“The way to be enduring and different is to start with the market and look inwards from there, instead of starting with you and trying to pitch yourself to a market. The formula is context plus missing plus innovation equals a new category you can create. Context is what is changing around your target audience. Missing is what problem that creates, or what new way it opens up to solve an old problem. Then the innovation is what fixes that missing thing. Very few companies, agencies, anybody, start with that conversation. They start with who we are.”
Build a Better Agency Podcast · Agency Business · November 2026
Context
Asked how AI changes category design when everyone has the same tools, Maney says the strategy doesn't change, and lays out his three-part formula, which starts from changes in the audience's world rather than the company's own offering.
Transcript
…have to constantly make that argument. And look, I mean, there are thousands, millions probably of companies out there that ride on that better argument and make a perfectly good business and living, but you're not going to be a breakout, like enduring success by constantly making that argument.
…think it's super challenging, particularly in this world of AI. So I'm curious, as everybody has access to these same amazing tools, how has that changed or has it changed kind of the way you look at category design for businesses in general, but in our case, in our conversation today for agencies?
Well, and first of all, I would say that we can get to the topic of AI and all of that. I don't think it's changed the way we look at the market or the way we look at strategy. And so what I would tell your audience is that the way to be enduring and different is to start with what start with the market and look inwards from there, instead of starting with you and trying to pitch yourself to a market. And so the last book that we had out, the title of the book is the category creation formula. And it's because over the years of doing this work with companies, we found a lot of thinking tools that are really helpful. And a lot of them are in the book. And we've tried to codify all these things that we've done over the past 10 years. But the title is that because the single most powerful thing that we've come across is this very simple way of thinking about a strategy and the market you want to address. So we have this formula, and the formula is context plus missing plus innovation equals a new category that you can create. And so to explain that, and I would tell your audience, like go through this exercise because it actually can identify a way for you to be something different rather than just better. And so context is what is happening and what is changing around your target audience. And that includes everything from, and this…
So you've walked a lot of clients in your consulting business through this formula. Can you share with us an example of how it played out so people can sort of see the sort of the output of the context, what's missing, and innovation parts so they see how they fit together?
Yeah, sure. And I know this gets outside of the agency area, but actually kind of close to it in a sense. So one of the more successful projects that we did was with, so LinkedIn has a division called Sales Solutions, LinkedIn Navigator, Sales Navigator, a lot of your clients will be very familiar…
So as I'm listening to you, I'm thinking: so if an agency knows they want, and maybe already has, maybe they already have a niche and they serve a certain industry or group of businesses. What kind of questions would you, if they're going to gather a focus group, a research project, a chat over…
More from Build a Better Agency Podcast
