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Competing Strategies for Challenger Brands

This document outlines 8 credos or principles for how challenger brands can compete against larger brand leaders: 1) Break with your past identity, 2) Build a strong, emotionally resonant "lighthouse identity", 3) Assume thought leadership of your category by breaking conventions, 4) Create symbols that challenge consumer habits, 5) Sacrifice things like availability for a stronger identity, 6) Over-commit to translating intentions into actions, 7) Use advertising and publicity boldly to demand attention, 8) Focus on generating new ideas rather than focusing on existing consumer needs. Following these principles can help challenger brands compete against larger entrenched competitors.

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Sundeep Kumar
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152 views14 pages

Competing Strategies for Challenger Brands

This document outlines 8 credos or principles for how challenger brands can compete against larger brand leaders: 1) Break with your past identity, 2) Build a strong, emotionally resonant "lighthouse identity", 3) Assume thought leadership of your category by breaking conventions, 4) Create symbols that challenge consumer habits, 5) Sacrifice things like availability for a stronger identity, 6) Over-commit to translating intentions into actions, 7) Use advertising and publicity boldly to demand attention, 8) Focus on generating new ideas rather than focusing on existing consumer needs. Following these principles can help challenger brands compete against larger entrenched competitors.

Uploaded by

Sundeep Kumar
Copyright
© Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PPT, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd

How Challenger Brands can

compete against Brand Leaders

ADAM MORGAN
The 8 credos of successful challenger
brands

1. Break with Your Immediate Past


2. Build a Lighthouse Identity
3. Assume Thought Leadership of the Category
4. Create Symbols of Reevaluation
5. Sacrifice
6. Over-commit
7. Use Advertising & Publicity as a High-Leverage
Asset
8. Become Idea-Centered, Not Consumer-Centered
1. Break with Your Immediate Past

If you are up against a giant with an


eight-foot spear, the one weapon it is
foolish to choose is a four-foot spear; if
you can’t match the length, you need
something different.
1. Break with Your Immediate Past

• Redefine what business we should really be


in (in context of The Big Fish)
• Free ourselves up to see all the possibilities
of the category
• See clearly both opportunity and threats, and
create the momentum to push Challenger
Strategy into Challenger behaviour.
2. Build a Lighthouse Identity

• Challenger brands do not attempt to navigate


by the consumer. Instead, they invite the
consumer to navigate by them. (Not “That’s
why”advertising)
• Like a lighthouse, one notices them without
looking for them
2. Build a Lighthouse Identity

Four Key Dimensions:


• Identity
• Emotion
• Intensity
• Salience

“Energizer Bunny”
2. Build a Lighthouse Identity

• The Challenger Brand has to possess a


stronger, emotionally based relationship with
the consumer than the brand leader does.
• Indifference is death.
3. Assume thought leadership of the
category

• It’s not just about strategy. It’s about


behaviour.
• Deliberately break some of the category
conventions, while rooting yourself in others.
4. Create symbols of reevaluation

Attack the dominant consumer complacency


(deep-seated belief/habit). Introduce a new
dimension.

Ericsson Mobile Phones


5. Sacrifice

• A brand leader’s currency is its mass appeal.


• Challengers need to create differences which may
sometimes polarise consumers. (To strongly attract,
one may also deter).
• The sacrifices a Challenger needs to make do not lie
in the incidentals to the business, but in the
fundamentals:
– Trade numbers for identity
– Trade availability for desirability
– Trade depth for definition
5. Sacrifice

• Concentrates the internal and external


expressions of identity by eliminating
activities that might dilute it.
• Allows the creation of strong points of
difference.
• Generates critical mass for the
communication of the identity and
differences by stripping away other
secondary activities.
6. Over-commit

• Aim two feet below the brick.


• We cannot fool the consumer by talking
about good intentions. Overcommitment is
the only way to translate intention into
behaviour.
7. Use advertising & publicity as
a high-leverage asset

• Challengers must demand to be noticed.


They need to take a bold position in
everything they do.
• Creative breakthrough is a strategic
necessity. Need ideas that seize the target’s
imagination.
• “You can play safe and take a risk. Or you
can take a risk and play safe.”
8. Become idea-centered,
not consumer-centered

• Communication ideas engage the


imagination and emotion of consumers who
think their needs are already satisfied by the
brand leader.
• Need to continually `manufacture’ ideas to
incessantly demonstrate the promise.

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