“Best of breed” is nearly always at the top of product messaging hierarchies. Whether it is there because of ego or some researched view, customers across the globe rarely share that same messaging focus. “Best of breed” is implied to mean the best – period. However, it is often a shallow tagline for a range of messaging assets that might aggregate to feel like best in brand. What this tells us is that there are ways to handle this but not with the old language of the technology industry. The following examples show how targets view “best of breed” when given a simple trade-off exercise. This is also true across many of the thousands of other analysis areas so please listen to these customers.