Before you can find anything you have to decide what it is you're looking for. And that requires some kind of framework. Aristotle developed a taxonomy of living things so it was easy to match something he might find which didn't appear to be on the map with the conceptual map he had made. In marketing there is often too much focus on individual brands and products and not enough about what category they are operating in. Without a reference point its impossible to explain what. Even if we are looking for a particular kind of consumer behaviour in relation to a product - flossing teeth - this only makes sense when you relate it to a framework. Of dental care. Or the manufacture of light strong threads - an alternative framework.

The dotcom boom of the late 1990s saw a stream of entrepreneurs with startup funding heading for ad agencies with the idea that if they put their product out there then it would become a market leader - without understanding that if you don't have an established marketplace then you have to make one. Without that there is no market to be leader of. And it became very evident that many of these startup web ventures solved problems which did not fit any established market category which meant there was no way to explain what the product was and why it was a benefit. Without a category it took usually at least 10 minutes to explain what it was the product did. And this was to an agency audience - sympathetic - keen to make a living promoting whatever it was that this web startup represented. And the entrepreneur would expect that the advertising agency would find a creative idea so compelling that a 10 minute explanation could be reduced to seconds. It couldn't be done. The most important task for a startup is to define the category and only then to go on to explain where the product fits within the category. Why it is better and what it will do for the customer, Try it. Try to explain what a product is and does without reference to a category. Language disappears.

So it has 4 legs, is furry, has a pouch, has a beak like a duck. Sounds like it comes from Australia.. or the Galapagos..

This is just as important when you go and ask real people about products. Because the categories they use aren't necessarily the ones the marketers dreams up. One of the main roles of marketing is to do some educating so customers stay with the categories the brand managers would prefer them to have. Or to think of the market using a new framework which will make the market entrant feel more relevant and the established products look less relevant. But what ever happens don't try to do it without a category.