Jamie Matthews, CEO at Initials, tells us how challenger brands are successful in the market, and shares tips and advice on how established brands can adopt this mentality to fight back. 

Today, even the longest established and most famous FMCG brands are under intense pressure.

Over decades, these brands have been massively successful at carving out a role in people’s daily lives. They have been highly effective in leveraging their scale advantages via globalisation, ubiquity of distribution and weight of advertising. They have been masters of the marketing game as it has traditionally been played. Now the rules of the game have changed. The landscape is being redrawn by several inter-connected factors.

Firstly, the structural. Dramatically lower barriers to entry, the emergence of ‘new’ retail and re-prioritisation within traditional retail are all having an impact. Secondly, attitudinal factors. Different consumer expectations, an appetite for experimentation and scepticism about traditional elites result in dramatic changes.

In order to get under the skin of this issue, we commissioned quantitative research amongst over 1,000 people who had recently switched from an established brand to a new challenger brand. The research looked at eight FMCG categories – from food to beauty to household products.

Across each category, the findings showed that Challengers are disrupting every product range. By marrying mindset, ambition and behaviour, challenger brands are able to lead with conviction and win new customers.

CHALLENGER BRAND PHENOMENON

The challenger brand phenomenon isn’t new, but it’s definitely accelerating. Today, across almost every category, challenger brands are on the march.

While it’s easy to see how market changes are giving Challengers a significant leg up, that doesn’t explain why consumers are embracing them with such enthusiasm. Challenger brands aren’t just winning market share – very often, they’re winning the market argument too.

To understand why, let’s define precisely what a challenger brand is. Adam Morgan, an expert on the topic and author of the seminal ‘Eating The Big Fish’, puts it well: “A challenger brand is defined, primarily, by a mindset – it has business ambitions bigger than its conventional resources, and is prepared to do something bold, usually against the existing conventions or codes of the category, to break through.”

MINDSET AND AMBITION

Mindset and ambition are fundamental to success. Challenger brands believe they can change the weather by overturning category norms. And they marry belief with behaviour. At every level – values and personality, product design, channel strategy, service delivery, customer experience – they display complete coherence and absolute conviction. They jump on insight to identify a point of resonance, then focus on it with ruthless obsession.

HOW CAN ESTABLISHED BRANDS FIGHT BACK?

To challenge the Challengers effectively, established brands should consider adopting more of this mindset. This means re-setting ambitions, re-discovering conviction and turning both into new behaviours and actions that channel the positivity and energy of the Challengers. To a certain extent, they need to re-invent themselves.

This may require changes at both a product and an emotional level. At the product level, quality standards must be maintained or enhanced, NPD must be prioritised, even at the risk of self-cannibalisation. And brands must dig deeper to find authentic, resonant product stories.

At the emotional level architecture may need to be re-framed; certainly, behaviours may need to be re-invented in order to convey true conviction. Stories should be built from the ground up, encouraging people to re-discover the brand for themselves, and the narrative opened up for audiences to play with and shape.

In order to compete effectively, established brands need to find a guiding conviction of their own and re-organise themselves around it. All of this requires bravery and a much greater appetite for risk.

TRANSLATING BELIEF INTO BEHAVIOUR

What Challengers lack in capital, they make up for in conviction. They have the ability to translate strongly held beliefs into strongly attractive behaviours, due to some intrinsic advantages.

1. Because they start with a clean sheet of paper and carry no historical brand baggage, Challengers can zero in on unarticulated or emerging consumer/customer needs.
2. Their product development can be highly considered and laser-focussed on addressing that key need.
3. They can design the customer experience from the ground up, ensuring every element of the offer supports the core value proposition.
4. They can pursue the distribution strategy that best fits their model and proposition. They are not slaves to historic trading relationships, ways of working or other entrenched interests.
5. At launch, challenger brands rely on making an exaggerated impact on a limited number of people. Because they do not have to please multiple constituencies, they can be more dynamic and take more risks in how and where they communicate.
6. If necessary, they can refine their offer quickly. Compared to most established brands, they are not burdened with cumbersome decision-making hierarchies, so they can be nimble in responding to changing circumstances.

In short, challenger brands have the luxury of positioning themselves in opposition to the category norms and expressing that opposition through their values and behaviours. The present shift in consumer attitudes gives them an unprecedented opportunity to overturn the status quo. So, for those established brands that are not evolving accordingly, then it may be a case of do or die.

The post The rise of the Challenger Brand: why Mindset, Ambition and Behaviour are driving change appeared first on IPM Bitesize.

Naked Juice invited visitors to Festival No.6 in Portmeirion, Wales, to step into the brand’s Colourtopia experience, an experiential activation which the brand has been taking round a number of festivals this summer.

Naked says that with a communal family-friendly atmosphere and creative vibe, the boutique Welsh festival was selected as a natural fit for the third instalment of its live engagement campaign, as it prioritises creativity, while the audience of 25-40-year-old ‘dynamic doers’ mirrors Naked’s. Naked Juice Colourtopia also delighted visitors at the Latitude (July 12th to 15th) and Wilderness (August 3rd to 6th) festivals this summer.

Starting as a stark white wilderness full of interesting sculptures, Naked puts the power of colour and creativity into the hands of festival-goers, prompting them to create a vibrant, dynamic environment filled with positive, feel-good energy. Armed with a Naked smoothie and colourful, fruity stickers that reflect the ingredients of the smoothies, people are encouraged to go wild with colour, putting the stickers wherever they want within the space.

The Colourtopia activation, created by integrated agency Initials, builds on the brand’s highly successful experiential activity in 2016. The objective is to drive trial and awareness of its smoothies and convey the “weird and wonderful spirit of its brand”, Naked says.

Under the banner of Naked Juice’s “Power. Full. Smoothie” positioning, attendees of Festival No.6, which took place from September 7th to 10th, were encouraged to try Naked’s different smoothies before being welcomed into Colourtopia,

Danielle Mendham, Brand Manager at Naked Juice, said: “At Naked, we are dedicated to creating the best-tasting smoothies made from the most delicious ingredients and nutritional boosts. There’s no better place for people to get to know our brand and experience ‘the Power. Full. Smoothie’ than at a festival. Initials’ work on Colourtopia embodies the imaginative, adventurous spirit of the brand, providing festival-goers with an engaging environment in which to get creative and colourful, while driving brand awareness and purchase.”

Naked Juice is an American company that produces juices and smoothies. A subsidiary of PepsiCo, Inc., Naked Juice products are now distributed in international markets including Canada, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands and France, as well as across the US.

Initials is one of the UK’s fastest-growing independent agencies, with expertise in brand planning and brand activation, spanning Promotional Marketing, Shopper Marketing and Live Engagement. Initials delivers innovative marketing for clients on a local and global scale including Arla, Fiat Group, Heineken, McLaren Automotive, Nestlé, PepsiCo, Philips and Samsung.

Festival N°6 is an annual family-friendly art and music festival, held in and around Portmeirion, Wales. The name comes from the cult 1960s TV series, the prisoner, starring Patrick McGoohan, which was filmed in and around Portmeirion.

The post Naked Juice adds Colourtopia to Festival No.6 appeared first on IPM Bitesize.

Integrated agency INITIALS has promoted Rachel Bateman, director and head of live engagement, to its senior leadership board as part of the agency’s ongoing championship of its live engagement offering.

Bateman will continue in her current role with an additional remit to advocate the live engagement offering within all board discussions. She will also assume responsibility for overseeing the welfare of existing staff to ensure rules of best practice are in place, both culturally and socially, across the agency.

The move builds on Bateman’s promotion to the newly created role of head of live engagement in 2015 as part of the agency’s transformation of its experiential provision to live engagement.

Bateman has worked within the live events industry for over 12 years, servicing a wide portfolio of UK and global clients including PepsiCo, Fiat Chrysler Automobiles, and Samsung. She joined INITIALS in 2010 bringing her invaluable expertise in live event management to the agency’s broader marketing mix.

Jamie Matthews, CEO at INITIALS, said: “After several years of progressing steadily through the agency, Rachel has embraced and delivered on every challenge we put her way. She’s highly regarded amongst peers and clients and has spearheaded many high profile campaigns as a result. It’s great to have her on the board and we have no doubts she’ll have a fundamental part to play in driving our agency forward.”

Bateman added: “I’m thrilled with my new appointment onto the board and excited to be a part in building INITIALS’ future. Returning to work in 2013 from maternity leave has given me a new perspective; seeking to find the right balance between a successful and fulfilling career and being a mum. I hope that my promotion will encourage others to see that flexible working hours don’t have to impact an ambition and ability to succeed in senior roles within the industry.”

The post INITIALS puts Bateman on board appeared first on IPM Bitesize.