In 14 days we run a forensic triangulation across 8–12 competitors in your category — ads, changelogs, product reality, user sentiment — and ship the Messaging Gap Report your team can take straight to the CMO.
Your category has 8–12 competitors all claiming the same buzzwords. Your PMM team is buried in sales-deck support, not running the category-positioning research that should be their actual job.
to generate battlecards or summarize competitor activity — accelerating the commoditization of tactical CI work.
before the next competitor messaging shift outpaces the in-house update cycle (90–120 days at companies without automation).
actively avoid suppliers who send irrelevant messaging — and your category’s signal-to-noise ratio is decreasing every quarter.
Built around your category, not a template. Every section ships with sourced evidence, dated capture, and a verdict. Take it straight to your CMO, board, or quarterly category review.
Six artifacts. One forensic frame. Every claim cited, every verdict timestamped, every recommendation defensible.
We map 8–12 competitors’ marketing claims against verifiable product evidence. Every row cross-referenced against changelogs, docs, ad copy, reviews, and status pages. Tagged Proven, Vague, or Gap. Same signature artifact as the Competitive Proof Sprint, expanded category-wide.
A Noise-vs-Stakes 2×2 plotting every competitor in your category. Shows the commodity zone where buzzword overlap is destroying CPM efficiency, and the high-stakes territory where focused messaging wins. Borrowed verbatim from the published identity security report.
Identifies the two or three competing narratives your category is splitting between. Lets your team pick the side that fits your actual strengths instead of straddling and diluting both. Geoffrey Moore category-creation thinking, applied to messaging.
For each of your strongest claims, three concrete differentiation angles ranked by defensibility. For each weakest area, the specific competitor messaging you can defuse with evidence.
A documented version of the 4-source methodology — ad surveillance, historical drift, product reality, sentiment — so your team can rerun the analysis on new competitors or new quarters internally.
Notion or Google Drive workspace with every source URL, screenshot, and capture date. Plus a 60-minute recorded Loom walkthrough — your internal evangelism tool. Yours permanently, no recurring fees.
Total buyer time commitment: ≈2.5 hours. 60-minute kickoff, 30-minute mid-sprint check-in, 60-minute delivery walkthrough. Everything else is async on our side.
60-minute kickoff call. Lock the competitor list (typically 8–12), share your existing positioning + any prior research, identify the 2–3 most contested category narratives.
“Define the category before you analyze the players.”
Four evidence layers: LinkedIn Ads Library + Meta Ads Library surveillance, Wayback Machine historical drift, product changelogs / release notes / docs review, sentiment mining (G2, Capterra, Reddit, HN, Trustpilot). Every claim tagged with source, date, and verdict.
“No source, no claim. Every row ships with a timestamp.”
Reality vs Rhetoric Matrix assembled. Strategic Anxiety Heatmap plotted. Bifurcation Point identified. Differentiation Opportunities derived from actual data, not founder hypothesis.
“Most positioning fails because it’s built on assumptions. This fails-safe by being built on evidence.”
Draft sent for 24-hour async review. Final report + Notion/Drive handoff + 60-minute recorded walkthrough. Under 20 verified messaging gaps? Half your fee comes back. Our full research lifecycle, quality control, and ethics framework is published openly.
“You leave with the report in one tab and your next category review in the next.”
The premium B2B brands aren’t louder. They’re better triangulated. While competitors recycle each other’s buzzwords, the differentiated brand cites evidence.
Two reports have been published openly. Both demonstrate the methodology, the artifact shape, and the level of evidence depth. Read either to see exactly what’s delivered.
Published on rubikn.com. Full report PDF available below. A forensic teardown of Saviynt, ConductorOne, Apono, Nudge Security, and others. Includes the Reality vs Rhetoric Matrix, Strategic Anxiety Heatmap, Bifurcation Point Framework, and Tactical Execution Model in their full form. Written for CMOs facing budget pressure and category-messaging differentiation.
Read the full reportPublished on rubikn.com. A two-company head-to-head category comparison demonstrating the methodology applied to project management software. Triangulates LinkedIn ad messaging, product release notes, Reddit/HN community sentiment, and G2/Capterra reviews to expose where each company’s marketing rhetoric exceeds product reality.
Read the full analysisA report costs us three weeks of undivided attention. We’re careful about who we run them for.
If the delivered report doesn’t surface at least 20 verifiable messaging-product gaps across your competitor set and 3 specific differentiation angles your team can deploy this quarter — half your fee comes back. Keep what we shipped.
The published reports already exceed both thresholds. The Identity Security report alone surfaced 25+ gaps and 4+ differentiation angles across four named competitors. Twenty is the floor, not the target. The half-refund (not full) reflects the research time already invested if your category is unusually clean — but most categories have layered, exploitable rhetoric gaps that emerge once the four-source triangulation runs.
I run forensic messaging-gap research for B2B software companies in saturated categories. The methodology draws on three traditions PMMs already know — empirical brand science (Byron Sharp, Ehrenberg-Bass, Binet & Field), Jobs-to-be-Done (Christensen, Moesta), and behavioral economics (Berger, Cialdini, Geoffrey Moore category creation).
Every report follows the published research lifecycle, quality control, and ethics framework. No source, no claim — every row ships with a date and a citation.
If you’ve read either lighthouse report and the methodology speaks to you, the 15-minute fit call is the next step.
One report. Fixed scope. No surprises.
Pricing reflects the methodology’s depth without enterprise overhead. Three tiers, one add-on, one bundle. 50% upfront, 50% on delivery.
Same forensic methodology, different output and buyer. The Competitive Proof Sprint produces 3 sales battlecards + positioning brief for VP Sales / Sales Enablement teams in 10 days for $4,500–$7,500. The Messaging Gap Report produces a 20–30 page strategic positioning artifact for Director/Head of PMM in 14 days for $4,500–$8,000. Same evidence base. Same Reality vs Rhetoric Matrix. Different deliverable format optimized for marketing-leadership consumption vs sales-enablement consumption.
Yes, as a bundled engagement. We run the 14-day Messaging Gap Report against 8–12 competitors, then derive 3 sales battlecards from the same evidence in an additional week. Bundled price: $9,500. Saves $1,000 vs buying them separately and gives both your marketing and sales teams the artifact each one needs.
Positioning workshops produce your new positioning — your homepage copy, your value proposition, your sales narrative. Most are built on founder hypothesis + customer interviews from your side. The Messaging Gap Report sits one layer earlier: it produces the competitor-side intelligence your positioning workshop should be built on. Many clients run a Messaging Gap Report first, then take the findings to FletchPMM or their internal team for the positioning copy execution.
The 14-day forensic engagement across 8–12 competitors is dense work. Wynter and similar research firms charge $15K+ for comparable scope. The $6,500 standard tier reflects the methodology’s depth without enterprise pricing. The $4,500 founder tier is reserved for the first 3 customers (in exchange for case study rights). The $8,000 extended tier includes a 60-minute follow-up advisory call 30 days post-delivery.
Because 8–12 competitors take longer to triangulate than 3. The CPS goes head-to-head depth-first; the Messaging Gap Report goes category-wide breadth-first. The extra 4 days cover the additional ads, changelogs, and sentiment sources.
Yes. Every engagement begins with a mutual non-disclosure agreement before any briefing call. We treat your competitive strategy, positioning thesis, and category intelligence as strictly confidential. Standard mutual NDA available; your legal team’s preferred template accepted.
All research is sourced exclusively from publicly available information — company websites, product documentation, changelogs, LinkedIn Ads Library, Meta Ads Library, G2, Capterra, Reddit, Hacker News, Wayback Machine, press releases. We never access proprietary systems, scrape behind login walls, impersonate customers, or engage in social engineering.
You own everything. The Notion or Google Drive repository — matrix, heatmap, framework, evidence sources, recorded walkthrough — is yours permanently. Follow-on reports available quarterly at $5,000 per refresh (the baseline source library is already built). Many clients run quarterly cadences to catch new competitors and emerging messaging shifts.
Within reason, yes. The 8–12 competitor band is the working range; we can compress to 6–8 for tighter categories or expand to 14–16 for high-fragmentation categories. Pricing adjusts proportionally. We don’t compress below 6 competitors — that’s the Competitive Proof Sprint’s territory.
A 15-minute call. We assess your category’s saturation level, confirm fit, and outline exactly what you’d receive in 14 business days. If it’s not a fit, we’ll tell you on the call.