A GUIDE TO CHALLENGER BRANDS – JUST WHERE CAN THE NEXT DAVID BEAT GOLIATH?

I’ve just been listening to Liquid Death’s founder Mike Cessario’s talk about how he created a built a billion-dollar water brand in probably the most commoditised of category of all, water. Here are some of the success stories that have stolen market share from the multinationals in largely commoditised categories:

Liquid Death – thrash metal cool (water) in a can.

Innocent Smoothies – breakfast on the go in a drink. Stance Socks – cool socks in a world of white sports socks.

Brewdog – punk beer brand in a world of sunny lagers and old man ales.

Grenade – cool weight management products (the Thermo Detonator) based on a hand grenade!

Dollar Shave Club – high-quality razors for a low monthly fee!

Just what do you need to do to gain traction and carve your own niche in the market? Here are 5 principles that I’d recommend anyone to walk through before jumping in with both feet and putting their life into it:

1. Huge Category Opportunity

Each of the above have taken what is often revered as a commodity category with little consumer interest. What I see most challenger brands in the UK do is create new sub-categories that just don’t have enough people buying into them. It is much easier to create traction in a category that everyone already buys into. The team behind Stance socks walked into a big retailer (might have been Walmart) and came with their tech thinking background to see just which category was dormant and needed life throwing into it. Most big categories usually have a duopoly that is perceived as impossible to break into. But these are the categories that are ripe for innovation if there are no interesting brands in play already.

2. A Category with Dull Brands

99% of the brands in huge categories play by the same rules and just end up looking like wallpaper. None have huge character or charisma that you want to buy into. As Mike says in his talk, our brains are designed to work on autopilot, so new things have to hit our error bias and standout against the crowd by being different. But culturally different to also be relevant. In Liquid Death’s case they looked at the bad/dumb ideas to create something truly unique.

3. Solve a Human Problem

Drinking water out of a bottle at an event made you look, well uncool, by putting it in a can and making it look like a beer brand it made it socially acceptable. Innocent created a healthy(ish) drink for people on the go in London, Brewdog made craft ale cool and a brand you wanted to have in the hand. If you aren’t solving a problem, you should probably rethink the idea.

4. Create a Tribe

An opportunity exists to build a brand that people want to be part of. Every one of the above examples is a cool brand that people want to be a part of. Don’t follow the herd, standout for being different, standout for something that people want to be a part of.?

5. Test & Learn before you Invest

The power of ideas is that there is a playground to test them before even putting too much money into the game. Test and learn by creating a concept, or concepts, and then taking them to social media to see which sticks and gains traction (followers, engagement, etc.). Only at this juncture should you put your hard earned cash, or your round of family & friends funding into production and taking the idea to market. DTC and Amazon made it easy for people to trade, but test the concept first and make sure people want to buy into it. Then make sure enough people want to buy into it. ?

Follow the above 5 principles and increase your chances of success. Perhaps revisit just where you are today against the 5 and then reshape what you are looking to do moving forward. If in doubt, give me a shout. I’d be more than happy to share a candid opinion or two!