Over the past 5 years I’ve gotten more than 1,600 pitches from PR agencies and companies that are allegedly disrupting their categories. The truth is that if everyone is disrupting, nothing is getting disrupted. The word has officially become meaningless in CPG industry in the same way that “organic” did—so what actually constitutes disrupting moving forward?
Let’s start off with the actual definition of the word in business context, according to Dictionary.com:
“In business and technology, disruptive has a positive or transformative meaning. It refers to a new product, service, or idea that completely changes how a market operates—often by replacing older, traditional methods with something faster, cheaper, or more efficient.”
Key phrase here, completely changes how a market operates. In our industry one could easily swap market for category.
For better context, let’s look at some examples of disruptive CPG products from this past decade.
