The Half-Finished Worksheet: Auditing Casper's 5C Analysis Before a New-Category Launch

Marketing Academy · Field Work●Marketing Fundamentals

MiniAudit· 30 minutes

Casper Sleep

Objective: Given a partially completed 5Cs worksheet for Casper's expansion into a new sleep-accessories category, identify which C's are missing, shallow, or conflated with another C, and rewrite the weakest one.

You're a strategy associate at Casper Sleep, reviewing a 5Cs worksheet a junior teammate drafted ahead of a leadership review on entering the weighted-blanket category.

Check the worksheet's five sections against what each C is actually supposed to answer, flag the weakest section, and rewrite it with specific questions answered.

Before you start

What you'll need

Free path (everything below is enough to finish)

Google Docs

FreeHold and edit the shared 5Cs worksheet

Free, collaborative, matches how this worksheet would actually be reviewed by a team

The process

2 steps

Step 01 of 02

Distinguishing Competitors from Collaborators

The lesson's How It Works section defines Competitors as who else is fighting for the same customer, and Collaborators as the partners, suppliers, and distributors that enable your business to function — two different questions, often merged by mistake.

The worksheet's 'Competitors' section lists: 'Tuft & Needle, Purple, our fulfillment warehouse partner, our retail wholesale distributor.' What's wrong here?

Google Docs— The shared worksheet doc, 'Competitors' section.

Procedure

Read every line under 'Competitors' and ask: does this entity compete for the same customer, or enable the business?
Move 'fulfillment warehouse partner' and 'retail wholesale distributor' into a new 'Collaborators' section.
Leave only true competitors (Tuft & Needle, Purple) under Competitors.

Sample output

COMPETITORS (corrected)
- Tuft & Needle
- Purple

COLLABORATORS (new section, split out)
- Fulfillment warehouse partner
- Retail wholesale distributor

Healthy

Competitors lists only entities fighting for the same customer.

Unhealthy

Competitors and Collaborators merged into one undifferentiated list.

What this means

Conflating the two C's hides real questions — a distributor problem needs a partnership fix, not a competitive one.

So what do I do about it?

Symptom	Action	Effort
One list mixes competitors and enabling partners	Split into two labeled sections and re-answer each C's actual questions	30 min

YouYou can do this yourself, no engineering access required.

Step 02 of 02

Auditing for a missing Context analysis

The lesson's How It Works section defines Context as the external forces shaping the market: economic conditions, regulation, technology shifts, and cultural trends — sometimes framed with the PESTLE lens.

The worksheet has zero content under 'Context.' What questions should have been answered there before this goes to leadership?

Google Docs— The shared worksheet doc, 'Context' section (currently blank).

Procedure

Note that Context is entirely empty — a real gap, not a shallow answer.
Draft 3-5 questions: Is home-textile spending rising or falling this year? Are there new import tariffs on textiles? Is 'cozy home' a rising cultural trend post-pandemic?
Answer each with a one-line finding sourced from recent data, not assumption.

Sample output

CONTEXT (drafted)
- Economic: home-goods discretionary spend down slightly this year
- Cultural: 'cozy/hygge home' search interest trending up
- Regulatory: no new textile tariffs affecting blanket imports currently

Healthy

Every C has at least 3 answered questions, including Context.

Unhealthy

A whole C left blank going into a leadership review.

What this means

A blank Context section is the exact failure mode the lesson's Quibi example shows — context shifts sink product bets that looked fine on paper.

So what do I do about it?

Symptom	Action	Effort
Context section is empty	Draft and answer 3-5 PESTLE-style questions before the review	30 min

YouYou can do this yourself, no engineering access required.

Final deliverable

An annotated worksheet: the Competitor/Collaborator split corrected, and the Context section fully answered.

See a reference example

Sample output

Allbirds new-category worksheet audit (excerpt)

COMPETITORS (corrected) — On Running, Nike, Rothy's
COLLABORATORS (split out) — wool suppliers, retail wholesale partners
CONTEXT (drafted) — sustainable-footwear market growing ~16.8% annually; no new tariff changes affecting wool imports currently

Success criteria

You're done when you can:

Correctly separates Competitors from Collaborators with a stated reason
Fills the blank Context section with at least 3 real, sourced questions and answers