As Prolific North Live returns to Manchester this week, one of the event’s speakers, Richard Midgley – Founder and Group Strategy Director at Ponderosa – explores how challenger brands can use ‘intelligent disruption’ to outthink rather than outspend their rivals. Ahead of his talk, he shares why bold, creative thinking isn’t about breaking things, but breaking through...
At Ponderosa – we aren’t always working with ‘the Coke’s’ and ‘the Nikes’. Many of our clients would class themselves as ‘challengers’. And therefore, the objective becomes to steal as much share from above as we can (and to basically be the brand the leaders stress about in their boardrooms).
Which is a tough gig. Because (believe it or not) being big comes with its advantages. They are much more well known (sometimes household names) with infinitely larger marketing budgets that are simply impossible to compete with head-to-head. They can afford to be on the telly and the tube. They can afford to get noticed, and therefore, stocked by retailers. They can afford to keep themselves at the top. The easiest way to be a big brand, is to already be one.
The difficulty for smaller brands.
All of this makes it really difficult for challengers to get noticed. People don’t generally conduct deep research to find emerging brands. You can’t just ‘build it and expect them to come’. We have to find a way to get ourselves in front of the right people, with much less spend.
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And consumers don’t care about this stuff half as much as we do. Brands (in particular smaller ones) just aren’t that high on most people’s agenda. It’s a shame, but the people on the street are basically indifferent to the work we put everything into. There are much more interesting things going on in their heads than the latest hair gel brand.
The power of ideas.
When we lack control over the size of the brand and the budgets – the main lever we can pull to get a leg up, is the creative. And this is very well researched and recognised. The famous Thinkbox research that shows ‘creative quality’ is the biggest controllable driver of marketing ROI, behind brand size – with a potential 12x multiplier. And System1 backs that up. As Adam Morgan puts it:
“Dull is expensive. If you produce a dull campaign in the UK it costs you roughly £10m more in media spend to have the same commercial impact as an interesting campaign”.
This means smaller brands can use the power of ideas to punch above their weight, to give them much more bang for their buck.
Surreal, the high-protein cereal brand, is a good example. They’re competing against the likes of Kellogg’s and Nestlé, but instead of trying to match their budgets, Surreal have found what they do differently (healthy), and then they deliver it with emotion and humour with purposeful jabs at the competition. Plus, extra points through partnerships with brands like Gymshark. They get to borrowing some cultural relevancy, while sharing ad space.
What does this look like?
The clue is in the name. Challengers need to challenge and provoke – but with intention. Anybody can get ‘attention’ by being shocking enough, but it needs to be the right attention and with the right people. It’s about finding the cracks in the market leaders armour and positioning the brand accordingly. We first need to first find out how the brand is different, or, how we can talk about it differently.
And then it’s about turning it up to 11 and creating something remarkable.
Using humour, emotion, and distinctive ideas that ruffle the feathers of the market leaders and start to build some familiarity. Ideas that challenge the market, and offer something brand new.
And by doing this, we stand a chance of getting people talking. This means moving fast, taking chances, and acting decisively. You have to outthink where you can’t outspend.
Why it’s difficult
The best work is always the hardest to sell in. Being bold feels riskier, and I empathise with brands who feel like they should sound like everybody else.
Rory Sutherland points out:
“It’s not that people in business are stupid — it’s that they’re incentivised to avoid personal blame. If you take a bold creative risk and it fails, your job’s on the line. But if you play it safe and it fails, well, everyone was doing that.”
At Ponderosa, the line we have written on the stairs is “wouldn’t it be cool if”. It’s about creating a culture of ambitious ideas that are fresher and braver. Not for the sake of ‘being creative’, but because this stuff is immeasurably more effective, and our challenger clients need it more than anybody.
The takeaway
When you’re small, you can’t win by doing what everyone else does. You can’t buy your way into people’s lives, you have to earn your space there.
Working with smaller budgets forces you to focus. Successful challenger brands concentrate on what makes them different and make that difference famous. They can’t afford to spread themselves thin, so they make sharper, smarter decisions. Challenger brands might not have deep pockets, but smart, standout creativity lets them compete and often outperform the big guys.
You don’t need to be everywhere; you just need to be unforgettable where it counts.
