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things – the new shiny object, conference buzzword or a slavish adherence to Purpose, whether it is right for the brand or not – rather than the core elements of strategy and brand building that will drive competitive differentiation. A drift that is dangerous for a market leader, and fatal to a challenger.
Let’s see what follows, then, as 10 different kinds
of challenger clarity. While we’ll find within their consumer and media strategies a wealth of insight about how, for instance, AI can indeed help a brand have a more human relationship with its customers, how direct-to-consumer (DTC) has successfully helped a challenger democratise a category, and how Purpose can be critical to certain (though not all) kinds of challenger ambition, we’ll also see that the use of those tools will be in support of a bigger strategic clarity and ambition, rather than becoming the ambition or strategy itself.
Finally, one of the forces fuelling this new wave
of challengers is a new generation of financial investment; for the first time we are seeing a new generation of investment companies set up to focus specifically on challengers. In the final chapter
of the book, therefore, we interview two of these companies about what has led them to focus here, about why they believe this is genuinely a new
era for challengers, and what they look for in
a challenger to invest in.
Enough preamble – we’re challengers. Let’s go.
10 Introduction