Here's how to make your Category Entry Points (CEPs) clear and recognizable to consumers

Let's start with what you especially shouldn't do. And that is to formulate a CEP in the broadest sense of the word. At Blauw, we often have brand managers make a list of possible CEPs during a workshop. They then have to choose a few to proceed with. At that point, it frequently happens that a number of CEPs that may be similar are summarized. This creates a completely new CEP that is completely unrecognizable to the target audience.

Why you shouldn't summarize multiple CEPs.

Think "Kids go to field hockey practice" and "Kids go to soccer practice. Then marketers think it's smart to summarize these as, say, "Kids playing sports. But that field hockey practice or soccer practice was precisely what made these moments so relatable to consumers. Summarizing it completely drops that recognizability, then it simply becomes too general.

Select the most promising Category Entry Points

That tendency to summarize various CEPs is quite understandable. The moment you start talking to consumers, and you start deepening and analyzing your category, hundreds of situations can come out that can be triggers for your product. Logically, you can't get started with that many CEPs. So you want to make a selection. Then the trick is to choose the most promising ones, without adjusting the CEPs individually. So without summarizing them into new CEPs, because otherwise you lose their value in practice.  

Make a CEP clear and concrete

So if you want more people to think of your brand, you need to make a CEP as recognizable and therefore as clear and concrete as possible. But how do you do that?  

Describe the context: what, (with) whom, when, where(to) and why

At Blauw, we organize one or more workshops during the course of a CEP's research, during which we help marketers describe a CEP in as much detail as possible. First of all, we then find it important that all the W's come out strongly in CEPs. The what, (with) who, when, where(to) and why should be able to be described as aptly as possible. In addition, we deploy Six Word Stories. This teaches marketers to describe CEPs in a clear and recognizable way for consumers in just six words. With all our experience, we can now say that this has proven to be an effective method for formulating CEPs very clearly and concretely.

Want to discover how to develop impactful CEPs for your brand?