The Importance of "-est"

Fastest, biggest, roundest, smallest, tallest, flatest....BEST.

Why settle for being anything else? It is really hard to compete for share of wallet if you cannot say that you are the "-est". Who wants to do business with the "fourth" or "fifteenth" in a category? Everyone wants to (or should demand to) partner with an "-est".

It is up to you what you should be "-est" in and define the market accordingly. If your channels and end users demand simplicity, then you need to be the "simplest".

It is not enough these days to say that while you are not the "-est" in any specific category, but rather something less than "-est" in a bunch of categories. At one point, this jack-of-all-trades approach might have worked. Things have changed however. Your channel partners and customers always have immediate access to the "-est". The emergence of open standards now makes it increasingly easy to connect all of the "-est's" together, even if they are from different companies across the globe. Integrators are great channels because they focus on securing all of the "-est's" for each of their clients through partnerships with companies that own the "-est" categories.

Your goal should be to position yourself as an "-est" and get everyone talking about it. Make your competition react. Once they catch up, redefine the "-est" and tell the story again.

That would be the coolest.