Inside NewsBridge’s Category Creation Strategy: How They Made ‘Video Understanding’ Stick
Creating a new market category is more than coining a phrase – it’s about shaping how an industry thinks about a problem. For NewsBridge, this meant moving beyond traditional Digital Asset Management (DAM) terminology to create a new framework for thinking about video content.
In a recent Category Visionaries episode, CEO Philippe Petitpont revealed their deliberate strategy for category creation and the long-term vision driving it.
Moving Beyond Traditional Categories
NewsBridge faced an initial challenge: existing market categories didn’t accurately capture their solution. As Philippe explains, “Mam and dam. So Digital Asset Management or Media Asset Management are tools that are here just centralized content. And to make sure that it’s like a super dropbox, our job is to make content findable and to make people working faster with their video editing.”
Creating a New Language
The decision to move beyond established categories was deliberate. Philippe notes, “There’s not exactly a category that used to exist for two or three years so we are inventing a new one.” This required a delicate balance: “Sometimes you need to use words from the old world to be sure that people can understand what you’re doing.”
Early Evangelism Pays Off
A key element of their category creation strategy was early evangelism of advanced concepts. Philippe shares, “We’ve been evangelizing multimodal since like three or four years. And it was quite painful to explain what multimodal is, where no one was knowing that. And that’s a strategy.”
This early positioning proved prescient: “Multimodal AI started to be very popular at the beginning of the year where GPT four started to introduce, it was multimodal.” By establishing themselves early in the space, NewsBridge was positioned ahead of broader market trends.
The Technical Foundation
The company backed their category creation with substantial technical investment. Philippe notes that “half of the company… Is dedicated to research and development.” This commitment ensures their category definitions are grounded in real technological capabilities.
Market Education and Evolution
NewsBridge’s approach to market education evolved with their audience’s understanding. Their current focus is on “making content discoverable,” though Philippe notes “it will change very soon.” This flexibility in messaging while maintaining category ownership has been crucial to their growth.
The strategy has driven significant results, with the company hitting “the million dollar in recurring revenue early last year” and maintaining a pace to “double this turnover each year.”
The Category Creation Framework
NewsBridge’s experience offers a framework for category creation in technical markets:
- Identify limitations of existing categories
- Create terminology that bridges old and new concepts
- Invest in early evangelism of advanced concepts
- Build strong technical foundations
- Evolve messaging as market understanding grows
Looking Forward
The company’s category creation efforts support a broader vision. As Philippe states, “What we want to achieve is to be sure that everyone can tell a story using video.” This vision requires not just new technology, but new ways of thinking about video content creation and management.
For technical founders, NewsBridge’s experience demonstrates that successful category creation isn’t just about marketing – it’s about fundamentally reshaping how the market thinks about solving problems. By investing in early evangelism and backing it with strong technical capabilities, companies can create and own categories that drive long-term market leadership.