83. How to Strike in 2026

0:00Welcome to The Difference Engine, the show for tech founders, investors, investors, innovators.

0:09tech seems to be making a comeback which we love it's very counter cyclical wrongly bouncing back right now absolutely so um why don't we give some practical advice to those folks out there sat on nascent categories about strikes so you'll remember that strikes are these um launch events where you either launch your category if it's the first time you're launching your category or you come back and reinvent redefine the category if you're some way down the line we thought we'd take um four or five of the standard tactics that one does for a strike launch and talk you through where they are um from a perspective of today's market let's not forget that so much of today's market is being influenced by ai and the power of the llm to influence search and actually um a few of the things have also contributed so it's the end of what they call the era the zero interest rate uh nonsense that had a lot of um you know hail mary type categories launched which which haven't worked out can you explain what a hail mary uh category is to to those people who were not raised as catholics paul it's a it's an american saying from uh grid iron american football where you throw the pass um and you just hope it gets uh gets caught it's not unrelated to the hospital pass in rugby but the hail mary is where you um bless yourself and and hope for divine intervention that the past will complete.

1:32That's a Hail Mary. A sort of a spry and pry, but with one object. Yes. So, you know, one of the things that I hear all the time, and sadly, we just don't seem to get away from this, is the link between events, specifically analyst events, and, you know, shall I launch my category at the latest, Forrester, you know, IDC, Ovum, take your pick, events. There should be a little bit of clarity about events. And I've unfortunately had to cross London many times in recent months to go to the XL show. I thought he was going to say shed. Shed of um. Yes. And they have been heaving. Right? And it wasn't the idea that somehow all these events were just going to go online and we're not going to wander around talking to each other.

2:25People at booths having quite a good time. Yes. in fact there was and the name escapes me there was a startup that raised a lot and i mean a lot of money and then the founder exited with a lot of money uh claim on the hypothesis that events were gone now events are back i know that you and i have got a good friend who's a chief operating officer for a major events company um things are good they're booming in the events uh world but isn't the problem with events is if you if you're a startup if you're at the beginning of your category journey, they are ludicrously expensive. Yeah, they are. So, you know, the mistake is to take all your hard-earned cash, whether it's, you know, your founder's cash, your investor's cash, or even stuff you've scrambled just by your bootstraps, and spaff it all in an event and go, that's going to launch my category for me.

3:13Not all events are the same. We have to say that from the startup. But you pick the right event, and even though they're expensive, they can be very battle proven because the buyers that you need might be there on the day that you're there that you're there so maximizing face time which we know is very important in this world of zoom and podcasts is important so what sort of homework do people have to do to figure out if the event's going to be really important in um in launching the category so glad you are so like one of the things we always say is uh who is the audience and you know you will get a media pack that tells you that your audience is in there?

3:53Of course you will. Can you speak to companies of your same size that have got nice things, standard reference stuff that have been there last year and had a great time? Can you speak to them? Non-competitors, obviously. And also, you know, what's the, can I get a feel? They won't give you who went last year, but what sorts of companies and what sorts of, or even what sorts of titles attended last year. And you can get a good feel for where you, how good it's going to be for you with the amount of love and attention that you get back from the events organizer if they if if if they can't be bothered with you um you know obviously they've got an event that's sort of running on autopilot they don't necessarily need you you're not going to get a lot of value out of it you're gonna have to work extremely hard um there is of course um an alternative to all of this which is do your own events um now i i speak as somebody that doesn't like organizing events although you and I had a very excellently organized, I thought, AI dinner earlier this year with our previous guests, Roman Stanek and others on it.

4:56You need a very strong organizer, but if you do design your own event, and after all, if you're designing your own category, why wouldn't you? You can execute it flawlessly with the right agenda, the right spokespeople, the right guests, the right leave behinds, and the right impression of your company. So events, generally high cost, high reward, an option, do your own, but don't do that without a very strong organiser, either in-house or have an organiser. We can help you with some of those folks if you need the help. Yeah, and if you're doing it as part of a strike, just make sure there's not another strike going on at the same time.

5:37If you're in a major metropolitan city and a lot of people are going to come to you by public transport. make sure the drivers of those trains should they still have drivers are going to be working on that day that's a tough one so obviously uh in our glorious capital here we have folks who think it's fine to just bunk off for the day and call it a strike that is um you know you probably won't get your money back which is another reason not to put your eggs in one basket here um and you'll be scrabbling to to try and replicate the same sort of experience you had because if if you can't get to an event you sort of forget about it on the day but i think other things uh to avoid are things like when there's rival events on and that can include um rival events from your competitors so have a little look at their website and see what they're doing um it's also just another little um sneaky one if your competitor is having an event that day you can do a uh what you know a sort of fringe event and maybe take some of the folks that are going there anyway out for dinner the night before.

6:39Perhaps you could hire a mobile billboard and stick it outside the entrance. You can spray the flags, there's lots of things you can do. We've done that once or twice in our lifetimes. Exactly, there's no need to go and give all of your money to the events organisers, who often are, I'm coming on to a second tactic here, who often are the benighted, the gurus, the wise wizards of the IT and tech analyst community. You would be talking about the analysts themselves there. Oh, yes, indeed. Never knowingly under-impressed with themselves. Yeah, but aren't they really becoming a little less relevant as the world starts to become dominated by user-generated review content?

7:22Yes, and I think your AI point is here strongly as well. I mean, when you were buying enterprise software, let's say once every three years, five years, whatever your cycle was, and you really didn't want to get sacked as the buyer, you would consult with these gurus who spent their life analyzing and deciding which of the folks in their magic quadrant or wave or whatever they've got is the leader at that particular point in time. So there was, now that you've got AI, a lot of people are starting their searches, and we'll talk about this in a second on EarnMedia as well, starting the searches with a chatbot conversation.

7:59Why wouldn't they? So bypassing the analysts altogether. Now then the analysts, guys, you've got to give them their due. They are quite clever. And so you'll find that some of the software review sites are also owned these days by what were formerly analysts thinking of things like Capterra, etc. So they've shifted their game as well. But I think the sort of respect and let's just call it what it is, budget that was allocated to analysts is really hard to justify, certainly if you're starting off and just about to create your category, not least of which because they may be conflicted and have somebody paying them a lot of money that disagrees with your hypothesis.

8:39Yeah, it's deliberately trying to belittle you, should we say. I think it is worthwhile when you're doing this, expanding your own definition of what is an analyst. And there are some really influential individuals that may work for what you might consider to be tier two analyst houses. You search them out because they punch above their weight. And, you know, think about also specialist podcasters. Hello. Love those. Brackets. Other podcasts are available. Indeed. who strangely often hold deep sway over some niche audiences. Absolutely. And, you know, especially in things like, you know, recently looked at fintech, you'll find specialists on identity or specialists on payment rails, et cetera.

9:29You know, they don't have a lot of followers. They don't need a lot of followers. They are extremely specialists, but boy, will they look good if they support the thesis of your category. So, yeah, you're right. Expand that definition for sure. which moves us right on to something possibly the tactic that's changed the most about strikes and that's the classic you develop a pov who'd have thought it yeah earned media back with a bang boom all that hard thinking that you do about the specific problem or problems your category addresses that is meat and potatoes um to journalists right you know if you're smart about this one of the things you should be doing is really looking closely for for what we'd call trend jack opportunities.

10:13And that's where you can insert your category and your point of view within an existing conversation. So it doesn't look like you're trying too hard, but if you get this right, it can make your argument look compelling. And just a little learning from the field here, that point about making stuff look too hard is a valid concern, especially if you've got perhaps people on your team that have worked with larger vendors maybe used to dealing with larger budgets and you know thinking bigger because of budgets there may be a little bit of zettiness negativity if you will around the ability to trend jack a story you know i used to be at cisco and we used to talk about digital sovereignty all the time but we're only a small company we can't do it i think that's the wrong way of looking at it in fact you have a natural advantage here which is you are more fearless or you should be more fearless you understand that any mention of your category is a win and so you can afford uh with earned media to be pretty bold in a way that you know more buttoned down competitor couldn't be you can also be a lot faster yes and that's key these days there are all sorts of uh corporate reasons why why big brands can be very very slow to react.

11:29I think also, if you're going to do this effectively, it does make sense to use agencies providing their decent ones, because they should have the contacts. And of course, they've got a vested reason to know the right journalists. But the gold standard in agencies, I would say is their ability to take your point of view and get it inserted in many, many different opportunities. And it's that intelligence to be able to do that, that to me, always separates the agencies that are worthwhile against the also-round flackers. Yeah. And the flackers, as a former journalist, I think I can say this with confidence, The flackers are reasonably sorted out by the right journalists.

12:18You will get a million great slide decks to say, this is where we're going to put you. Oh, yeah? Show me. Show me when you've done this before. And the reason that the agencies that work very well work so well is they know not just the right journalists, but what the journalists are interested in. And therefore, they build up their own personal credibility with that journalist. Oh, it's so-and-so from this agency. Trust them. They've given me good stuff before. I will take the call. I will speak to their client. Let's not mess about with just having a reputation as being a big old legacy agency.

12:54It's all about the details. But when you're looking for somebody to help you on this, don't get obsessed about, has the agency done this for a company that's just like mine? That's not the point. The point is, can they explain the principles that allowed them to achieve the result you're looking for the intellectual process that was put together to give the delivery and that's what you're looking for you're looking for the thinking yeah because there's a very there's a great difference between knocking out product releases on a regular basis and corporate announcements and creating a category that you do need to go that extra mile it's a lot about that intelligence and awareness And a special bonus point about earned media as a tactic, these days, keep in mind this new rule of thumb, 85 % of LLM citations start off as earned media.

13:50Clearly, they're not going to take paid media. The LLM engines are pretty sniffy about what they use as citations. So you can now treat earned media as the engine of your category narrative. Clearly, there is value to be had by the filter of the media. But don't forget, look after your own social media as well. Right, which brings us right along to the earned and owned area of paid media. We're not just talking here about Facebook ads, Google ads, etc. We're talking about, largely these days, the social media platforms. And the one that B2B uses the most, sadly to this day, is LinkedIn, the Microsoft product.

14:38We know anybody's using LinkedIn at the moment. It's got a slot problem. It's got a massive slot problem. I don't know if you saw this week, Jonathan, there was a story about a former PR lady who posted the receipt from her visit to the cinema. Oh, the 200 quid? Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It costs 200 quid. She has a point, right? Like, it's expensive to go to the cinema, and maybe there's a little bit of, on the edges, sort of fraud-like behavior going on with charging. I get that. But the issue was more about, your first point, the slop problem with LinkedIn. And that lady copped a lot of flack, good or bad, for posting what is essentially a Facebook-like little groan on LinkedIn.

15:23And it gets to the heart of the problem. If you're building a category, is the amount of slop on LinkedIn an issue for you? I want to read another story about what's getting out of bed taught me about my entire approach to life. Yeah, I've been depressed. My dog's just died. This is what I had for breakfast. It's bring your dog to work day. Yeah. But that's not great. Nobody at LinkedIn is taking that off. So that means if you've got a very limited budget of where to spend your category money, does one spend some of it on, let's say LinkedIn, it's the one we're talking about, but one of the other social platforms and go with a paid media strategy.

16:03So how do you cut through all this slot, Ben Paul? Well, yeah, I mean, some obvious stuff. These days, everything's extremely visual. And that's an interesting one because visual, unlike copy, is very trendy, very meme-focused, you know, it changes our pace. So I remember we were at an event recently with a client in the ad tech space, and they had somebody, let's just say a famous matcha drink brand, who originally went with a very visual approach and deployed a ton of AI adverts, which went brilliantly for about a month or so. and then it went into reverse and people were calling it out as AI slot and they had to take all of that stuff down so visual yes but be extremely careful to try and go for I want to say classy but classic classic not of the moment especially in b2b when your buyers are a little bit more conservative anyway you need to be careful with visual approaches I can barely talk about this.

17:06Why is it that in 2026 major brands, which I can sort of understand, but emerging brands are using celebs? Why on earth would you use Idris Elba to sell... Service now? Because he's a good looking dude? I don't know. I can hardly talk about it. What on earth has the great actor got to do with this? Or Jude Law. Jude Law pretending to be a lawyer or something. I mean, maybe that's the joke. It is. It's a pun. You missed that. It's a very, very expensive pun. If anybody's got a simulation network out there, then I am available. How does that work? Simnet. Oh, God. Oh, God. Do keep up. I'm not keeping up with Jude Law, then.

17:54You've got to keep up with that. If you've got a disaster recovery, I'll mar it for you. Okay, so I think the other thing with influencers and celebrities, These guys can let you down. Let's not forget Tiger Woods was the face of Accenture for money a year. So very, very risky, very, very expensive. Don't think I'd recommend it. Slightly disappointed that the Sunday Times recently went with Idris and Jude and a bunch of other folks as celebrity endorsements. I think what they were trying to say is tech is mainstream, but we sort of know that. We don't need folks who know diddly squat about tech trying to sell us tech.

18:30It's a bad look. and probably, thankfully, too expensive for most people trying to start off in a category, avoid. I think the recommendation here is to treat your ad like a Super Bowl tactic. Like, you know, ads are, should be the cherry on top. They should be about brand building because they sure as hell ain't going to convince someone to pick up the phone and buy it straight away. um you know tech companies are as i mentioned with the sunday times piece getting away a little bit with the with the ability to make a slash slash a splash so what guns and roses next tour is going to be sponsored is that what you say do you know what it really wouldn't surprise me if it was like intel or spacex or whatever um so with paid media be careful avoid the slop and avoid the celebrity the lure of celebrity.

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20:09When the time is right to explore what's next, work with advisors who understand every step of the journey. hambleton partners so what should people be asking themselves then in all of this i mean what's the takeaway we've gone through five tactics so events high cost high reward analysts it's the shifting landscape there own media very strategic if you get it right but pick the right partners paid media can cut through the noise but boy is it expensive so we've been through a few tactics here. I think one of the things that is very important, because there's so much to do when you're building a category, you've got to get the product right, you've got to figure out who you're going to speak to, you've got to get those initial customer engagements, initial customer wins, initial pilots working, so you build the category.

20:57Just ask yourself, do you have, you know, as a team, the internal bandwidth to do some of this stuff DIY? I see a lot of people taking on the PR because they assume that's easy, starting off with the social media and losing steam, etc., et cetera. You, of all of those things we talked to, I think events is the one that has the biggest bang for buck. If you can DIY it, albeit with a, you know, freelance events focus. It's also the biggest risk. It's a risk. But then again, as you're starting off, learn the lesson and move on. So ask yourself, can you, what are the, which of these tactics to build out your category is appropriate for DIY or which ones should you actually conserve the capital on?

21:37I'm thinking specifically of large, unfocused events, and get your strike right. Maybe flip that to earned media or whatever. Yeah, and don't compromise and get some horrible little booths stuck in the corner that nobody goes to. It makes me want to cry some of the events I go to, and people have, you know, small companies have spent big money on places that nobody goes, and it just makes them look skint and pathetic, and you really don't want to look like that. No, you've got to play bigger, as they say. then you know creatively figure out the niche podcast you know we love to focus category builders on this on this pod so you know please hit us up um which of the analysts that aren't maybe uh the big names are on the way up or own the exact mind show of the exact target audience that you want to you want to get to that is clever thinking you know mind over dollars that's the sort of stuff that scrappy startups need to be thinking about yeah but to my mind really in all of this the one where you're going to get the best bang for your buck to me is it's what are the micro trends that are happening right now and how can we successfully trend jack in a in an earned media push you know use the influences to push your point of view in relation to what's happening so that your point of view just starts to seep into people's heads, but given a real-world context.

23:06So it's not just you saying, look at our stuff, it's great. It's people reading about you and realizing that you are entirely relevant to their problems right now. So there you have it. That's what we've got for you. That's what 2026 brings in terms of the right category tactics. You may disagree. If so, hit us up. We love a comment or two.

23:32thank you for listening if you want to learn more about category design head to becategorical.com if you need help designing and dominating your category then get in touch contact details are in the show notes

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