Market Verb Newsletter 16 (Jan 23-31)

Part 1 — Marketing Tip / Style

Create a Category for Victory

Once you join an industry, don’t start doing the most random things. Many people say that creating many things is the way forward—but I say otherwise. Create a category that, once you enter it, you instantly dominate. When giant brands entered their industries, they focused on one clear topic or category—and owned it.

Part 2 — Brand Story

Why Nokia Died

Nokia was—and still is—a simple, powerful mobile brand, even in this era of iPhone 17s and Galaxy S25s. Nokia didn’t die because it failed from the inside or due to poor execution.

Nokia was the king of hardware and durability, while emerging tech giants like Apple focused more on software and user experience.

As time went on, people grew to need more efficient, connected tools. And before Nokia could pivot, the end of an era had already happened.

Part 3 — Two Great Books

For God’s Sake – R. Paul Stevens

Business and leadership seen through faith, where values beat vanity every single quarter.

Frugal Innovation – Navi Radjou & Jaideep Prabhu, with Simone Ahuja

How doing more with less becomes a repeatable system for growth and advantage.

Part 4: Two Great Voices

  “Success represents the 1% of your work which results from the 99% that is called failure.”— Soichiro Honda

 “Before asking others, ask yourself.” — Kiichiro Toyoda

Part 5 — This Week’s Actionable

This week, remove something simple, clever, and lovable. Seriously. Remove a headline, feature, or tagline you love—but users ignore.

If there is no serious (negative) change, you haven’t been clever. You’ve just been showing too much… well, being a little too over.