Startup Communications: 3 Principles of Market Leaders

For every communications and marketing problem in the world of startup, there lies a tried and true principle.

For any asteroid-will-kill-the-dinosaurs sized crisis, like "how to be seen as a market leader?" The answer can only come through marketing action by way of principle.

For no-one, no matter how great their product or mission, awakes one morning to find that the world's marketplace has suddenly gifted them the prestigious leadership position.

On the contrary, one can wake up to a cold hard truth. That someone, someplace, has already moved their way into the top spot.

A spot that's hard to unseat once the market leader becomes cemented into consumer consciousness.

Just ask the cybersecurity upstarts who thought they had a chance of stealing marketshare from CrowdStrike after last year's infamous "blue screen of death" outage.

Yet to bitter pill of all the second, third, fourth and fifth place finishers—a startup market leader earns what they get, and they earn it by being more than just first.

While today's losers wait for the market to settle the fight between young upstarts, pinning their hopes for victory on the superiority of product alone, future market leaders are different.

These startup winners are taking market matters into their own hands, whispering in the ears of the judges at the judges table, influencing their opinions, their scorecards, and inspiring in them a favorably biased view of this ten round boxing match and everything they have to offer.

Call it craftiness. Call it calculated. Just don't call a market leader a coincidence.

In the startup marketing world, there is no happen chance. There are no accidents. There are only principles.

You either know them. Or you don't. You make them work for you. Or they work against you.

Without further ado, here are 3 principles to help you communicate like the future market leader you are. What you do with them, how far you'll go?

That's up to you.

1. The Rooster Crows or Dies Principle

Let's face it. Leaders have a shine to them. A charisma that people want to be a part of. A kind of magic pixie dust that others hope will rub off on them if only they get close enough to the source.

Everyone wants to get their picture taken with the horse who has a shot to win the Kentucky Derby.

The catch is? He doesn't even have to win it. He just needs to be in the running.

In startup marketing, positioning yourself as a market leader in your new category or niche is what's expected of you. It's that sense of irrational confidence that much arise like a sunburst of early morning sun.

Just don't half-ass it. Just don't do it like one of the many hens hoping to lay the precious golden egg.

Only the rooster, the dogged rooster, as dogged as dogged can be, that's Doggedness with a capital D, can in all its doggedness—be respected as the undisputed leader among its pack of a dozen hens.

To communicate their standing, to signal their presence and lay claim to their territorial dominance—a rooster can't help but crow and crow and crow from the break of dawn to the inevitable nightfall.

It's this doggedness that allows the universe no doubt about who's the top kick. But it's the very question of whether nightfall and another tomorrow will come at all, that inspires this crowing to begin with.

Can a rooster and its hens survive its competitive environment? Can they fend off predators? Can they alert their caretakers to save them before danger? That's no guarantee.

"The only guarantee," says wily coyote, "is that if any rooster goes quietly into the midnight—they're as good as dead."

It's a lesson in "signaling" when it comes to market leadership.

My first experience with signaling came in my first Corporate America marketing contract.

It was a Fortune 45 in McLean, Virginia. The man who had spent 19 years helping to build the company, just became CEO in year 20.

Good for him.

If you had a bookie in Vegas, you'd hedge your bets that he knew something about the march to leadership. Of course, as a buck private on the corporate marketing line, I had no chance of picking his brain on the million dollar matter.

But you do hear things in the trenches. Sometimes directly from a superior. Sometimes from a radio picking up signals from HQ. Sometimes because someone just wants to vent about a marketing order.

Nevertheless, if his rise to leadership was anything like the communications directives he sent into the creative department, all one could say was that his approach to market leadership was as dogged as a goddamn rooster.

No matter the campaign, creative concept, or creative brief—no piece of COMMS could go out into the world without the overarching message that said to the American public, "We are the leader in [insert industry].

It became almost a subliminal message you said to yourself when you were sleeping and dreaming at night.

But that's when you know your doggedness has been dogged enough to work. Like when the CEO can't help but get through his first five minutes of a company address without saying "We are the leader in..."

Or when he stops the presses on marketing creative. Just because the verb "make" hasn't been changed to the present participle "making."

After all, like "ing" suggests, ongoing dogged action is at the heart of any market leader.

Here's what you need to know about — "The Rooster Crows or Dies Principle."

• WHAT: Don't wait for the race to be decided, communicate your market leader position now.

• WHY: The charisma of a leader, it's relevance, and significance in marketing are an asset for audience building.

• HOW: Doggedly layer your communications both internal and external until employees say it in their sleep.

2. The Jamie Dimon Principle

When I put my startup marketing career on pause, I learned a helluva lot when I entered the world of corporate financial advertising.

In fact, I seen a whole 'nother world.

Sometimes, I scratch my brain on it. This kaleidoscope of eternal banking ads, first one, then another, and another—everyday a millennium—with color codes stuck to my memory like it was an important imprint of my life.

American financial advertising is a very bureaucratic, very regulated, very traditionally-minded industry. It's also very tight-lipped.

Keep in mind, most major American banks have little differentiation between each other. If you asked a marketer on one of the internal teams themselves, they may even struggle to tell you what makes them different than the bank three doors down.

It's not their fault. The tight ropes of the banking industry make it so.

But what any marketer must never forget, is that one of the most important principles in positioning for market leadership, is your self-awareness about the status quo of the industry.

Bureaucratic. Regulated. Traditional. Tight-lipped. They serve as traits that you should aim to defy—not follow.

If you can't be first mover by way of product. You must be first mover by way of perspective.

"The Jamie Dimon Principle" approach to market leadership is about exactly that.

For a little backstory, Jamie Dimon is the CEO of Chase Morgan. And he has been since 2006.

At the beginning of every new calendar year, Dimon writes a letter on the state of the national economy. And everyone, who's anyone, reads it.

It's a thing.

In high school, he earned his nickname "Mad Dog" because of a polarizing personality and short temper. Today, Dimon has channeled that persona on Wall Street as the "direct guy with a short tongue."

It's a zag from the banking status quo. It's been said his "hatred of bureaucracy" has led to shouting matches with those who can't let go of the red tape.

In most cases, I'd be nervous about anyone who gets in shouting matches with someone at work. But knowing the pains bureaucracy bring to everyday people trying to manage their money, and pay their bills, I'd sleep fine if he got the Nobel Prize.

I've never worked for Chase. But I worked for a direct competitor.

Burned in my brain, was this time when my company got me a ticket to one of Dimon's keynote speaking events. He had been invited to one of the advertising industries more notable events.

I remember a moment when Dimon was asked about the state of advertising in banking, and I don't recall anything he said. That is, aside from the backhand he subtly threw at a competitor financial company for over-advertising.

I wondered what the CEO who caught that shot in the back, would say in return to Dimon. Then, I realized it didn't matter. Because nobody cared enough to hear it. Nor, did he have the platform to give it.

He was no Jamie Dimon.

Here's what you need to know about — "The Jamie Dimon Principle."

• WHAT: Be a first mover not just by powerful product. Be a first mover by way of polarizing perspective.

• WHY: Standout in startup communications in marketing, comes from defying the industry's status quo.

• HOW: Bureaucratic. Regulated. Traditional. Tight-lipped. Identify traits like these and aim to defy—not follow them.

3. The One Upper Principle

At the party punch bowl everyone hates the one upper. That certain type of person who after someone innocently recalls the tastiest little croissant they had at the local café this morning—they can't help but follow with a telling about their most recent summer escapade to good ole Paris.

If you're lucky, they'll even take you down the TikTok rabbit hole. In case you wanted a vicarious visual taste.

While I empathize with your disdain for this kind of one upping behavior. I must warn you to think twice about dismissing it entirely.

At least in startup communications and marketing.

That's right. There's a world where the words of a one upper help move a mission towards the top of the market leader position.

This is called "The One Upper Principle."

The point of this principle is not to puff out your chest, or flex your marketing muscles. No, it's about getting ahead of trends.

If there was one new department I could add to every brand whose marketing I believe could change the world, I create a "Trends Analysis" division.

A group of people, mainly individuals, thinkers, rebels, and marketers whose only job is to watch communications trends, evaluate their shelf-life, predict when they're going to die—and most importantly, spot the next wave of messaging trends before they've even gotten off the ground.

I say this, because of the memories I've had working at bigger corporate brands. Mainly the times, when we were asked by brand partners to concept "new" campaigns or "fresh" messaging to develop the corporate brand.

Only by nature, corporate brands tend to adopt communications or messaging trends an alarmingly slow rate. They must wait for general consensus among the public to say "Yes, we're behind this trend. We won't abandon you."

Then, they must wait once more. This time for the general consensus among their corporate peers to say "Yes, we're behind this trend, too. We're all going to adopt it."

Groupthink can be a powerful immobilizing force for any marketing department. You must work conscious to stay ahead of it.

The best example of "The One Upper Principle" is how employer branding and communications has evolved over this decade.

• First it was — "We need more diversity in the workplace"

• Second it was — "No, that's not enough. We need to give everyone a seat at the table."

• Third it was — "No, let's do more than give people a seat. We need to make everyone an active participate."

Thus, Diversity—to Diversity and Inclusion—and finally Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging.

Where will it go from there? What's the next communications and messaging trend that'll meet our cultural marketing moment?

He's a rundown of "The One Upper Principle."

• WHAT: One-up the current message in the market with something more progressive or ahead of its time.

• WHY: If you're using trending communications that have been beaten to death—you'll won't fall behind—but you won't separate either.

• HOW: Pretend you have a Trends Analysis department looking out dying or newly-born trends: position your perspective progressively as every leader does.

Maybe, it really is time to start hiring for that Trends Analysis department?

I can dream.

This article is part of my new series — "I Killed The Startup Bro."

Need a startup communications and marketing consultant?

Get in touch: charley@andcharley.com