ZAG: The #1 Strategy of High-Performance Brands

The cheap-reader category was pure white space before someone noticed a job not getting done: People were going without extra pairs of glasses because they didn’t want to spend hundreds of dollars on prescription pairs.

Using ethnographic research in which researchers move in with consumers to observe their habits firsthand, they uncover need states

Customers today don’t like to be sold—they like to buy, and they tend to buy in tribes. Better advice for companies is to focus their communications not on a USP but on a UBT—a Unique Buying Tribe—that has a natural affinity for the company’s products or services.

the advertising industry is fighting back with even more intrusiveness. This is the first reason for advertising’s death spiral.

since people now have a choice, they’re choosing to spend more time on the Web, where communication is more like a conversation than a sales pitch. They’re also listening more to their friends, in a return to the word-of-mouth culture

And what about your company? Where’s your passion?

25 years from now your company is wiped out. Now, sit down and write your company’s obituary. What would you like posterity to say about you?

With a zag, you can start a new category that your customers, your employees, your partners—even your competitors—will help you build.

In a marketplace of me-too offerings, people don’t seek features and benefits so much as tribal identity.