Before you can position a product, you need to know what the category's ideal product looks like — to the people who buy it. The Category Brief defines exactly that, on evidence.
What it is
The evidence-backed definition of the winning product in your category. It sets out who buys, what they value most, the questions they ask before purchase, and the levers that actually grow the market. It is the foundation every positioning and content decision rests on — the picture of demand you measure your product against.
What's inside
- Who buys — the real audience segments and what drives each
- What they value most — the features, benefits and use-cases that decide the purchase
- The questions they ask — what buyers need answered before they commit
- Growth levers — the moves that expand the category, not just rearrange share
- Pain points — where the category as a whole falls short, and the opening that creates
- The ideal product, defined — the benchmark to position against
An example
For Canon's pro photo printers, the Category Brief found the growth lever wasn't taking share — it was expanding the category. The telling number: in Germany only 1.0% of camera owners also bought a pro printer, against 2.2% in the UK. Doubling the attach rate, not winning a rival's customers, was the prize. A separate brief repositioned the Canon G7X from a "vlogging camera" to "travel content creation" — matching the product to how buyers actually framed their need, and opening a far larger pool of demand.
A real one — the German headphone market
Our German sound market study read 2,775 products and 30,899 mentions to define the category from the buyer's point of view.
Priority use cases. Music listening was the broadest (187 products, +0.64 sentiment) — but the standout was Gaming: the highest demand in the category at a 124.6 priority score, yet the lowest sentiment of any major use case at +0.45. High intent, unmet expectations — a use case 162 products compete in but none satisfy. Fitness was open white space: no top-15 brand owns it, despite strong demand (general fitness +0.67, running +0.61).
Top features by impact. Active noise cancellation led on volume (1,511 mentions, 846 impact, 331 products competing). Sound quality was the real differentiator — +0.64, the highest sentiment among top features, the property that decides the purchase. Battery life sat third (637 impact) with a wide −0.90 to +0.95 range.
Market structure. A barbell: soundcore 25.6% (budget leader), Apple 24.0%, Sony 9.3%, with Bose at 2.8% holding the premium end.
The strategic priorities that fell out: target gaming with purpose-built features (the biggest demand-to-satisfaction gap), and solve the build-quality crisis — the lowest-sentiment top feature at +0.22, ranging from −0.95 to +0.90.
Who uses it
This serves the CMO setting category strategy and the product marketer deciding what a product should stand for. When the ideal product is defined on evidence — and the growth levers are named and sized — you can prioritise the moves that grow the whole market, not just fight over today's slice.
Define the ideal product on evidence — then build toward it.