The POV Era

Have you noticed?

Today, it feels like we’re expected to have a potent POV on everything.

No longer are you allowed to just sit on the fence or have a wish-washy opinion. We’re nudged towards divisiveness. Triggered and locked in.

Electric scooters? “eco-friendly” or “sidewalk clutter”

Plant-based meat? “ethical eating” or “fake meat”

Generative AI? “augment my job” or “take my job”

Country rap? “gettin’ tipsy” or “country crap”

Trump? “will save USA” or “will f**k up world”

Work from home? “disconnected team” or “increased focus”

Bonnie Blue? “objectifying women” or “empowering women”

This is by collective design, not accident.

Potency creates visibility. Everything else? Ignored, forgotten.

The premise of divisive POVs has been around forever. But, in recent times, the pervasiveness and intensity of them has cranked up a few notches. Everywhere you turn, it feels like you are forced to take a position. POVs have been weaponised. This is the society in which we all now live, for better or worse.

On a personal level, the lived-human experience of this can be exhausting, especially if you don’t want to adopt an ‘off-the-shelf’ point of view. These are specifically designed — by companies, intellectual bodies, and political organisations — for your mind to easily assimilate in order to perform a desired behaviour.

Noam Chomsky referred to developing one’s own — unique — POV as "intellectual self-defense”. This requires the development and continued exercising of mental muscles that criticise, dissect, and filter the news, information, and perspectives we are continually exposed too. It does not mean being a constant contrarian, but instead deconstructing the data around us into its component parts and then reconstructing it to fit a self-serving objective.

But, who really has the cognitive bandwidth, inclination, and time to do this for all aspects of their lives? No one.

At best, people achieve this bar for the most important parts of their lives, shaping choices such as whom we marry, the friends we choose, where we live, our career, personal interests, and the occasional big decisions that influence them.

But, that’s a teeny fraction of the total choices people make in their lives. Implication: most people’s POVs are adopted, they are not created from within. This leaves monstrous opportunity for a third-party to inject their own into people’s minds.

Similar to how a handful of folks in Hollywood determine which movies (stories) billions of people will consume and internalise, the same dynamic applies in politics and commerce.

As individuals, our POV towards product categories and brands is largely informed by a small minority of people that have a vested interest in them. This perspective is derived from the frame of reference and the narratives they perpetuate and articulate — instilling or inhibiting buying behaviour.

This sounds more sinister than it is. For the most part, it’s with generally good intention (to solve what they perceive is a problem for their prospects and customers). After all, if they aren’t mentally packaging it no one will.

But, there is a clear divide occurring. Due to the POV-culture in which we find ourselves, companies that have strong and divisive POVs — and articulate that clearly and consistently — trample over those that do not. It’s a 2020s GTM cheat code, precisely because it creates attention and divides the mind like a psychological sledgehammer.

Whether they agree or not, folks can’t stop talking about companies with strong POVs. This creates a sense of inevitability. Less than 1% of concepts get 99%+ the airtime.

To thrive today, think of your category as a marketplace of POVs, not products. Meek is weak. Tension drives conviction and action.

What’s a company POV?

It’s a company or brand’s perspective on the category in which it plays. For example, DuckDuckGo’s POV is that:

1. Google is a creepy stalker

2. Violating user privacy has a human cost

3. Search should be private

To be clear: it does not relate to how a company takes a position (or not) on broader societal concerns like the environment, equal pay, and DEI. For example, Hellman’s brand purpose of “fighting food waste” is not a POV. At best, stuff like this are features of the POV but not the POV itself.

There are exceptions to this. Such topics could form part of a POV if it’s core to a company’s view of the category. For example, Scope3 is building a new category — Collaborative Sustainability Platform — to analyse and reduce emissions from advertising campaigns. Therefore, the environment is core to its view of the category its building.

Scope3’s POV:

1. The digital ad industry is causing huge carbon emissions

2. The supply chain is inefficient, generating massive financial and CO₂ waste.

3. Measuring emissions is critical for the future of the industry

Here’s something else to be aware of: a POV is also not a company’s vision, mission, or solution. These are ways to articulate a POV. They tell your prospects what you want to achieve, what you want to build, what value you will deliver, and how. What they often struggle to do is enable your prospects to see through the lens you do (and pull your arm off because they agree with you). That’s your POV. You see a problem, and have a specific approach towards solving it.

Time to answer some prudent questions:

• Why are we in the POV era?

• What makes a strong POV?

• Example?

Why are we in the POV era?

The lazy answer to this is “the Internet”.

Paul Graham made a salient point in his latest essay, in which he suggested the economics of the world-wide web forced publishers to switch to (or dial up) their emotional and ideological appeal. This, combined with social media algorithms that optimise for human engagement (i.e. the cognitive biases and insecurities that trigger us), of course surfaces mostly polarising content and perspectives to the population.

Other words: we have all been conditioned to expect — even crave — strong and divisive points of view. This transcends what we see online. It’s not just about ‘post views’ and ‘clicks’ anymore. It’s a mental recalibration that filtrates into the fabric our lives: visiting shops, going to conferences, driving down the freeway. You name it.

It’s not just because of the Internet, though. Another driver of the emergence of the POV era is technology and its cousin globalisation, which has made more product launches possible for ever less expenditure. Along with this advancement, so too has the volume of companies and products risen. Exponentially. It used to be an ideas-driven marketplace where compelling ideas typically emerged as winners. Not anymore. Now, compelling ideas need a strong POV to win.

Why? There’s too many compelling ideas. There’s too many categories and too many propositions within those categories for prospects to make choices like they once did. They’re overwhelmed. Established brands and products are somewhat immune to this — they are already positioned in the mind. It’s startups and new products that are mainly affected.

Don’t have a strong POV? Good luck getting noticed or getting people to care. That’s a fastpass to invisibility. It’s not enough to put a new value proposition out there, it must be framed sharply and provocatively into context. Prospects are using POVs as filtering mechanisms to make sense of the proposition-saturated world around them. To pick where they want to allocate their psychological investment, time, and money.

Said another way: propositions are a dime a dozen. A strong and clearly articulated POV? Diamond in the rough. It surfaces above the noise. “Cuts through and clarifies” — to paraphrase Gordon Gekko. For startup founders, it’s also a point of leverage to compete against larger and established companies. The POV can highlight a weakness in their strength, which they’re unable to fundamentally change. Consider DuckDuckGo again, Google can’t incorporate their ‘privacy POV’ since its advertising business relies upon extensive user data collection and processing. Strategic checkmate.

Plus, POVs function as as a credibility filter on a subconscious level. With a strong point of view, a company can demonstrate its deep understanding of customers' perceived problems and its uniquely purposeful approach to solving them. This requires time, effort, and care — distinguishing it from competitors.

What makes a strong POV?

It achieves 3 things:

1. It gets you noticed

2. It defines a differentiated problem

3. It convinces prospects you’re solving it uniquely

Why do these things matter?

The first is obvious. If you don’t get noticed, you’re invisible (death row for startups). The second sets you apart from everybody else. They’re solving ABC problem, you’re solving XYZ — creating demand. The third attracts prospects as a customer to you. They subscribe to your unique approach of solving the differentiated problem.

Achieving these 3 outcomes can be mapped to Dave Trott’s (legendary adman) ‘Impact, Communicate, Persuade’ framework. He created this to cut through the faddy and overcomplicated (ineffective) bullsh*t strategies that Madison Avenue-style ad agencies peddle to clients for eye-watering fees.

It’s simple (by design) and effective because it identifies the only three things that fundamentally matter in order to built interest and get a sale:

Here’s the theory behind it: in order to sell to someone, you have to persuade them. In order to persuade them, you have to communicate an idea. In order to communicate, you have to get attention. You can’t have one without another. And, they have to be in that order.

The premise of this boils the job of a strong POV down into 3 parts:

1. Impact. Is the POV interesting? Does it command attention?

2. Communicate. What is different? Why does this matter now?

3. Persuade. Why should prospects buy into your approach?

To meet the bar of interesting, it has to meaningfully introduce tension against an established way of doing things, as your prospects see it. This tension should be divisive, which is what you want since it forces a choice and creates conversation. Those that are attracted to the POV are your best-fit prospect (“ICP”). Those that are deterred by it are latter adopters or no-fit. Consider your POV a lead screener as much as it a demand generator and customer retention weapon. It should force a choice.

Your POV sells a unique approach that your best-fit prospects buy into, correcting a failing of the category. It’s a philosophy that guides how you build your value proposition. It’s contrarian.

Want this approach? Choose us.

What that approach? Choose someone else.

Remember: context is king.

Humans yearn for context — we are sh*t scared of missing out or losing something. The insecurity of this mobilises prospects to take action. Whoever they perceive is best able to contextualise an uncertain situation will gain trust and recognition — like a guide to solving the problem. Your POV is the spearhead that enables you to contextualise a problematic situation favourably for your prospect.

The running theme across all of this should be the POV feels opinionated — you feel strongly about it, goddammit. This is a strength, not a weakness. First, it makes you seem more human (we naturally gravitate towards people with similar interests and views). Secondly, it kills ambiguity. The last thing you want is for prospects to walk away thinking you’re some kind of android that just spits out features and facts. If so, they struggle to understand or recall why it matters, where the value is versus competing options.

Does a strong POV mean you have to be a d*ck?

Absolutely not. The power of a POV is in the message itself and being productively creative with it, attracting those unfamiliar with you. It exists to help your prospects more than it helps you. Not the other way around. That’s the difference.

It should be provocative, positive, and prudent. Not petulant, pompous, or patronising. This can be a fine line to tread.

Here’s a famous Oatly ad, which executed this well:

Example

I previously wrote a deep dive on Outbrain, a B2B adtech company that took off in the 2010s. They invented the ‘content recommendations’ category.

You know... those third-party generated content thumbnails you see on publisher websites and apps, as a consumer.

Screen grab of an Outbrain widget👇

Like it or not, this is big business. Worth $ billions annually. When it was up and coming, the adtech industry could not stop talking about this category and the players in it. At the time, banner ads were much more dominant as a format of online advertising. And, they were riddled with problems originating from the technical architecture on which they were facilitated and served.

Outbrain’s POV:

In a nutshell:

• Get noticed: Banner advertising is spammy, interruptive

• Differentiated problem: Banner adtech puts advertisers first, not consumers. Devalues page views, not sustainable.

• Approach: Orient around consumer content consumption behaviour, advertising becomes more valuable and sustainable

From this, the solution — content recommendations — intuitively flowed.

It was divisive, and they grew like crazy.

The two main opposing views:

• “They are consumer-oriented ads”

• “No, they deceive consumers and undermine editorial integrity”

Many publisher executives who agreed with the latter still championed the solution internally anyway, because the companies they represented needed the new revenue. The divisive discourse helped make content recommendations a mainstream category.

Result? Outbrain took off, and so did its direct competitor, Taboola.

More examples (quick)

Let’s take a look at a few hypothetical POVs (i.e. not taken verbatim from internal document, for illustrative purposes only), from a bunch of startups when they gained traction:

Bumble

• Get noticed: Women should be in the dating driving seat.

• Differentiated problem: Dating apps often empower men, leading to creepy conversations.

• Approach: Women should have control over initiating conversations.

Salesforce

• Get noticed: The End of Software!

• Differentiated problem: Hard-install CRM software is expensive, cumbersome, and inefficient.

• Approach: CRM should be accessible and efficient, using the cloud.

HelloFresh

• Get noticed: Meal planning stresses millennials.

• Differentiated problem: People struggle to cook healthy meals without wasting time or food.

• Approach: Meal preparation should be time-friendly and waste-free.

ProtonMail

• Get noticed: Big Tech is spying on your emails.

• Differentiated problem: Most email services prioritise profits over privacy.

• Approach: Email communication should be private and secure.

Gymshark

• Get noticed: Look good in the gym 💪

• Differentiated problem: Traditional gym wear is either baggy or overly fashion-focused, neglecting functionality and the gym aesthetic.

• Approach: Gym apparel should enhance both performance and aesthetics.

That’s it for today. I’ll be back in your inbox soon. 🤘

Martin

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