christopher Lochhead discusses some of his marketing ideas timely for a potential (we hope not, but economists say otherwise) recession. Here are 7 recession marketing ideas for our listeners that you might want to consider for your business. 1. Never Let A Good Recession Go To Waste! History proved that recessions are the impetus for change. With change comes both threats and opportunities. Ordinary business people usually panic and focus on threats. However, legendary marketers focus on both. Recessions are a great excuse for taking action, especially those that should have been taken anyway. “Get on your recession planning now! Do not wait for the recession to happen. Get on it, regardless of whether or not we’re going to have a recession. They are great excuse to tighten up shit on your ship!” - Christopher Lochhead 2. Assume you can’t raise any more money Recession talks are best paired with the assumption that there is no money available for lending ⁠— no more VCs, bank loans, operating lines or rich uncles. If you do raise equity or debt, expect that your valuation or market cap is likely coming down, so you will have to give up more equity to raise VC. Likewise your costs to service loans or operating lines is going up. “Focus on your cash and remember that paying customers are your best VCs, your best bankers.” - Christopher Lochhead 3, Measure twice, cut once Go through your marketing plans and budget with a magnifying glass. Christopher advises to categorize every single investment ⁠— either one time or on-going investments ⁠— into three buckets: must do, good to do, nice to do. “Do not have more than a 3rd of your investments in ‘Must Do.’ Find at least 10% of your investments that you can cut now. If you want to get aggressive, find 25%. Plan to cut or re-deploy at least 5%, no matter what happens – recession or not.” - Christopher Lochhead  4. Brainstorm short-term ways to increase revenue Come up with some packages or offerings you can promote to your best customers now. Brainstorm around 25 ideas on how to increase revenue immediately. Ideas that aims to provide customers with an incentive to buy more from you right now are the key to this before they start cutting back spending hard. 5. Market & Sell Into The Whitespace Get a list of all of your existing customers and figure out which customers, own / use which of your products and services. This is to identify the white space or which customers are not users of all of your offerings. 6. Consider a competitor trade-in. Recessions are a unique opportunity to destroy your completion.  7. Double Down on Your Category This is an area you should focus on a recession. Chances are, most of your competition is going to panic and they most likely will over-cut marketing. Take advantage of the lower cost of marketing and go hard on content marketing, especially in social media. “Your prospects and customers will be hearing less noise. Take advantage of this, to evangelize your category point-of-view. Become more visible, while your competition is hiding under a desk, asking for their mommies.” - Christopher Lochhead Bio: Christopher Lochhead is a Top 25 podcaster and #1 Amazon bestselling co-author of books: Niche Down and Play Bigger. He has been an advisor to over 50 venture-backed startups; a former three-time Silicon Valley public company CMO and an entrepreneur. Furthermore, he has been called “one of the best minds in marketing” by The Marketing Journal, a “Human Exclamation Point” by Fast Company, a “quasar” by NBA legend Bill Walton and “off-putting to some” by The Economist. In addition, he served as a chief marketing officer of software juggernaut Mercury Interactive ⁠— which was acquired by Hewlett-Packard in 2006 for $4.5 billion. He also co-founded the marketing consulting firm LOCHHEAD; was the founding CMO of Internet consulting firm Scient, and served as head of marketing at the CRM software firm Vantive. Link: Lochhead.com

This is Christopher and I sure hope you are enjoying some of the first episodes of Lochhead on Marketing. I want to tell you about a special offer we’re making and why. Radical Generosity I am not a fan of self-promotion (which may sound crazy, coming from a three-time marketing guy), so I have thought about how I’m going to market and promote the podcast. On one hand, I wanted to do some marketing that would feel comfortable without the overly self-promotional crap. This brings us to my buddy and co-conspirator on category creation and design and legendary marketing, Eddie Yoon.  He has this powerful idea: that legendary category designers practice “radical generosity.”  If you think about the word ‘creation’, in a lot of ways, you could argue creation is about bringing something to the world and Eddie says if you wanted to create a design category -- having a radical generosity mindset matters. We’re Gonna Spend A Bunch Of Money Legendary category designers and creators come from a place of generosity. So, to promote this podcast, I am going to spend a bunch of money.  Rather than buying a ton of ads, I thought I might include you. I’m doing it in a way that is radically generous. Here's the offer: I’d love it if you will rate and review Lochhead on Marketing, take a screenshot of that review, email it to blackhole@lochhead.com. For the next 7 days, I am going to make a $20 donation to four of my chosen charities.  We will publish on our website with full transparency, how much money we raise and how much money we gave away as a result of you participating in helping us market the new marketing podcast. The Beneficiaries What I’m asking you to do is rate and review the podcast, share it on social media and email us at blackhole@lochhead.com. Once you do that, we will drop $20 in one of the following charities: 1. As we all know, I love animals. American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA) is one of my chosen beneficiaries. 2. Frontrow Foundation is a charity that works with people, often kids, who are facing life-threatening conditions to give them one legendary experience. 3. If you’re a regular listener, I'm sure you know how much I love 1LifefullyLived.org. Founded by my buddy, Tim Rhode, this nonprofit has tried to put together programs and content around life planning and design, financial planning and design, and entrepreneurship. They try to do this as close to free as possible. 4. The fourth one is a non-profit called DonorsChoose. This is an extraordinary organization that allows school teachers around the country, to tell people what they need and people can go ahead and fund those things for their students and their classrooms.   So thank you so much!

In this episode, Christopher Lochhead discusses why category creation is the new growth strategy for legendary marketing. Great companies do not focus on incremental growth, rather, they focus on being exponentially different. These leading companies introduce people to new businesses and provide them with new ways of doing things. Making A Different Future Legendary companies shape our lives and design a different future. They are on a mission to make the future different. Further, these companies create something exciting ⁠— a new way of living, thinking and doing business ⁠— category creation. Through category creation, these companies are pioneering the way to the future. “Many times they are solving a problem we didn’t know we had—or a problem we didn’t pay attention to because we never thought there was another way.” - Christopher Lochhead These legendary companies make ordinary companies run for their lives. These ordinary companies want to profit from the world for offering it the same set of products and services. Big Es and Small Es Lochhead cites different big enterprises as well as small enterprises as an example. Huge companies now started as small when they changed our way of thinking. Companies such as AirBNB, Google, Amazon, Palo Alto Networks, Cisco and Salesforce not only created great products⁠—they created a good company and a great category. “They had to courage to stand on their own to create a new category of products / services they niched down. And by designing a different niche, they got to own it.”  - Christopher Lochhead Category First, Brands Come Second Categories make the company, not the other way around. In relation to this, if we carefully examine big brands, there are no legendary companies in a bad category. There will be no customer-recall of brands if these brands are not tailored to cater to a category. “Brands only matter if they dominate categories that matter. Category design is a new lens, play with it!” - Christopher Lochhead To hear more about Category Creation as the new growth strategy and more relevant information from Christopher Lochhead, download and listen to the episode. Bio: Christopher Lochhead is a Top 25 podcaster and #1 Amazon bestselling co-author of books: Niche Down and Play Bigger. He has been an advisor to over 50 venture-backed startups; a former three-time Silicon Valley public company CMO and an entrepreneur. Furthermore, he has been called “one of the best minds in marketing” by The Marketing Journal, a “Human Exclamation Point” by Fast Company, a “quasar” by NBA legend Bill Walton and “off-putting to some” by The Economist. In addition, he served as a chief marketing officer of software juggernaut Mercury Interactive ⁠— which was acquired by Hewlett-Packard in 2006 for $4.5 billion. He also co-founded the marketing consulting firm LOCHHEAD; was the founding CMO of Internet consulting firm Scient, and served as head of marketing at the CRM software firm Vantive. Link: Lochhead.com We hope you enjoyed this episode of Lochhead on Marketing™! Christopher loves hearing from his listeners. Feel free to email him, connect on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and subscribe on iTunes!

In this episode, Christopher Lochhead looks into the age-old marketing approach of peanut butter marketing and why it is not an applicable strategy in today’s world. Instead, he introduces us to the concept of lightning marketing, as mentioned in his first book “Play Bigger.” PB and Lightning Defined In Lochhead’s book “Play Bigger,” he defined the terms Lightning Strike and Peanut Butter marketing. With the traditional Peanut Butter approach, marketers spread the marketing and PR across all sorts of markets⁠—over a long period of time⁠—with the hopes that somewhere, somewhat, the message would “stick.” “Peanut butter marketing does not break through in this era of ca-co-pho-nous media and never-ending swarms of new start-ups seeking attention. A lightning strike must overcome the noise.” - Christopher Lochhead In today’s society⁠—where ads are all over social media, television, radio, and print media⁠—most people consider Peanut Butter marketing as noise. This definitely calls for a different kind of approach, hence, a lightning strike. “A Lightning Strike is an event meant to explode onto the market, grab the attention of customers, investors, analysts, and media, and make any potential competitors crap their drawers. It is the full concentration of the company’s resources on a high-intensity strike.” - Christopher Lochhead, Play Bigger Ground Wars and Air Wars Lochhead quotes more information from his book, this time, about ground wars and air wars. Air-wars⁠ is a campaign to change potential customers’ minds so they would consider buying from the company. On the other hand, ground wars refer to more hand-to-hand work such as lead generation, sales, calls, and closing deals. “Some companies know they need both air wars and ground wars to move their target’s brains so they then move their buying patterns. Lighting strike gets air wars off with a resounding bang. One of the best strikes is to hijack an event⁠—an industry conference or trade show⁠—where a good number of the target audience will be gathered.” - Christopher Lochhead, Play Bigger It is a Company Event Lochhead further shares that the most important thing to understand about a lightning strike is: it’s not a marketing event, it’s a company event. It becomes a forcing function for every part of the company. “Once the work is done to define the category and set up the vision, the lightning strike is meant to show the world that the category and vision are real, imminent, and inevitable.” - Christopher Lochhead He gives further advise on strategies when to best employ the lightning strike approach. To hear more about Peanut Butter vs. Lightning and more relevant information from Christopher Lochhead, download and listen to the episode. Bio: Christopher Lochhead is a Top 25 podcaster and #1 Amazon bestselling co-author of books: Niche Down and Play Bigger. He has been an advisor to over 50 venture-backed startups; a former three-time Silicon Valley public company CMO and an entrepreneur. Furthermore, he has been called “one of the best minds in marketing” by The Marketing Journal, a “Human Exclamation Point” by Fast Company, a “quasar” by NBA legend Bill Walton and “off-putting to some” by The Economist. In addition, he served as a chief marketing officer of software juggernaut Mercury Interactive ⁠— which was acquired by Hewlett-Packard in 2006 for $4.5 billion. He also co-founded the marketing consulting firm LOCHHEAD; was the founding CMO of Internet consulting firm Scient, and served as head of marketing at the CRM software firm Vantive. Link: Lochhead.com We hope you enjoyed this episode of Lochhead on Marketing™! Christopher loves hearing from his listeners. Feel free to email him, connect on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and subscribe on iTunes!

Retailers or B2C market often uses the term mystery shopping. It is a concept to understand the customer’s journey in your services. For the fifth episode, Lochhead tackles the importance of mystery shopping for your company. Embracing Mystery Shopping Retailers employ the concept of mystery shopping⁠—where they pay someone to visit their store and document their experience. This is also applicable to online retailers as they commission mystery shoppers to test their website. It is important for marketers to look into the “funnel” and the “journey” because the key trick is simplifying the process. “I think it’s really critical whether you are in B2B or B2C, that we embrace the idea of Mystery Shopping.” - Christopher Lochhead Third-party participation is not always required for mystery shopping. Any individual can check their own websites and see how easy it is to navigate on it. Marketers should consider this in improving the overall buying experience. How hard is it to buy from myself? Lochhead discusses the importance of mystery shopping⁠—whether its for B2B, B2C, digital or physical. These companies should be able to identify how easy or hard it is to do business with their company. Further, Lochhead advises even the CEO or business owners themselves, to regularly mystery-shop. In doing so, they will be able able to experience first hand what their customers. This is a good ground to see what needs improvements as well. “Mystery Shopping always uncovers one or two, often small changes we could make to incrementally increase our sales.” - Christopher Lochhead To hear more about Mystery Shopping and more relevant information from Christopher Lochhead, download and listen to the episode. Bio: Christopher Lochhead is a Top 25 podcaster and #1 Amazon bestselling co-author of books: Niche Down and Play Bigger. He has been an advisor to over 50 venture-backed startups; a former three-time Silicon Valley public company CMO and an entrepreneur. Furthermore, he has been called “one of the best minds in marketing” by The Marketing Journal, a “Human Exclamation Point” by Fast Company, a “quasar” by NBA legend Bill Walton and “off-putting to some” by The Economist. In addition, he served as a chief marketing officer of software juggernaut Mercury Interactive ⁠— which was acquired by Hewlett-Packard in 2006 for $4.5 billion. He also co-founded the marketing consulting firm LOCHHEAD; was the founding CMO of Internet consulting firm Scient, and served as head of marketing at the CRM software firm Vantive. Link: Lochhead.com We hope you enjoyed this episode of Lochhead on Marketing™! Christopher loves hearing from his listeners. Feel free to email him, connect on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and subscribe on iTunes!

In this episode, Christopher Lochhead discusses the 5 traits of legendary brands⁠—different, stands for something, point of view, consistent and prioritizes category creation. We’re positive marketers will learn a lot from this mindset-oriented podcast! 1. Be Different   Legendary brands are unique, interesting and groundbreaking. Marketers must continuously ask themselves how to become different from their existing competitors. “When you hear most CEOs, CMOs, entrepreneurs, business people, talk about their differentiators⁠—most of what comes out of their mouths is a comparison from their competition⁠—as opposed to a distinction from their competition.” - Christopher Lochhead 2. Stand-up For Something Moreover, legendary brands have a mission, they stand up for something. Interestingly, more legendary companies of today are committed to creating more impact in society. It is often called a “double bottom line”, where they also build projects with a social or human impact. “You got to stand for something or you’ll fall for anything.” - Christopher Lochhead quoting singer/songwriter John Melencamp 3. Point of View  Legendary brands have a point of view. A company should have a true north that they believe in. A lot of brands have provocative POV and it has proven to skyrocket their revenues, especially when they associate with personalities who have strong positions and opinions. 4. Consistency Because POVs don't change, this brings us to the fourth trait, which is consistency. Legendary brands do not deviate from their core, but they can evolve and embrace new things. “Legendary brands are consistent, their colors, their point of view, and if you will, the place from which they come stays the same.” - Christopher Lochhead 5. Category First Arguably, for Lochhead, the most important trait of a legendary brand is category-first. These brands do not attack the category, in fact, they promote it. They help improve the category by expanding and leading the category in different ways. “Most legendary marketers know that categories make the brand, not the other way around.” - Christopher Lochhead To hear more about the 5 traits of legendary brands and more relevant information from Christopher Lochhead, download and listen to the episode. Bio: Christopher Lochhead is a Top 25 podcaster and #1 Amazon bestselling co-author of books: Niche Down and Play Bigger. He has been an advisor to over 50 venture-backed startups; a former three-time Silicon Valley public company CMO and an entrepreneur. Furthermore, he has been called “one of the best minds in marketing” by The Marketing Journal, a “Human Exclamation Point” by Fast Company, a “quasar” by NBA legend Bill Walton and “off-putting to some” by The Economist. In addition, he served as a chief marketing officer of software juggernaut Mercury Interactive ⁠— which was acquired by Hewlett-Packard in 2006 for $4.5 billion. He also co-founded the marketing consulting firm LOCHHEAD; was the founding CMO of Internet consulting firm Scient, and served as head of marketing at the CRM software firm Vantive. Link: Lochhead.com We hope you enjoyed this episode of Lochhead on Marketing™! Christopher loves hearing from his listeners. Feel free to email him, connect on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and subscribe on iTunes!

On today’s episode of Lochhead on Marketing, Christopher Lochhead delves into the concept of category creation. He discusses why legendary entrepreneurs, CEOs, and marketers see category creation or category design as the new approach to winning. What is it? Category design is a new management discipline that is focused on creating and monetizing new markets. Moreover, Lochhead sees category creation or category design as a radical differentiation of oneself. “Winning today is not about beating the competition. The most legendary entrepreneurs, CEOs and marketers are the people who invent a whole new game by defining a new market category, developing that market category and ultimately executing, so that they dominate it over time.” - Christopher Lochhead  Distinguishing Oneself Legendary marketers and innovators refuse to be in comparison to what came before them. Due to this, customers look at legends as unique, or someone who broke or took a new ground. Most importantly, legendary marketers want others to be compared to them. They are the agenda setters. They’re the ones defining the game and the rules. Moving the World Legendary marketers educate the world about an idea or a problem. Therefore, they provide a solution in a completely different way. They also have the ability to create value and urgency around the idea or problem. “When the world accepts your point of view about a problem and solution, you change everything. That is what category design is about.” - Christopher Lochhead Lochhead also discusses the fact that categories are everywhere. Further, he states that category comes first and the brand comes second. According to him, “category is the human filing system that we have, so we can relate to things and most importantly, value things.” In the end, Lochhead poses the question any marketer should ask oneself, “are you playing someone else’s game or do you have the courage in creating and designing your own category?” To hear more about category creation and more relevant information from Christopher Lochhead, download and listen to the episode. Bio: Christopher Lochhead is a Top 25 podcaster and #1 Amazon bestselling co-author of books: Niche Down and Play Bigger. He has been an advisor to over 50 venture-backed startups; a former three-time Silicon Valley public company CMO and an entrepreneur. Furthermore, he has been called “one of the best minds in marketing” by The Marketing Journal, a “Human Exclamation Point” by Fast Company, a “quasar” by NBA legend Bill Walton and “off-putting to some” by The Economist. In addition, he served as a chief marketing officer of software juggernaut Mercury Interactive ⁠— which was acquired by Hewlett-Packard in 2006 for $4.5 billion. He also co-founded the marketing consulting firm LOCHHEAD; was the founding CMO of Internet consulting firm Scient, and served as head of marketing at the CRM software firm Vantive. Link: Lochhead.com We hope you enjoyed this episode of Lochhead on Marketing™! Christopher loves hearing from his listeners. Feel free to email him, connect on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and subscribe on iTunes!