Challenge everything

x Sponsored content on Research Live and in Impact magazine is editorially independent.
Find out more about advertising and sponsorship.

Ask yourself this: What does your business stand for, or what does it stand against? If you don’t have an answer to either question, you might be in trouble. Adam Morgan, one of the leading lights of British brand planning and the author of Eating the Big Fish, thinks companies need to be challenging something in order to grow.

We often think of challenger brands as small, spunky upstarts: little Davids battling against corporate Goliaths. But being a challenger has nothing to do with size, says Morgan. “It’s a mindset.”

His new book, Overthrow, (co-authored with Mark Holden of media agency PHD) identifies 10 different types of challenger brands, as well as the different types of stories they tell to customers in order to win market share.

So, which type of challenger are you going to be?

The people’s champion
They claim the moral high ground and seek to right wrongs and challenge the motives of the ‘establishment’. As a tactic, ...