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Category Entry Points

The set of situations, needs and moments in which a buyer thinks of a category: the cues a brand must be linked to in memory to be considered at all.

Romaniuk & Sharp, How Brands Grow 2 (2015); codified in Better Brand Health (2023)

What it does

Maps the situations, moments and needs that make people think of the category at all. Brands get chosen because they come to mind in the buying moment, not because they are better; CEPs are the list of those moments, which moves targeting from demographics to occasions.

When it breaks

Useless when the category does not yet exist. A genuinely new product has no moment to be recalled in, and it must build one before this tool has anything to work on.

Case

Snickers' “You're not you when you're hungry” rebuilt the brand around the hunger occasion rather than a demographic. In its first full year global sales grew 15.9% with share gains in 56 of 58 markets, adding roughly $376m over 2010–2012.

Campaign · Snickers case study ↗
Waking Commute Desk, 3pm After gym Late night One buyer's day Brand A Three ways in Rival One way in
Category Entry Points · 1.1

In the wild

Unchecked · not part of the tier

What people have written about this tool in the last twelve months. A machine found these and nobody has read them. Everything above this line was checked by hand.

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