EXIDEA Releases 2026 Category Branding White Paper Analyzing Brand Recall Across 16 B2B Categories

EXIDEA Inc., a company that provides category branding services designed to achieve top-of-mind awareness in the market, has conducted surveys of 200 purchasing stakeholders in each of 16 B2B business categories and has published findings on the state of brand recall. The company has now released the 2026 edition of its Category Branding White Paper, which compiles the full survey results, cross-category analysis, and strategies and concrete actions for becoming synonymous with a category. The white paper identifies four key findings across the 16 categories. First, the brand with the highest awareness is not always the brand with the highest recall. In multiple surveyed categories, brands were found to outperform the top-awareness brand in recall. The report classifies this structure into three types: aligned, reversed, and dispersed, and analyzes the pattern in each category. Second, purchasing decision-makers are influenced by brands they knew before sales discussions began. In many categories, a high percentage of respondents said that brands they already knew influenced their final decision. In expense management systems, the figure reached 78.5%. The leading reasons were that the brand became a basis for comparison and that it felt reassuring and easy to consider. The white paper calls this structure, in which the ranking of candidates is already formed before sales teams meet customers, the “zero-stage selection.” Third, highly trusted brands become the benchmark for their categories. In the business card management category, Sansan recorded an 81.0% top-trust rate, the highest among the 16 categories. The report notes that such brands have established themselves as the market’s evaluation axis, creating a structure in which competitors are constantly judged by comparison with them. Similar patterns were also observed in electronic contract services and corporate card categories. Fourth, there are still blank spaces in the market. In categories such as sales enablement and inside sales support, more than 60% of respondents could not name a valid brand in unaided recall. In markets where no brand has yet secured the recall position, companies that first become synonymous with the category may gain a structural advantage that continues even after later competitors enter. The white paper consists of five chapters. Chapter 1 explains why categories matter now, drawing on the LinkedIn B2B Institute’s 95:5 rule and Binet & Field’s research on investment allocation to outline three structural problems caused by an overemphasis on short-term tactics and the compound effects of investing in category branding. Chapter 2 analyzes the realities of recall, consideration, and selection across 16 markets. Chapter 3 explains winning principles for two battlegrounds: mature categories and new categories. Chapter 4 presents four execution steps, from defining the category and packaging distinctive brand assets to designing recall pathways using the SCB model and managing KPIs. Chapter 5 lays out a three-stage roadmap from awareness to establishment and market dominance, while highlighting the most important principle for avoiding superficial category branding. Teppei Shioguchi, Executive Vice President and COO of EXIDEA, commented that the surveys repeatedly confirmed a structure in which brands with higher awareness are overtaken in category recall. This was not a coincidence in a single market, but a consistent pattern across categories. Brands that capture recall share a common trait: they continue to strengthen the link between the category name and the brand name. The white paper analyzes the common structures of brands that have become synonymous with their categories, such as Rakuraku Seisan, Sansan, and CloudSign, while also exploring strategies and actions for winning in markets that still lack a leader. EXIDEA Inc. was founded in May 2013 and is headquartered in Ginza, Chuo-ku, Tokyo. The company has capital of 15 million yen and 89 consolidated employees as of the end of April 2025. Its businesses include B2B branding support, B2B marketing support, video production and video marketing, marketing tool development, SEO consulting, and web media operations. Through category design that combines creativity and digital marketing, EXIDEA supports new corporate growth and accompanies clients from business strategy development through execution and improvement, together with its proprietary AI-powered marketing tools.