Challenger brand

I think large brands are going to continue to struggle here.

I think that's why you'll see these challenger brands pop up and then get acquired.

I think this is happening across the board on websites and the deployment of, you know, AI driven landing pages.

I just did a podcast on that.

it's true.

Reddit's so hot right now.

it's bonkers where like there's more opportunity than ever before for these smaller challenger brands.

When at the same time, the larger brands have more content, bigger budget, more current brand awareness, more content already being published out there.

They do some amazing things that become the playbook.

You know, Sam, in an era of marketplaces where Amazon, Zooplus, Chewy, Challenger brands in particular have a level playing field.

100%.

And so appealing to them as a community that's in need of amplification and audience is a wise strategy.

Our focus is on understanding what challengers do differently.

So we spent the last five years, now over 10,000 hours, actually researching and documenting the playbook of successful challenger brands, which of course in large part includes how they are deploying AI.

And then we work with blue chip brands like Unilever, Burger King, Xerox, JP Morgan to help them adapt and implement these solutions.

I don't know that I have a favorite song right now, but I have been down a deep rabbit hole on like old school Lil Wayne recently, like going all the way back to like late 90s, early 2000s.

Yeah, and also kind of like, why did they get stuck? Why are so many companies stuck in wave one with the C-suite of all sides of companies getting frustrated with, well, there's a big investment gone in, but I'm just not seeing, to your point, it's not going up and to the right, and they don't understand why.

Yeah.

Well, I think the first thing is, again, our world is understanding what challenger brands do differently from incumbents.

And one of the big advantages that they have is that they are more long-term oriented in how they approach what they're doing.

I look at places like Sam's Club and what they're doing with the hire of Jeff Jenkins and seeing them as a challenger brand.

I look at Gap as being just past that challenger status and getting back on track with what Fabi's been doing, which is obviously an amazing job.

And then you have the more traditional quote unquote challenger brands that are the small startup, these, you know, groups that are really trying to make a big run for it in the, in the space.

You know, whether it's like these new beverages that are popping up or whether it's these new snacks, especially anything that has protein or fiber, you just see challenging the status quo on the big cereal brand.

So, I mean, it depends on how you look at it, but as far as who I'm looking at the most right now, I, Always love a good comeback.

And in this kind of new world of the microcultures that are getting rebundled, the way to lead culture is if you have the money, maybe still the top down way.

But if you don't, if you need to take the challenger approach where the time and the money are the constraint and the innovation is the opportunity, then it's kind of rebundling culture and putting that out there as a way to lead once again.

So a lot of what we see with challenger brands, they don't have the time, they don't have the budget.

I'm so happy about that.

So yeah, you built this Challenger brand.

How have you done that? And what advice do you have for other founders who are kind of going through trying to build a challenger brand?

So what I would say is do the obvious and then keep doing it and don't try and reinvent things.

So I think we went through a period of going, well, we did a campaign about this last year.

And we just felt like we just couldn't keep telling the story, but actually there's lots of different ways you can tell the story, but the story stays the same, right? It's the one that we know is really effective.

So when we got the Channel 4 funding, We did exactly the same story, but Deborah Meaden did it and we just put it on TV.

And so I think that's what I would say to challenger brands is you don't need to keep reinventing the wheel.

I was based up in Newcastle, so I worked 100% remotely most of the time.

That was the kind of very scrappy, early kind of startup, startup challenger brand era.

So we did everything between, I guess, maybe three or four people.

That very much looked like influencer marketing, email marketing, SMS, new launches, designing packaging, really kind of getting stuck into all different areas.

And so we'll do it.

but pretty much everything um and i think it's so so important i love that that's a really clever way

of actually making sure that they're going to engage with the product as well because i think a lot of the time it might be a risk to put a new flavor out or to try a new product but if you already know that your community are wanting that they're backing it it's the next step in your progression because they've asked for it then you know that it's likely going to be successful and they still have that real like instinct of what they built and that probably really shows to all the community as you continue to grow and what advice would you give to any other challenger brands trying to scale without losing the sense of community and authenticity that made people connect with them in the first place

We've talked about it a lot, but I really think listening to the consumer and bringing the consumer into the fold is so important.

And the sort of philosophy behind it was like, well, how do you get a city to behave like a challenger brand? And there was some very specific problems that were like there in Edinburgh and Edmonton and Fredericton.

So what do you mean by challenger brand? What does that mean?

So there's basically a book called Challenger Brands.

And I completely blanked on who wrote it, which is rather embarrassing.

But you can Google it and stick it in the show notes.

So it truly is like a good definition of dull and the anti-creativity.

And we actually found in that one study that it costs brands about, Brands are wasting nearly $200 billion of media spend when we looked at this massive cohort of brands because they're being too dull and having to spend more on media to make up for it.

So, yeah, you see this all the time.

I've worked in businesses like this, especially... publicly listed businesses I think one of the most interesting things that you're going to see coming out of the next decade in marketing is why this happens and how to get around it and the fact that there's been a few articles about this already but I reckon someone's going to write a book on it soon founder-led businesses often grow much more than publicly listed businesses because they can take the risk.

I think it was 15 years ago.

The job then, you know, it was make a TV ad, and then you call your shopper team, and you bring it below the line.

We all make profit, because Challenger Brands can't afford a TV ad.

There might be a few big ones at P&G who have launched a Challenger brand, and, oh, God, they've bought a £2 million...

I think in some ways it was a bit of a byproduct of just coming in as outsiders and looking in more through a consumer lens that you're inevitably going to be a bit of an outsider in an industry and a bit of a challenger in that sense.

But we certainly didn't start a coffee business to be a challenger brand.

We thought the incumbents here, we can provide a better experience and compete.

And we always had an ambition to build a global brand, to build for the very long term.