Zag ???? - One of our Favorite Challengers of All Time, How Cash App is Dominating in the US, and Kim Kardashian's new Marketing Role

Deep Dive

??One of our favorite challenger marketing case studies comes from an unlikely source and an unlikely time. Luckily the campaign is still active more than 100 years later even if most people don’t realize who or why it was started. 

Back in the early 1900s, the Michelin tire company was looking for ways to boost car ownership and driving in general to sell more tires. They probably did their fair share of ‘traditional’ marketing (whatever that was at the time), but they also took a more creative but very strategically sound approach by starting a book of restaurant guides and ratings. The guides reviewed restaurants in various locations, giving people a reason to drive more. But even more importantly, they were good! So good, in fact, that the Michelin star is still renowned as the highest accolade a restaurant can receive. 

 We love this case study because it’s one of the purest examples of a brand creating a media company around what they stand for in a way that adds value to the audience they’re trying to reach. Others are Guinness with their book of world records (get people to spend more time in pubs by having more to talk about) and Red Bull with their extreme sports events. 

If you add value through your marketing and communications to the audience you’re trying to reach, they will come to you. They will trust and advocate for your brand and they will buy your product or service. It’s not a new idea (at least 100 years old, but I’m sure Michelin wasn’t the first), but it is tried and true - when done well… 

Here’s how to get started if you want to explore this kind of strategy: 

1. Figure out what your brand stands for to your audience (for Michelin it was travel and adventure)
2. Come up with a way to produce valuable content on that topic that doesn’t already exist (a fine dining guide)
3. Focus on editorial integrity, not short-term business objectives (find the best restaurants, not the ones that were furthest away) 
4. Distribute the content through underpriced attention channels (we’re not sure how Michelin got the guides into people’s hands, and of course now they basically sell themselves with the brand they’ve built. If they were starting those guides again today there would probably be a strong TikTok and influencer campaign behind them though!)

Look around, inside your category and outside of it: the strongest brands are usually the ones that have added a ton of value over the years, not just through their product but through what their brand stands for and the challenges it helps their audience solve.

Challengers in Action 

?? We’ve covered Cash App as a case study on building a successful challenger brand and business before, but here’s a fresh take on it from a new Substack newsletter we’re really into (hat tip to Yan for sending it our way). If you’re not familiar with how Cash App has driven its hyper growth in the US using a combination of brand positioning, underpriced attention, and word of mouth, definitely check this one out. 

?? Maybe not a “challenger in action”, but we love this deep dive on the history of the Miller Lite vs Bud Light rivalry in the US beer market. We’d imagine the focus is starting to shift from how they compete with each other to how they stay competitive with all the challengers entering their category…

???? Let’s take a trip over to South Africa to look at Bathu, a challenger footwear brand, that has grown to be one of the top brands in Africa since launching in 2016. Many African markets are still dominated by western brands, but there’s a strong wave of local challengers coming up that are built by and for the local communities and cultures. 

Grab Bag 

?? Top Gun 2 is the highest grossing Memorial Day movie of all time. Great marketing or just THE BEST MOVIE OF ALL TIME? Fine - maybe marketing had a bit to do with it…

? If you’re not already subscribed to Simon Taylor’s Fintech Brainfood Newsletter, you should be. It’s one of the most thorough and differentiated newsletter out there. The content can get pretty nerdy (in a good way) on fintech, but a lot of it has to do with brand and marketing as well, including last week’s edition on how so many fintech challengers are racing towards crypto and web3, in large part driven by marketing objectives. 

?? Beyond Meat has hired Kim Kardashian as their Chief Taste Consultant. That’s…unappetising. Why do companies keep doing this “completely irrelevant celebrity as fake c-suite exec” thing? Just pay them to post and be done with it…

Rival this Week

???Did you catch our first episode of Punchy? What did you think? We’d love to hear your feedback and please do subscribe, like, and/or leave a review if you enjoyed it! We appreciate the support in getting the new show off the ground. 

?? We’re taking our Rival Roundtables on the road! These are our small, group thought leadership dinners where we bring together CMOs and challenger entrepreneurs. We’ll be hosting roundtables in London, Copenhagen, Zurich, Amsterdam, New York, and LA over the next two months. If you’re interested in getting involved, please get in touch with Eric ([email protected]). 

Challenge of the Week

?? If you had to launch your business’s version of the Michelin dining guide, what would it be?