How to master the challenger brand marketing strategy (+ 5 brands getting it right)

We’re hardwired to love an underdog; when the unexpected, lesser-known, lesser-supported or lesser-experienced contender wins in a fight. But there’s nothing victim-like about challenger brands — nor is it a surprise when they succeed.

What is a Challenger Brand?

A challenger brand breaks the status quo. Characterised by a forward-thinking, hugely customer-centric mindset, these companies make it their mission to spark change in the industry. They are prepared to do something extraordinary, bold, and out of the norm — and their marketing strategy has to match.What are the common marketing strategies uniting challenger brands together, no matter how different their vision, values and vibe? Let’s take a look so that you can start channelling that challenger magic for yourself.

How To Create A Challenger Brand Marketing Strategy

1. Make a stand for what you believe in

Challenger brands are laser-focused on an ideology they see as unique. Yes, their product might be radical. But it’s the values of the business that really set them apart.That’s why ‘making a stand for what you believe in’ is the dominant marketing strategy that all challenger brands share.What does this look like exactly? It depends on the brand, its sector, and who the desired audience is. But the basic steps go a little something like this:

• Identify your like-minded customers - Connect with their values and what they think is important in life. This will be crucial to start a revolution from the ground up.
• Don’t worry about pleasing everyone - The old marketing adage “You can’t be everything to everyone” has particular significance for challenger brands. Being a challenger means turning some heads and butting up against the norms — and not everyone will love you for it.
• Use your marketing platform to reaffirm your view of a better future, time and time again - What problem are you trying to fix? What injustice are you fighting to resolve? This should be central to your marketing messaging in every piece of comms.

As a challenger in the feminine care space, Callay’s mission is clear: expect more from period products. We worked with Callay to draw awareness to how little innovation there had been in tampons in the past century — and what a bad deal those who menstruate were getting — setting the scene perfectly for their sector-changing ‘tampliner’.

2. Get emotional

Tapping into emotion is essential for creating content that sticks. Challenger brands typically use humour, shock, empathy, and other galvanising emotions to connect with an audience — and video is the perfect medium.

• Emotive storytelling is shareable - Make an impact with one person, and you can predict that they’ll talk about it with their friends.
• Challenge people’s expectations and don’t be afraid to make them feel uncomfortable - There’s a delicate balance between shock for shock’s sake and inspiring someone to take action. Find your sweet spot.
• Re-route to your mission - Not sure if you’re going overly emotional? Course correct back to your core mission and only release campaigns that help you achieve it.

Emotive storytelling and outrage were key tactics used for our work with youth-led movement BiteBack2030, who wanted to raise awareness of its mission to reduce childhood obesity, and recruit young people into the brand.We invited a group of people to take part in a social experiment, where we used the same techniques as the advertising industry to manipulate their food choices, before revealing the true impact of these tactics. Co-creating with our audience, their genuine reactions gained real traction, with 5000+ new followers to BiteBack2030’s Instagram account, and shares across news publications worldwide.

3. Develop your owned channel presence

Without big media budgets, challenger brands often rely on grassroots support from the community to push them into the stratosphere. This means ensuring your owned channel presence is working hard for you.

• Identify the space your audience hangs out and own your corner of it - ‘Owned’ media is a place where you have full control over what you share and when. Social platforms are the easiest place to start.
• Entertain - Your content doesn’t always have to be fun, especially if you’re tackling big, unpleasant issues. But it should always be compelling to keep people coming back for more.
• Encourage shares - Community underpins the challenger brand’s growth strategy, so make your calls-to-action clear and get your message heard across the world.

Take a look at Redbull for some serious challenger brand owned media inspiration. Redbull has managed to create an entire entertainment platform out of their owned media channels. They use a combination of video, audio, print, and more to create the go-to place for unique sports stories.

4. Partner with smaller names to gain trust

Influencers and creators are a great way to direct people to your owned content, gain followers and extend reach. For challenger brands, micro-influencers (those with 10k-50k social media followers) are a great place to start because of their highly relevant and engaged following.

• Micro-influencers have higher engagement and conversion rates - Who in the wide world of social media is the best fit to expand your reach and build your audience?
• Set your sights on earned media - How can you partner with micro-influencers to create a buzz and word-of-mouth marketing?
• Direct interest to your owned channels - Work with micro-influencers to increase your following and drive a call to action.

Buy-now-pay-later brand, Klarna, partners with influencers like @coral_pearl_ and @remiakande who promoted their Money Talks card game. With the help of influencers, Klarna is working to get people talking openly about their finances and break the stigma around money.

5. Harness acquisition strategies that focus on community

A challenger brand’s community focus also influences their way of acquiring new customers. We’re talking ‘Refer a friend’ campaigns, invitation-only discounts, and even premium monetised content (if that feels like a good fit).For example, new grocery delivery service, Gorillas, offers great deals to new customers and referral incentives to existing customers. Gorillas has also partnered with Revolut to offer customers three free months on Revolut Premium when they sign up with Gorillas.

If offering deals isn’t your style, you could try to entice people with exclusivity. Clubhouse managed to create lots of buzz around their audio platform by using a velvet-rope strategy. Clubhouse’s decision to offer invite-only memberships tapped into people’s FOMO and allowed them to strategically build hype around their platform. This made new users feel like they were (literally) part of the club.

• Isolate the strategies that work - What’s the most persuasive hook for could-be customers? And how does that fit with your mission?
• Learn from what others are doing - What ‘mentor’ brands are there in your space or beyond? Being a challenger doesn’t mean going it alone — optimise your marketing based on what you see works elsewhere too.
• Don’t be afraid to drop strategies that fail - If your money-off acquisition strategy is struggling to convert, switch it up. Challengers can benefit from being agile — that’s how you stay ahead of the competition.

We Can Help You Set Your Challenger Brand Marketing Strategy

If you’ve got a challenger brand origin story, we’d love to help you tell it. Don’t Panic has built hugely successful and shareable branded content for challenger brands like yours. Get in touch today.