In this episode of Demand Gen U, Mark Huber, Head of Brand & Product Marketing at Metadata, and Jason Widup, VP of Marketing at Metadata, discuss Metadata’s experience creating a new category—and what they learned along the way.

Episode Summary

Neither executive had previously ventured into category creation before this initiative. The episode explores their motivations, lessons learned, and challenges encountered throughout the process, including acknowledging previous execution gaps.

Key Takeaways

1. Balance Vision with Reality

Balance future product vision with current market realities while managing investor expectations. Category creation requires honesty about where you are today.

2. Create Detailed Multi-Year Roadmaps

Rather than distant projections alone, build detailed multi-year roadmaps that connect your current capabilities to the category you want to own.

3. Plan Before You Announce

Careful planning at each phase prevents rushing into announcements prematurely. The hosts acknowledge that thorough preparation makes the difference between a category that sticks and one that falls flat.

How to use this resource in evaluation

Use Going Behind the Scenes of Creating a Category as a working prompt for your buying committee, not as a standalone takeaway. The useful question is how the idea turns into governed campaign execution: which accounts are included, which contacts are reachable, which channels carry the message, which budget controls apply, and how results are reviewed after launch.

Bring the resource into a demo or internal planning session and ask each owner to inspect a different layer. Demand generation should review the audience and offer logic. RevOps should inspect CRM, marketing automation, and reporting flow. Sales should confirm whether the campaign creates context they can act on. Finance should ask how spend, conversion quality, opportunity creation, and pipeline are connected before budget expands.

Before treating this as complete, compare the recommendation against one current campaign. Check the audience source, channel fit, exclusion logic, approval owner, expected conversion path, and the report your revenue team will use after launch. That keeps the resource tied to an inspectable operating workflow.

  • Audience fit: define the exact account, contact, customer, or intent segment this idea should reach.
  • Campaign controls: confirm approvals, exclusions, budget limits, creative variants, and launch readiness before spend starts.
  • Measurement path: decide which leading indicators matter early and which pipeline outcomes matter before scaling.
  • Next action: turn the concept into one reviewed campaign object, one owner, and one follow-up date.

The strongest walkthrough should make the resource concrete: a campaign plan, visible guardrails, a revenue-review owner, and a reporting path that a revenue team can inspect without relying on native ad-platform summaries alone.