In today’s landscape of entrepreneurship and greater consumer access, opportunities for challenger brands are at an all-time high. These ambitious, often smaller brands seek to disrupt industries ruled by established giants, striving to win over consumers.
Yet, against competitors with strong brand loyalty, visibility and deeper pockets, challengers must be bolder, using unique strategies to stand out and capture attention.
Part I of this two-part series dove into challengers disrupting consumer behavior.
- Proffer a Better Brand for a Better World: Enter with products offering superior features layered with an altruistic element.
- Challenge the Status Quo: Move consumer choice and ignite a revolution of new standards within a category.
- Bring Next-Gen Excitement: Introduce new options that swiftly respond to emerging consumer tastes and trends.
Part II uncovers how innovations in service, value or positioning can also succeed.
- Center on the Consumer: Introduce alternatives addressing unanswered consumer pain points.
- Offer Universal Accessibility: Offer consumer access to categories once restricted by demographics/physical characteristics (income, size, ethnicity, etc.).
- Leave a Striking First Impression: Burst onto the scene via Big Game spend and/or ads that bring the drama.
Center on the Consumer
Some challengers find opportunity in industries where consumer needs are unmet, whether in product or service. These brands position themselves as fresh alternatives in a staid and stagnant marketplace on a quest to champion the consumer. Communication on the long-standing pain points must be clear as must the brand’s solution, but brands still need to break through with engaging or entertaining creatives.
Dollar Shave Club shook up the shaving industry by pitching a subscription that eliminates the hassle of running out of razors as well as high cost—solving two barriers in the existing marketplace.
“Razor Escapes” presented these consumer pain points in a humorous, Convincing,* and Memorable* manner while sparking Curiosity* around the new brand.
A larger portion of viewer reactions to the thirty-second spot fell into neutral territory. While both men and women were happy to see a brand thinking of them, not all viewers would be early adopters of the subscription concept.
The banking industry has similarly been disrupted by online-only brands addressing multiple consumer pain points.
Employing simple, clean visuals and direct messaging, Chime Bank invited consumers to “Bank Differently” by laying out a new choice (Change) for online banking with no hidden fees or overdraft cost and early paycheck deposits.
The clear benefit focus made the brand stand out, with 87% recalling Chime on an unaided basis. The product was rated the Single Best Thing about the ad at more than twice the rate of the average banking ad while the offers were also noted.
This fifteen-second spot ranks among the top 5% of all banking ads in delivering consumer Information, with viewers expressing appreciation for the potential savings.
Offer Universal Accessibility
These brands challenge in categories that have historically restricted consumers via some physical or demographic aspect, with the goal of offering participation for all.
A key objective for such challengers must be to inform the audience on the differentiation, which Rent the Runway achieved in the thirty-second “Buy Nothing, Wear It All.”
The brand’s promise to provide access to high fashion and event-based wardrobes without the exorbitant costs and closet stuffing (and waste) of old hit a nerve with women. The creative itself placed in the 95th percentile of specialty apparel ads for the Change in direction the brand represented, and in the 99th for effectively informing.
In a single creative, Rent the Runway convinced women of all ages of its value proposition, with nearly two in three indicating a higher likelihood of trial—compared to only 43% for the average apparel ad.
Acorns made investing accessible to the masses with its app, which automatically invests spare change from everyday purchases. The thirty-second “Quarters” presented a single quarter as “more than just a quarter,” providing a simple explanation of a new investment opportunity while assuring consumers that their money would be safely diversified.
By removing barriers like the need for investment knowledge and minimum investment requirements, Acorns achieved a Relevance score in the 95th percentile among all investment ads and 96th in Information delivery.
Viewers across all income levels connected strongly with the ad, singling out the message and the product itself as the standout aspects. With a consideration rate of 45% (compared to the category average of 33%) and 92% brand recall, this ad delivered differentiation exceptionally well.
Leave a Striking First Impression
In some cases, getting noticed is deemed most critical, and one effective way to do so is to get people talking. Challenger brands taking this strategy may bet big on a Super Bowl introduction while others may launch creative so unusual it intrigues and leaves a lasting impression.
While Likeability, Information delivery, and/or Relevance may fall short, the primary objective is still achieved, either through the ad itself or the buzz it generates afterward.
Liquid Death bet its success on image, with edgy ads that wittingly chose to polarize the audience to stand apart. This approach requires acceptance that a portion of consumers will likely be lost.
“Breaking the Law” employed shock visuals and the Judas Priest soundtrack to dare consumers not to be scared, “it’s just water.” With scenes resembling children drinking in a party setting, viewers were Incredulous* at the Inappropriate* (for some, Exploitative) portrayals but sentiment delivered the brand’s desired result – a love it/hate it dichotomy.
While 40% reported a higher likelihood of purchase (significantly below the bottled water 52% norm), half as many were turned off the brand entirely. However, the creative grabbed Attention effectively and firmly established its outsider image.
Coinbase alternatively exemplified this approach with its first-of-its-kind 2022 Super Bowl entry which subjected Big Game viewers to sixty seconds of a bouncing “QR Code.” Albeit colorful, the creative was so far removed from the typical (let alone Big Game) ad, that a single viewing simply threw the audience.
Consumer response ranked the spot in the very bottom percentile of investment ads, while the confounding approach sparked Rare levels of WTF*, Incredulous*, Waste of Time*, and Awful* emotion in viewer sentiment.
Although the ad itself was underwhelming, its unique approach led Super Bowl viewers to crash the brand’s website scanning those codes and flood social media sites. Moreover, the brand reported excessively high levels of earned media.
In Summary
From embracing purpose-driven messaging to creating new consumer behavior or addressing unmet pockets of demand driven by changing habits, challenger brands are reshaping what effective advertising looks like in the age of empowered consumers.
While influencers, social media, gaming and event-based marketing can offer challengers additional opportunities to break through at varying budget levels and with more targeted audiences if desired, the stakes are high. Creative testing and careful media placement can significantly reduce the margin of error when battling legacy brands with bigger budgets.
*Indicates one of the 57 emotional reactions iSpot Creative Assessment measures for every video ad.