Law of Category

A better way to be the first in mind is to create a new category.

If I ask you, who is the first president?

Your immediate response is of course: Emilio Aguinaldo.

If I ask you who the second president is? The third, the fourth or the fifth? Can you answer as fast as you did the first one? For most of us, we are even clueless! Why? Because of the Law of First — if you are the first, people will remember you the most. They won’t usually recall the others following the first one.

But let me ask you another question — Who is the first lady president? Again, your quick reply would be: Cory Aquino.

How did you know even though she wasn’t the first president? Because though she wasn’t the first (She is the 11th president), she created a new category. She is the first lady president among a category full of male presidents.

Therefore, a good marketing strategy is to create a new category; whether in a company, a product, your personal branding — creating a new category will enable you to give birth to the newest niche untapped by your peers or competitors. In fact, if you create a new category, you won’t have any competitors, until they start copying you by which you already have a firm hold on being the first in the market.

More Examples:

Richard Poon. He steered away from the usual pop and band music scene as he sang standards rendered by the likes of Frank Sinatra and Tony Bennett. He was the first young guy who sang standards in the Philippines ala Michael Buble.

Mang Inasal. The first Pinoy-Style BBQ Chicken. How many chicken restaurants are there? A Lot! But they’re the first one that offers a specialty chicken from Iloilo and brought it to Manila.

Me. My book YOUnique, is about the four different personalities. D-I-S-C: Dominant-Influential-Steady-Corrective. It’s a study conducted by William Moulton Marston in the 1920s; there are also a handful of foreign authors who has written about it ever since. I started teaching this concept 12 years ago. I know that Filipinos would greatly benefit from the D-I-S-C personalities so I waited for someone to write for the Filipino setting. I waited and waited for 12 years, until I got tired of waiting. I told myself, if no one is going to do it, then I might as well be the one to heed the call.

I’m the first Filipino author who wrote about this concept. I even used famous Philippine animals to represent each personality.

How many authors are there? Hundreds of thousands! What gives me the confidence to get the book out in the market? Because by using the Law of Category, you can have a higher percentage of success.