Creating a New Category

So far, my thoughts on what I wish to work on is to develop a new traveling experience for tourist visiting Seoul. The Seoul Metro subway was identified as an area which opened several opportunities since the subway is the most convenient and common mode of transportation in Seoul.

The immediate thought coming to mind was to apply a Service or Universal design approach. Investigating existing point-of-sales and implementing new way finding systems are the default applications; but since my passion geared more towards Branding, I have been toying with the idea on apply a different approach to see if this may be a plausible solution.

Branding consists of many parts with marketing being one of them. For many reasons, the core reason for branding for coporations is simply to make money. Why? Because older methods are no longer applicable today. Traditional market research may have proved to be show positive results but how much resources would that require? Are there different methods to make money? Yes.

A principle in Branding is to be #1 in your category (Ries, A 2005). In other words, you cannot be the #1 brand without championing your category. i.e. you cannot create a Red Bull and be #1 without being the best energy drink. To cut the long story short. My thoughts are to consider tourism (the industry) as the market and apply a new concept using Branding to solve the brief.

The target audience has been identified and that's the tourist. So what if I identify a new category, creating the 'new tourist' and become the champion of this category? Applying diverging principles a tourist, what could I discover now?

Reference
The Origin of Brands: How Product Evolution Creates Endless Possibilities for New Brands, Al Ries 2005)