How to Escape Over-Crowded Categories

Yogi Berra’s famous paradox, “Nobody goes there anymore, it’s too crowded,” might seem like it belongs on a bumper sticker, but it’s an incisive metaphor within category strategy. When a category fully matures and becomes too broad, bloated, or generic, it loses the ability to communicate exclusivity, differentiation, or sophistication—the very qualities that confer status, identity, and ultimately value within the marketplace. What starts as a precise, powerful concept gets diluted by overuse or misapplication, ultimately eroding its value.

Consider:

- "AI-": Initially a term signifying cutting-edge artificial intelligence applications, "AI" now encompasses everything from chatbots to basic automation tools, creating confusion and reducing its ability to convey innovation.
- "Content Marketing": Once a focused discipline of creating valuable, relevant content to drive audience engagement, the term has expanded to include any online marketing efforts, diluting its original strategic intent.
- "CRM": Originally a software category focused on managing customer relationships, CRM has become so broadly applied that it’s unclear whether it refers to sales tools, customer service platforms, or marketing systems.

Just as “anybody who is somebody” avoids an overcrowded space, buyers, inundated with sales pitches for over-used terms, lose interest. They no longer see the value in terms that have become too broad to signal credibility or expertise in the problem they are looking to have solved.

Categories follow a predictable pattern of rise, mainstream adoption, and eventual saturation. This mirrors the innovation adoption curve, moving from niche communities to mass-market appeal and, finally, stagnation. Here’s how it unfolds:

- Niche Value: A category term begins with clear differentiation and boundaries, resonating deeply with early adopters. It signals expertise and alignment with cutting-edge thinking.
- Broad Appeal: As the term becomes widely adopted, it gains utility but loses specificity.
- Abandonment by Pioneers: Early adopters and buyers lose trust in the term as it becomes generic, inundated with overuse and vague promises.
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There is also the "novelty effect decay" dynamic, which an initial spike in interest and engagement when something new is introduced followed by a gradual decline in excitement and interest as the novelty fades and a return to baseline levels of engagement or interest

As Al Ries and Laura Ries famously wrote in The 22 Immutable Laws of Branding, "The best way to make news is to announce a new category, not a new product." This underscores the importance of creating fresh, distinct categories to maintain relevance and value.

Category term overuse not only weakens the term’s ability to differentiate but also leads to semantic satiation—when a word loses its impact entirely. This happens in three ways:

- Indiscriminate Usage: Terms like “innovation” or “disruption” are applied indiscriminately to incremental changes or even unrelated ideas.
- Catch-All Definitions: The broader a category’s scope, the less meaningful it becomes. “Big Data” and “Sustainability” are examples of terms that now mean too much and therefore mean little.
- Opportunistic Co-Option: Bad actors or shallow adopters use terms for optics, further eroding their credibility (e.g., greenwashing under the guise of “sustainability”).
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The risks of genericism extend beyond language; they undermine strategic clarity. Categories that are too broad make it impossible to stand out. If your business or product is lumped into a generic term like “AI,” “sustainable,” or “disruptive,” you’re competing in a space so noisy that differentiation becomes nearly impossible.

So, What Can Be Done?

- Create New Language: Instead of relying on overcrowded terms, establish new terminology. “Third Wave Coffee” was a strategy to escape the confines of the Starbucks-ification/enshittification of coffee houses.
- Refine the Category: Sharpen their category’s focus by creating more precise subcategories.
- Promote the Problem: Be clear on the problem you solve. Repeat. Define what the category truly means and align with its values.  
- De-Position Competitors: Emphasize outcomes and expertise over surface-level features. Highlight the depth or focus of your product without directly bashing competitors.

Ultimately, the most valuable real estate is not a crowded marketplace, but the uncharted territory just beyond its boundaries. True innovation doesn't compete within existing categories—it renders them irrelevant.

For the visionary leader, every overgeneralized category is not a limitation but an invitation. An invitation to sharpen our language, to restore precision to our thinking, and to venture where others have not yet imagined possible.

-DRMG