Unstoppable Club

I heard something interesting on my morning walk today that stopped me in my tracks.

I was listening to Melton Littlepage, CMO at 1Password, on Dave Gerhardt’s Exit 5 podcast. It is my usual chore in the morning.

One line made me halt, rewind, and replay: “You can’t attribute your way to being hot.”

As marketers, we obsess over metrics, attribution, and demand generation. But what if we’re measuring success in a category where we’re doomed to fight for scraps?

The Chief Markets Officer Mindset

Littlepage’s perspective is revolutionary yet brilliantly obvious in hindsight. We’re not just Chief Marketing Officers—we’re Chief Markets Officers.

Our job isn’t simply to generate demand within existing categories, but to create entirely new market spaces where our companies can reign supreme.

What does this mean in practice? At 1Password, they’re executing this with surgical precision:

1. They identified that being #1 in their original category (password management) wasn’t enough for exponential growth
2. They recognized “elephant in the room” problems that CISOs faced but rarely discussed openly
3. They created “Extended Access Management” (XAM) as a category that addressed these unspoken challenges

The beauty of this approach is that it doesn’t require abandoning your core business. 1Password built their category creation as a third act: consumer password management → B2B password management → Extended Access Management.

Each step built on their existing credibility while expanding their market.

The Hidden Psychology of Security Buyers

What fascinated me was Littlepage’s deep understanding of CISO psychology:

• Security buyers don’t want to be first (too risky if something goes wrong)
• They also don’t want to be last (too risky if breached when everyone else is protected)
• They seek the “safe middle of the pack”
• Adoption in security happens in a compressed wave – “a super narrow and very tall normal curve”

This insight informed their entire go-to-market strategy. Rather than trying to convince individual CISOs one by one, they focused on creating industry-wide consensus that “now is the time to solve these problems.”

The Unconventional Playbook

Littlepage’s execution playbook contains tactics I’ve rarely seen articulated so clearly:

1. The Three-Pronged Go-to-Market Attack

• Cross-selling to existing customers using 150,000 existing relationships as beachheads
• Leveraging high-intent leads from their original category – Using discovery calls for their password manager to uncover broader needs
• Targeted demand gen – Only after the first two motions are in place

This sequencing is brilliant—they’re in thousands of XAM sales cycles before spending their first dollar on marketing the new category.

2. The Lightning Strike Approach

Rather than a slow rollout, they orchestrated:

• Major presence at RSA (security’s biggest conference)
• 25+ analyst briefings in a compressed timeframe (both industry and financial analysts)
• CISO roundtables under Chatham House rules
• Their global advisory CISO “agitating” in security communities about the problem (not the product)

3. The Unorthodox Sports Marketing Play

Instead of traditional B2B channels, they became the title sponsor of the President’s Cup golf tournament—putting them visually alongside brands like Coca-Cola, AT&T, and BMW. This wasn’t just branding; it was a calculated move:

• They used Nielsen data to identify perfect overlap between their B2B and consumer audiences
• They reached buyers “when they’re not looking for us” and when they’re emotionally engaged
• They forced competitors to be perceived as “choosing not to go with the market leader”

As Littlepage explains, “Nobody wants to know who the market leader is and then buy someone else.”

The Economics of Category Leadership

The payoff for category creators is astounding:

• Larger average deal sizes
• Higher win rates
• Shorter sales cycles
• Default “Column A” positioning in evaluations

But what struck me most was Littlepage’s emphasis on the emotional aspect of buying: “The buyer chooses to buy with their heart and justifies the decision with their head.” By creating a category where your solution is the obvious choice, you win both the emotional and rational battle.

From Follower to Pioneer

As B2B Marketers what do you think?

How difficult would it be to execute this category creation strategy from where you are today?

Would it require a complete pivot in your product roadmap or marketing approach?

What’s the biggest obstacle you see in becoming a category king or queen in your space?

The most valuable marketing strategy might be the one that isn’t measured on your dashboard today.

But when you’re the category queen or king, those metrics all get a lot easier.

I’d love to hear what you think about this approach to category creation.

Have you tried similar strategies? What challenges did you face?

You can watch the conversation here.