Blink Twice
How to Map Your Category's Red Ocean
The first move in building any brand world, and the one most brands skip.
Most brands look like their category and have no idea. From inside the business, every choice felt like your own. From the shelf, it looks like everyone else's.
That's why the first move is mapping the red ocean.
What a red ocean is
Your red ocean is the shared language of your category: the colours, words, offers and promises every brand uses, until none of them mean anything. Audiences read you next to everything else on the shelf. If you can't see the rules, you'll follow them by accident.
Once you can see them, you can decide which rules matter and which are just habit.
The four layers
We map every category in four layers.
Look is how the category looks: colours, type, packaging, photography, the product itself.
Say is what it says: the claims, the words everyone uses and the tone of voice.
Sell is how it sells: price points, discounts, bundles and channels.
Believe is what the category promises underneath it all. It's the idea of what matters that every brand agrees on without saying it.
How to fill it in
Start with the first things people think of when they hear your category. Those associations are the core of the red ocean.
Then look across the whole category, not just your five closest rivals. If you're a niche brand, your direct competitors can give you a skewed picture.
Write down everything you see under each layer. When we do this for clients, it's usually around 20 things per layer, with images.
Finally, mark everything on the map that you do too. That's where you blend in.
Bottled water, mapped
Here's what the bottled water map looks like.
The look is blue and green, snow-capped mountains and clear plastic. The language is pure, natural and fresh. The selling is multipacks and low prices. Underneath it all is one belief: water is health.
Liquid Death looked at that map and went the other way on every layer: tallboy cans, skulls, heavy metal and the line Murder Your Thirst. Purity had stopped meaning anything because every brand claimed it. Liquid Death made drinking water feel at home at a party.
What sits outside the red
Anything on the map that only you do sits outside the red ocean. That's usually where your Unfair Truth is hiding. More often than not it's in how you approach the category, rather than in a single feature.
The free Red Ocean Map walks you through mapping your own category, layer by layer.
Then see where your brand world breaks. The Brand World Score is eight questions and two minutes, and gives you a score out of 10.