Introducing the Category Design Canvas 3.0

It's is a very big deal, according to me.

Strategy is worthless if your leadership team doesn’t follow it.

But how do you get all the leaders of a company on the same page?

The Gold Front Category Design Canvas.

Of course, you don’t need to use ours. But whatever you use, you need a single place to get all your ideas on the table, talk them over, and come to agreement.

I’ve been improving and honing our strategy canvas for 10 years. With v3.0, I think I’ve finally found the perfect configuration. To me, it’s poetry:

Here’s how it works:

The left side covers rational product marketing stuff:

• Product (or brand)

• Category Play

• Competitors

• Use Cases & Triggers

• Features & Capabilities

The right side is where you win hearts and minds:

• Most Important Customer

• Customer Ambition

• The Enemy

• Category Idea

Like any great story, it’s all inter-related.

No left side, no proof.

No right side? No hook, no story.

Once you’ve filled it all out, debated each point with your leadership team, and cajoled them into agreeing with you, you have everything you need to write your Category POV.

If your Category POV is a delicious meal, the Gold Front Category Design Canvas is a cupboard stocked with your best ingredients.

Let me show you an example.

Here’s the category design canvas filled out for Loom, circa 2017.

Their Most Important Customer was knowledge workers.

Knowledge workers wanted a more human way to share ideas at work. But there was a big, intractable problem standing in the way of this ambition: Too many meetings.

And, in 2017, Loom could absolutely make the case that their new video messaging app was the only thing that really made a dent in the “too many meetings” problem.

Can you see the relationships at work here?

Your Most Important Customer has an Ambition. The Enemy stands in their way. And the Category is the only thing that helps them get past The Enemy to reach their Ambition.

For Loom, these ideas came together to form a powerful story.

“Instead of another boring meeting, send a Loom. You’ll love it.”

As marketing, this pitch worked like gangbusters. But this narrative also became a north star for Loom’s product development team, who continued to build features that paid off the promise of “A more human way to share ideas at work.”

That’s the power of a north star strategy - customers absolutely love it when marketing and product are in sync. When what you promise and what you deliver are wonderfully in sync, consistently over time, it turns customers into raving fans.

I’ve analyzed the success of 57 tech unicorns.

It’s striking how many have a Most Important Customer, an Ambition, an Enemy and a Category Idea at the center of their story.

But of course this makes sense when we consider the all mighty mind of the customer.

Stories are how minds make sense of the world. These four ideas - Customer, Ambition, Enemy, and Category are simply the essential ingredients the mind requires to find any sales story compelling.

It’s why, at Gold Front, the Category Design Canvas is the heart of our workshops.

And because the CDC is based on timeless principles of the mind, our CEOs and leaders can come back to the canvas whenever a new strategic need arises.

In summary:

• Want to get aligned? You need to get all your strategic ideas in one document for all leaders to see, debate and agree on.

• The Category Design Canvas has a proof side and a hook side. You need both for your strategy to work.

• Fill it out as a leadership team. Debate answers as a group. Then agree.

• Don’t move on to writing your Category POV until there’s enough agreement on the canvas.

That’s it for today!

Master the CDC and you’ll have the best possible ingredients for writing a great strategic narrative.

And soon I’ll teach you how I write my narratives.

PS: For the PDF version of the canvas, reply “I want it” or DM me and I’ll send it over.