You’ve seen that meme pinching Tom Goodwin’s thoughts on challenger brands, right? The one that proclaims Uber, the world’s largest taxi company, owns no vehicles; that Airbnb, the world’s largest accommodation provider, owns no real estate; and that Alibaba, the most valuable retailer, has no inventory.
Well, those ubiquitous challengers are nearly a decade old (sick of seeing it, Goodwin recently updated the thought), and a new wave is coming through, fighting to be heard. It’s a cycle we’ve seen since the beginning of consumerism, actually—challengers aren’t a millennial phenomenon, as Pepsi will attest—but the modern media is downright fascinated by the concept of a challenger brand. Perhaps it’s a sign of our over-consumed society, or maybe it’s just because we always love an underdog. One thing’s for sure, though—those challengers know how to tell a great brand story.
Purplebricks Group PLC (LON:PURP): Moving Home without the Agent Fees
You’ll see a theme emerging throughout these stories: Start with your customers. The reason a challenger brand exists is that it sees a gap in the market, after all, and that gap exists because consumers need something else.
For Purplebricks, there wasn’t so much a gap as a canyon: Real estate agents are a necessary evil, but people just don’t like them or trust them. So this challenger got rid of commission percentages on sales and disrupted the market.
“We have a different business model to the high street but we recruit a lot of people from the traditional sector, and for them the way we approach estate agency is a breath of fresh air—they say it gives them a new lease on life,” says James Kydd, director of marketing. “We don’t hate the traditional sector, but it appears a few of them don’t exactly love us.
“Often what challenger brands do is to change the value perception of a service or product. Many industries don’t change very much from year to year, so it takes a challenger brand to create an environment of change. This often leads to people paying less money or getting a more convenient/better service, and that’s what they love. People know it’s hard to take on an established industry so they have respect for those who try it and even more for those who succeed. There is also a certain kudos to being an early adopter—in essence making a smarter choice than following the established way.”
As if proving the theory that real estate needed to change, Kydd cites Purplebrick’s “commisery” campaign as its most successful brand story thus far. It is, he says, based on “the simple insight that people don’t like paying more for the same, or less”—and it resonated with the brand’s purpose and its tone of voice, too.
“There is no point putting lipstick on a pig—you can’t invent a tone of voice; it has to be a true reflection of how you as a company operate,” Kydd says. “All our customer-facing staff are friendly, approachable, knowledgeable, and committed to offering a better type of estate agency service. Those are the building blocks for our tone of voice, along with a friendly and inclusive tone.”
But one thing Purplebricks did, that many challengers do not, was invest heavily in getting the story out there. A “heavyweight TV advertising” campaign “hit a mass audience in a relatively cost-effective way,” Kydd says: “So many brands try to do it on the cheap and as a result never reach a critical mass. If your awareness is low, your potential to challenge is low.”
