Category Creation: How PR Names and Owns a New Market

PR names and owns a new market by getting independent voices (reporters, analysts, customers, and eventually AI engines) to describe a new problem in your words and to cite your company as the reference example. The company defines the category; earned media makes it real. Without third-party adoption, a category name is just a tagline.

Category creation is one of the highest-stakes positioning choices a growth company can make. Done well, it lets you set the buying criteria, shorten comparison cycles, and anchor the market’s understanding around your approach. Done poorly, it confuses buyers, burns a year of marketing, and leaves you explaining a term nobody searches for. This guide covers when to attempt it, how to build the narrative, and how PR carries it into the market.

What is category creation, and why does it matter?

Category creation is the deliberate work of defining a market that buyers do not yet recognize: naming the problem, naming the new type of solution, and establishing the criteria by which solutions should be judged. The goal is for your company to become the default answer when anyone asks who leads that category.

The economic argument comes from the category design school. Play Bigger’s 2014 report, Time to Market Cap, analyzed venture-backed U.S. technology companies founded since 2000 and found that “category kings” captured about 76% of the total market value of the companies that met its criteria. The authors later expanded the argument in the book Play Bigger. Treat the figure as the authors’ own study of a specific dataset rather than a law, but the pattern it describes is widely observed: in a new market, the company that defines the category tends to capture a disproportionate share of its value.

A frequently cited example is HubSpot. The company’s investor relations biography of co-founder Brian Halligan credits him with coining “inbound marketing” and, with co-founder Dharmesh Shah, building a movement around it, including the INBOUND event and a book of the same name. The category name, the event, the book, and the company reinforced one another.

When should a company create a category instead of competing in one?

Create a category only when your product solves a problem in a way existing categories cannot describe, and when buyers will change behavior once they understand it. Most companies should compete in an existing category with a sharp point of difference; category creation is expensive and slow.

Signal	Compete in an existing category	Create a new category
How buyers describe the problem	They already have a name for it and a budget line	They describe it in pieces, or not at all
How you are compared	Fairly, against peers with similar approaches	Unfavorably, against tools built for a different job
Analyst coverage	An existing analyst category fits your product	You are forced into a category that misrepresents you
Sales cycle	Buyers arrive with criteria you can win on	Sales time goes to reframing the problem
Resources	Limited marketing and PR budget	Funding to sustain a multi-year narrative
Evidence	Incremental improvement	A measurable change in outcomes buyers can verify

If most of your answers fall in the right column and you have the funding to sustain a narrative for several years, category creation may be worth it. If they fall in the left column, a strong position within an established category, built on a clear messaging house, will usually win faster.

There is a middle path that often works best for Series A and B companies: a subcategory. Rather than inventing an entirely new market, define a clearly named segment of an existing one (“X for regulated industries,” “the operating system for Y teams”) that buyers can place immediately.

How do you name and define a new category?

Name it in the language buyers would use if they already had the word, and define it in one sentence a reporter could repeat without your help.

A strong category name is:

• Descriptive. It tells a newcomer roughly what the category does. Abstract or clever names rarely travel.
• Not your brand name. If the category is your product name, competitors and reporters will not adopt it, and the category will never become a category.
• Searchable and sayable. Two or three words, no invented spellings, easy to say in an interview.
• Defensible. It describes your approach well enough that your company is the natural example.

Then write the category point of view, the core of any category narrative:

1. The old way: how the problem is handled today, and why that approach is breaking.
2. The shift: the change in technology, regulation, behavior, or economics that makes a new approach necessary now.
3. The new way: the new category, defined in one sentence, with the criteria a good solution must meet.
4. The proof: evidence that the new approach works, ideally from customers and independent data.

Notice that the company does not appear until the proof. A category narrative that leads with the product reads as a launch, and reporters will cover it, if at all, as one. Our post on PR-led brand strategy explains why the narrative should be built to survive a reporter’s first question.

How does PR make a new category stick?

PR makes a category stick by moving the term from your website into independent sources: news coverage, analyst research, podcasts, conference agendas, customer language, and reference sites. Each independent use is evidence that the category exists apart from your marketing.

This is a high bar, and it is meant to be. Wikipedia’s guidance on neologisms requires reliable secondary sources that discuss a new term itself, not just sources that use it, and says a term in wide use without that treatment is not yet ready for coverage. AI engines and buyers apply a similar informal test: a term they only find on your site is your marketing, while a term they find explained in trade press, analyst notes, and tier-one coverage is a market.

The PR program for a new category usually runs in this order:

1. Validate the category with buyers and analysts. Test the name and definition in customer interviews and analyst briefings before going public. If analysts push back hard, refine it now.
2. Name and define it. Lock the name, the one-sentence definition, and the evaluation criteria in a category brief that every spokesperson uses.
3. Write the point of view. Publish a founder or CEO essay that argues for the shift, and prepare executives to make the case in interviews.
4. Seed it with proof and data. Original research that quantifies the problem gives reporters a reason to write about the shift rather than the company. Our guide to data-driven PR covers how to build a study reporters trust.
5. Earn independent adoption. Pitch trend stories about the shift to reporters who cover the market, brief analysts, place executive bylines, and encourage customers to speak about the change in their own words.
6. Reinforce it in search and AI answers. Publish a definitive “what is [category]” page, use the term consistently in structured data and profiles, and track whether AI engines define the category and cite you.

How do you pitch a category story to journalists?

Pitch the market shift, not the category name. Reporters cover change, conflict, and consequences; they rarely cover a company’s preferred label. In Muck Rack’s State of Journalism 2026, 70% of journalists said clear relevance to their beat is what they value most in a pitch, and 40% named original data or research. A category pitch should deliver both.

Weak category pitch	Strong category pitch
”Acme is defining the new category of X."	"Mid-market finance teams are abandoning Y. Here is data from 300 of them on what replaced it.”
A press release announcing the category name	A trend story with customers, an analyst, and a competitor or two quoted
The CEO explaining the product	The CEO explaining why the old approach is failing, with evidence
Pitching only tier-one business outlets	Trade press first, then tier-one once the shift is visible
One launch-day push	A sequence of stories over 12 to 24 months

Two practical notes. First, expect reporters to describe the shift in their own words before they adopt your term; that is normal, and consistent use by your executives and customers is what eventually standardizes the language. Second, include competitors in the story where it is honest to do so. A category with one company in it looks like a product; a category with several credible players looks like a market, and the company that defined it is still the reference example.

For executives carrying the narrative, an executive visibility program and a steady cadence of bylines give the category point of view a home outside your own site.

How do AI engines learn a new category?

AI engines learn a category the way they learn any entity: from consistent, corroborated descriptions across many independent sources. When a buyer asks ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, or Google AI Mode “what is [category]” or “which companies lead [category],” the answer is assembled from the pages those systems find and trust.

That has three implications for a category program:

• Own the definition page. Publish a clear, factual “what is [category]” page that defines the term, lists the evaluation criteria, and describes the main approaches, including competitors. Pages that read as neutral reference material are easier for engines to quote.
• Use the term identically everywhere. Your site, structured data, LinkedIn, Crunchbase, review sites, press boilerplate, and executive bios should all use the same category name. Our guide to entity strategy for GEO explains how engines reconcile inconsistent descriptions.
• Earn third-party definitions. Trade articles and analyst notes that explain the category are the corroboration engines need before they repeat the term with confidence.

This is where the disciplines connect. At Digitize, category programs start with brand and messaging work, run through tier-one and trade PR as the core, and finish with AEO and GEO so the category definition that reporters adopt is the same one AI engines repeat.

What mistakes sink category creation efforts?

Most failed categories fail for one of five reasons:

1. The category is the product. If only your company can be in it, nobody else will use the term.
2. The name is clever, not clear. Buyers and reporters will not adopt a term they have to decode.
3. No proof. A new category without customer outcomes and independent data reads as positioning, not a market shift.
4. No patience. Categories take years. Companies that change the name or definition after two quarters reset adoption to zero.
5. No alignment. Sales, product, marketing, and executives use different language, so the market hears several categories instead of one.

Hypothetical example. A Series B software company believes compliance teams at mid-market banks need a new kind of tool. It tests three category names in 20 customer interviews and four analyst briefings, chooses the one buyers repeated unprompted, publishes a survey of compliance leaders that quantifies the problem, places the CEO’s point of view as a byline in a leading trade outlet, and pitches a trend story to a national business reporter that quotes two competitors as well as its customers. Over the next 18 months, it measures how often trade press, analysts, and AI answers use the term. The figures are illustrative; the sequence is the point.

How do you measure whether you own the category?

Measure adoption, not activity. Track how often independent sources use your category term, and how often they name your company when they do.

• Media adoption: articles using the term, and the share that name your company.
• Analyst adoption: whether analysts reference the category or a closely aligned one in research.
• Search demand: branded and category search volume over time.
• AI answers: whether engines define the category accurately and list you among its leaders.
• Sales language: whether prospects use the term unprompted in discovery calls.
• Competitive adoption: whether competitors start positioning against your category definition, which is often the clearest sign it has taken hold.

If you are deciding whether to create a category or sharpen your position in an existing one, our brand strategy and messaging team runs that work with PR at the center from the first workshop. Start a conversation about your category.

Frequently asked questions

What is the difference between category creation and positioning?

Positioning defines where your company sits within a market buyers already understand. Category creation defines a new market and its evaluation criteria, then positions your company as its reference example. Every category creator needs positioning, but most companies need only positioning, built on a clear point of difference in an existing category.

How long does category creation take?

Expect years rather than quarters. Early trade press and analyst conversations can begin within months, but broad adoption of a new term by reporters, analysts, buyers, and AI engines usually takes several years of consistent narrative, proof, and executive visibility. Companies that change the name midway generally restart the clock.

Can a startup create a category?

Yes, but most should start with a subcategory. A Series A or B company rarely has the budget to educate an entire market. Defining a clearly named segment of an existing category (“X for healthcare,” “Y for multi-location operators”) lets buyers place you immediately while still giving you ownership of a defined space.

Should competitors be included in a category story?

Usually, yes, where it is honest. A category with a single company looks like a product launch, while a category with several credible players looks like a real market. Defining the criteria and being the first and clearest example keeps your company at the center even when others are named.

How do you get analysts to recognize a new category?

Brief analysts early and often, before the public launch, with a clear definition, evaluation criteria, customer evidence, and an honest view of adjacent vendors. Analysts are more likely to reference a category when they hear it from customers and see it in independent coverage, so analyst relations and PR should run together rather than in sequence.