How Chobani challenged Nestle & Danone to become No.1

Key learning:

• A superior product, competitively priced (the Blue Ocean strategy of pursuing both differentiation & cost competitiveness)
• During the 1^st phase, brand growth happened through extreme product focus and not through marketing and advertising. Marketing driven growth happened only during the 2^nd phase
• Brand point of view which was not developed by an agency, but by the owner himself and agency did the role of amplifying it
• Matching brand behavior with brand identity
• Use of social media to generate advocacy
• Maintaining the challenger mindset even when you are number 1  

                 

DISCLAIMER:

This blog represents my views. They do not necessarily reflect those of my employer

Challenger Brand Credo # 3 – Build a Lighthouse Identity

Identity Vs Image 

Mostly brand communication is developed by conducting focus group among its target audience, exploring need states and then proposing a solution to a particular problem that they might be facing in their everyday life. This approach is mostly reflected in the communications developed by most of the brands. They try to speak to you by telling you that they understand your world, problems, and aspirations. And that they have used this knowledge to come up with a product which will solve all your problems and make you happy. This school of communication can be called ‘that is why advertising’. This school of thinking is navigated by the consumers, should the consumers change their needs, the brands will follow. 


The interesting thing about challenger brands is that while they understand their consumers very well, they do not essentially navigate or position themselves basis their consumers. Challenger brands instead take a position or a stance on what they believe in, and then like a ‘lighthouse’ project, they invite customers to navigate the brand. Such a position helps the challenger brand to always stay in notice, even if the consumers are not actively looking for them.

There is a myth that challenger brands do not pay attention to the consumers, but sail by their own will and style. It is not the case. Challenger brands have a powerful, sometimes personal understanding of their consumers because in most of the cases senior management or the owners spend a lot of their personal time face to face the consumers. This helps them develop a very deep understanding of what motivates their customers - but essentially they do not confuse this understanding with playing it back to the consumers.
  

Developing a Lighthouse Identity 

Lighthouses are built on rocks and in the case of challenger brands it’s mostly built on:

A product truth which will give it credibility and own ability in the marketplace 
A brand belief which is absolutely unique and on which an identity can be built. One of the defining characteristics of this brand belief is that it should be an active brand and not a passive onlooker like rest of the category. This belief will be the engine for everything that the brand does.
A product truth:

Chobani:

Chodani drove the wedge against large brands with absolute product difference, hear it from the person who started it 



A brand belief:
Lenovo:
When Lenovo started to expand beyond their home market i.e. China. They were taking on leaders Dell and HP, who were typically doing the ‘that is why communication’ discussed earlier. Lenovo positioned itself as the brand which helps ‘doers’ with the campaign ‘For Those Who Do’.

Beyond communication, Lenovo started to support various people who were doing edgy work and used it as communication to project their brand belief.











DISCLAIMER:
This blog represents my views. They do not necessarily reflect those of my employer

Challenger Brand Credo # 2 - Take thought leadership of the category

In every category there are two types of brand leadership:

Market Leadership – the brand which is the biggest in the category, the brand which is selling the most, the brand with the largest distribution, the brand with the largest advertising budget, the brand that is most familiar, trusted and respected.

Then there is Thought Leadership- the brand which everyone talks about. If a challenger brand cannot compete with the market leader on any planks of the market leader (which most challenger brand will not be able to because of limited resources), the challenger brand should assume thought leadership, the currencies of which are not determined by significant financial or historical business resources.

The key currency to assume thought leadership is ‘Momentum,' in the sense the brand introduces new ideas into the marketplace and re-frames the way people think about how the category operates.

Now to assume thought leadership, challenger brands deliberately and carefully breaks all the established conventions of the category. And by doing so, they redefine the rules of the category to gain well-deserved respect.


Becoming a thought leader necessarily involves understanding category conventions and re-framing it mainly from three critical perspectives to build a new kind of relationship and buzz in the marketplace around your brand:

Conventions around how a category represents itself
Media conventions of the category
Current user experience conventions

Conventions around how a category represents itself

This could be conventions around how the category sees its relationship with its customers, packaging design, philosophy of doing business etc...


How Planet Fitness Health club changed the rules of fitness centers by striking a chord with everyday fitness enthusiasts.




Media conventions of the category

Innocent in its initial days put a lot of emphasis on creating disruptive OOH and retail shelf displays which reinforced its 'natural' core.







Current user experience conventions

How WeChat and Line challenged market leader WhatsApp with a better user experience.

While WhatsApp has higher global numbers, WeChat and Line are very successful challengers in the Asian markets. 


Line sold colorful emoticons for users to send them to one another. On the other hand, WeChat gained early traction partly thanks to "shake," a function that allows you to see other, nearby users shaking their phones at the same time – a brand new way to find dates, a revolution.


DISCLAIMER:
This blog represents my views. They do not necessarily reflect those of my employer

Challenger Brand Credo #1- Symbols of re-evaluation

A challenger brand needs to create symbols of re-evaluation to succeed in the market and not just brilliant ads that try to change assumptions with attitude and words.


When a challenger brand wants to compete with an established brand, they need to puncture the consumers’ autopilot thinking by creating symbols of re-evaluation. These symbols of re-evaluation are often the game changers. And they are steeped in the business and not just brilliant communication. 

Below are three great examples of challenger brands which went on to challenge the established brands:


Toyota Tundra:

Toyota had an over-engineered product when they were taking on Ford & GM, the big daddies of trucks in their home market, US. 




Chobani:
Questioned Nestle & Danone on the way their products are made 




Fogg:
Created symbol of re-evaluation by questioning what consumers are paying for  




DISCLAIMER:
This blog represents my views. They do not necessarily reflect those of my employer