Welcome to SratLabs. The place where thousands of founders, CEOs & marketers learn the strategy secrets behind the world’s most successful brands. If you like what you see click the button below to join us for free.

INTRODUCTION

Want to know one of the biggest mistakes brands make? Only hiring people with ‘relevant experience’. Over the last year we have worked with a variety of brands at Defiant, and irrespective of their category or stage of growth, the same question rears its ugly head.

“Please can you provide some more category-relevant experience”

This question is not only lazy but it is limiting and dangerous. Let me explain why category expertise can be dangerous and why stealing from beyond it, can prove lucrative…

EXPERIENCE IS YOUR ENEMY

Don’t get me wrong if you're growing a brand you should hire some people with category experience. Hiring a marketing team with connections to retailers and distributors, for a food & drink brand, is essential. Hiring someone who can navigate the legal loopholes, of an alcohol brand, is beyond helpful. And hiring a CEO with a proven track record, in your category, can be invaluable.

But becoming blinded by experience, and only hiring for it, can be dangerous to brand growth. Especially when it comes to defining your strategy, communications & branding. Why? Well, the problem with people only hiring people with category experience is you become blinkered by it. You end up with an approach that too often falls into the tropes of your category and never seeks inspiration, beyond it.

Last year we worked with a wonderful supplement brand to help them redefine their brand positioning and identity. One thing that became immediately apparent is that most brands in the category tended to focus on the same stuff (ie simplicity & ease). Why? Well, these brands had all hired experts from the supplements and wellness space. Experts who tended to all think the same.

Ref 1: The wellness category is filled with experts who tend to think the same

Ever noticed how fintech brands all tend to use the same quirky names and bold colour palettes? Ever noticed how most alcohol brands tend to focus on provenance or lifestyle in their comms? Or ever noticed how beauty brands’ tend to follow a formula? Yep, you guessed it - overhiring for category experts.

Ref 2: The beauty category is one of the worst offenders for hiring experts and following a formula.

Now if you are a scaleup or challenger brand, the above can prove to be incredibly dangerous. Because if you are competing in a highly competitive category such as sweets, alcohol or haircare. A category saturated with far bigger brands that outspend & outshot you. Then the most dangerous thing you can do is to have a strategy, branding & communications that ends up being too similar to them.

The truth is if you cannot outspend these bigger brands, you need to find ways to outsmart them. You need to play by your own rules, break category norms and be inventive. And one of the best ways to do this? ‘Steal’ from others.

STEAL TO WIN

Some of the most successful brands are brilliant at one thing above else, stealing from outside of their category.

Liquid Death has grown from $3M to $263m in revenue in just four years. Its founder had no real experience in the bottled water category and actively stole from beyond it. Their whole brand ‘steals’ from the alcohol category and breaks every norm of the bottled water category, they compete in. It’s the reason their can, communications and behaviours are so distinctive and effective.

Ref 3: The brand is so successful because it steals from the alcohol category

NICE, the UK’s fastest-growing brand wine brand, was also founded by people with no experience in the alcohol category. Instead, they took a different approach and stole from the lifestyle category. It’s the reason their pink cans are so disruptive, in a category that at the time only sold mini bottles that all looked the same. It’s how they identified and owned different occasions (ie festivals and train travel). And it’s how they unlocked new partnerships for distribution (ie Virgin Atlantic).

Ref 4: NICE wines founders had no prior wine category experience

Red Bull, one of the most successful brands of all time, is an avid stealer. The product itself was stolen from the health category (it was invented by a Thai Pharmacist). Its brand also steals from the entertainment industry, operating more like a media brand than a drinks brand.

I could go on to relay countless examples, but I won’t. As i hope the point is clear. If you want to win, you need to break norms, ditch the obsession with experience, and seek to steal from beyond your category

Want to know the best way to steal for your brand and unlock 10x growth? Well, this is just one of many tools we teach in our strategy masterclass. Perfect for founders or strategists working for established brands.

The next cohort will be going live on April 29th. The six-week masterclass will help you and your team 10x your strategy skills and brand growth. Want to find out more? Click on the link below.

CHECK OUT THE STRATEGY MASTERCLASS

CONCLUSION

Look I get it. Hiring solely for experience feels safe & secure. It can also help navigate company politics as it reassures your boss, founder or investors. Yet whilst whilst experience is invaluable in some roles it can be so damn dangerous and limiting if it becomes an obsession.

If you are outspent and outshouted in your category, you need to outsmart. Simply if you want to win the game, you need to play by different rules. And one of the best ways to do this? Steal from outside of your category.

If you are a founder building something new, or working for a scaleup or challenger brand…why not get in touch with us? At Defiant we have helped countless brands break the rules, steal from outside their category, and unlock exponential growth.

Drop us an email to: will@hellodefiant.com 

Ref 5: Embrace the steal

________________________

Expect big thinking & small typ0s because i'm #MadeByDyslexia 

________________________

Will Poskett

Co-Founder Defiant

Welcome to SratLabs. The place where thousands of founders, CEOs & marketers learn the strategy secrets behind the world’s most successful brands. If you like what you see click the button below to join us for free.

BE WARY OF COMPLEXITY

Want to know one of the biggest threats to business growth? Complexity. Time & time again I have seen companies fall into the same trap. They try to create too many product variants, stand for too many things & land too many messages. Yet this is a dangerous game to play. Let me show you why with a brilliant example from Apple.

Apple is one of the most successful companies and iconic brands of today. Yet this wasn’t always the case. In 1985 Steve Jobs was fired from the company he founded. And following his departure it didn’t take long for the company to suffer at the hands of complexity.

At a business level, Apple shifted from making a few brilliant products to creating an almost endless array of undesired new innovations. They tried to ride on the coattails of the Apple II’s success with a boatload of spin-offs and variants. They also experimented with new products, such as the Apple Newton, which was a total failure. Why was all of this so unsuccessful? Complexity. The company had become obsessed with creating lots of new things and forgot a simple truth - build products people want first, and innovate second.

Ref 1: Apple created a complex range of unwanted products, such as the Apple Newton

At a brand level, Apple also lost sight of its purpose and its reason for being in the world. A constant pipeline of new products saw the company default to an endless array of disparate product-focused communications. In short, the brand was overly complex and almost schizophrenic in how it talked and behaved.

THE POWER OF SIMPLICITY

Thankfully Steve Jobs returned to Apple in 1997. And what was one of the most effective things he did? Embrace simplicity.

He went back to basics. He peeled back the layers of complexity and got to the heart of what made Apple great and distinct in their category. At a business level, he cut around 70% of Apple's new product lines and focused all the company’s efforts on developing one brilliant product, in two variants. What was it? The iconic Apple Macbook and desktop. The very one that evolved, over time, to become one of the best-selling range of computers in the world.

Ref 2: Apple went back to basic on its product line

This simplicity of product, also enabled the company, to bring greater clarity to its brand. They realised they could not afford to compete with other technology companies, with far greater resources, head one. They realised they if they ‘wanted to win the game’ they had to play by different rules. Looking at their new range of products, and who historically bought Apple products, a powerful truth revealed itself. A truth that revealed they were not just another company selling technology. Rather, they were a company that makes tools for creative minds. This shift in strategy enabled them to build a brand that was far more distinct and unique in the category.

Ref 3: A powerful and simple strategic shift for Apple

This focus on building tools for creative minds also paved the way for a more simplistic and lucrative line of product innovations. Leading to the hugely successful iPod, iTunes, Apple Music and Apple TV. All products that other technology companies failed to see coming and whose brands were not set up to own.

NEED SOME HELP?

After over thirty years of working with the world’s most famous brands and at the most successful agencies, we decided to build a better way. We are flexible, plugging in & out the best team when you want it, and meaning you only pay for your needs.

So no matter if you're looking for some big strategic thinking to peel away the complexity or bold creativity to unlock fame and growth, get in touch. If you’d like to find out more, drop us an email below.

If you’d like more of a flavour of what we do, check out this snippet from a recent podcast I was on

Check out our new site here:
https://hellodefiant.com/

Or drop me an email directly at:
will@hellodefiant.com

CONCLUSION

No matter whether you are a startup creating a new snack brand or a big tech company, complexity is one of the greatest threats to effective strategy. Yet as many of us are forced to navigate office politics, meet quarterly sales targets or catch up with our competitors it can be a trap all too easy to fall into.

Yet in those moments when complexity rears its head, remember brands such as Apple, Liquid Death & Tesla. Each a hugely successful company that established themself with a simple business offering and brand point of view on the world.

Have a lovely Easter.

________________________

Expect big thinking & small typ0s because i'm #MadeByDyslexia 

________________________

Will Poskett

Co-Founder Defiant

Welcome to SratLabs. The place where thousands of founders, CEOs & marketers learn the strategy secrets behind the world’s most successful brands. If you like what you see click the button below to join us for free.

THE TIMES THEY ARE CHANGING - THE BRAND REVOLUTION

Ref 1: Welcome to the revolution of brand-building

Brand building has been under attack for over a decade. It has been under attack from investors that value short-term sales over profitable growth. It has been under attack from tech-led marketers who loved to sh*t on brands and sold us the dream of performance marketing &  last click attribution.

Yet times, they are a changin’.

Economic uncertainty has forced many investors to change tack. They now increasingly seek profitable and sustainable growth, over revenues alone. At the same time, even the most hardened of tech-led marketers are beginning to wake up to the limitations of their ways. Notice how many of them are quietly pivoting away from product-led growth to community building. Or notice how Google, the world’s biggest pusher of performance marketing & last-click attribution, has just released their own mix modelling tool. Times are changing and the sands are shifting. 

Ref 2: Even the most hardened of tech-led marketers are now changing tack

Best of all? 

In this brave new world, brand building will be more important than ever.

In a world of economic uncertainty, where investors seek profitable growth, brand building will be the most important tool in their arsenal. Why? Well, we know that brand building fundamentally is about profitable growth. It’s the reason Nike can manufacture a trainer for cents in the Far East and sell it for $100 or more in the West. It has a powerful brand people are willing to pay a premium for. We also know that even in times of economic uncertainty people are willing to pay up to 14% more for brands, that are meaningfully different (source: Kantar). And let’s not forget that it was the most powerful brands that bounced back and grew the greatest after the last great recession of 2008/9. 

Ref 3: Powerful brands bounced back better & outperformed the rest after the last great recession.

At the same time, those tech-led marketers that now pivot from performance to community building, are ironically new champions (whether they know it or not) for brand building. You see their newfound hacks of ‘creating content’ in order to ‘grow a fanbase’, are nothing more than brand awareness activity to grow their own fame. The latter (fame) being proven to be the greatest driver of sales, market share and profitable growth. Perhaps the greatest irony of all? Even the most outspoken critics of brand building relentlessly post on Linkedin to grow their own brand, fame and therefore sales.

Ref 4: John James is one of the most outspoken critics of brand campaigns…yet ironically builds his own brand by posting on Linkedin, daily…a form brand campaign in of itself

CONCLUSION

So here's to the new world order.
A world filled with generic, low-rent content.
A world where the growth hacks of old are now redundant.
A world where brand building will be needed more than ever.

If you believe this revolution is happening, do me one small favour.
Post this newsletter on Linkedin to spread the word.
If you disagree share it anyway and we can fight it out in the comments ;)

________________________

Expect big thinking & small typ0s because i'm #MadeByDyslexia 

________________________

Will Poskett

Co-Founder Defiant

Welcome to SratLabs. The place where thousands of founders, CEOs & marketers learn the strategy secrets behind the world’s most successful brands. If you like what you see click the button below to join us for free.

INTRODUCTION

What do you do if you are a smaller scaleup or a challenger brand, trying to compete with far bigger players? What do you do if you are massively outspent, outshouted and outshelved? Well, this week we are going to cover exactly that. I am going to show you how to outsmart, when you cannot outspend, by breaking down an award-winning campaign I developed many years ago. Sounds interesting? Let’s dive in.

PICK A DIFFERENT FIGHT

Mattessons Fridge Raiders is a tiny meat snack brand in the UK. Despite showing early promise, it was increasingly struggling. Sales were declining and it was failing to grow household penetration (ie the number of households that bought it).  Why was it struggling so much? Well simply in the UK, we tend to not snack on meat & the all-mighty crisps rule supreme. In fact whilst only 2/10 of Brits snack on meat at lunchtime 9/10 regularly snack on crisps. 

Understanding this we realized we could not fight crisps head-on. We realized we needed to pick a different fight if we wanted to win. So we looked beyond the saturated lunchtime occasion and tried to find a new opportunity to unlock growth. Months of in-depth research revealed the answer. What was it? Well, we discovered that 2.9M teens in the UK snack and games, every day after school. Best of all? At the time no snack brand was playing in this space.

What can we learn from this? If the bigger players in your category are fighting over the same moments or occasions. Find new ones to own.

MEANINGFUL ACTION

Ads are great. No, really they are. I have been making them for over seventeen years and we have made a ton of them at Defiant. However, sometimes ads are not the best course of action. Why? Well, they can be expensive to make and require a ton of media money to be effective, against bigger brands. 

In the case of Fridge Raiders, we realized ads alone would not cut it. We realized if we wanted to win we needed to take action, rather than make ads. We needed to make a net positive contribution to the game occasion we identified, rather than spam them messages or performance marketing (ugh). What exactly did we do? Let me break it down below. 

We realized Fridge Raiders, being protein-based, could help gamers play for longer. Leaning into this we defined our strategic focus as “powering up gamers” and delivered on this year after year. In year one, we created the world’s first meat-snacking helmet, helping players game and snack without getting greasy fingers. In year two we created FRHANK, a robot that gamers could play along with whilst munching on Fridge Raiders. And in year three we took things to the next level. We decided to use gaming as a means to skill up teenagers and teach coding, whilst they played their favourite games and snacked. If you liked a proper overview of the campaign check out the case video below.

CHECK OUT THE CASE STUDY HERE

What can we learn from this? If you are a scaleup or challenger brand and cannot win on media spend…think of the meaningful action you can take, rather than the ads you make

CONCLUSION

The big question is, did it work? Yep, a hell of a lot. Fridge Raiders went from double-digit sales decline to double-digit growth. It also achieved an ROI over double category norms two. 

Do you work for a startup, scaleup or challenger brand and like more strategies on how to win? Well, you are in luck. I will be running a free workshop next Wednesday at 1PM GMT if you would like to find out more. Spaces are limited, sign up below. Sign up below for free:

workshop — ϟ STRATLABS ϟ

www.strat-labs.com/workshop1

Found this newsletter useful? Be a legend and share it around by clicking the button below.

________________________

Expect big thinking & small typ0s because i'm #MadeByDyslexia 

________________________

Will Poskett

Co-Founder Defiant

Welcome to SratLabs. The place where thousands of founders, CEOs & marketers learn the strategy secrets behind the world’s most successful brands. If you like what you see click the button below to get our free weekly newsletter.

INTRODUCTION

Over the last twelve months, we have been fortunate, at Defiant, to work with many a brilliant founder. Yet the more we work with startups & scale-ups the more we worry. Why? Well, we see them make the same mistakes time & time again. Mistakes that not only restrict growth but could ultimately lead to long-term failure. What are they and how can you avoid them? Let’s dive in.

#1 THE DANGERS OF GROWTH MARKETING

Whilst growth marketing can be useful to secure short-term sales, essential for cash flow and survival, it to often neglects the long term. Simply companies become so obsessed with tactics that they rarely (if ever) take the time to define their long-term strategy. Specifically, it fails to:

• Look at their competition & identify a whitespace to own.

• Define a future they want to create (ie vision)

• Define the best possible path to get to said vision (ie strategy).

This is dangerous and wasteful. Falling to define your long-term strategy will often see a company continually stumble around in multiple different directions, wasting a ton of energy and at worst ‘hoping’ for the best when it comes to different outcomes.

In contrast, the most successful scale-ups begin by really nailing their strategy. Liquid Death, for example, identified its whitespace (going after sober various drinkers, not bottled water drinkers), set out its vision (reduce plastic waste), and developed its strategy (ie “our evil mission is to make the world laugh and protect it”). This strategy has ultimately allowed the brand to carve out a unique take in the category and define a long-term path forward, that has helped them unlock over x30 growth in only a few years.

Key lesson? Sure keep using growth marketing for short-term sales, but if you want to unlock exponential growth you need to take the time to properly define your strategy.

#2 NOBODY CARES

To all the founders reading this, hold your breath, you might not like what I am about to say. Truth is, people don’t care about your product or service nearly as much as you do…if it all. People live busy lives and pay far more attention to their mortgages, loved ones, and their careers…than your precious offering. I tell you this not to be provocative. I tell you this, because it's liberating. 

You see once you realize this, you realize what you need to do. You need to build a brand that is the most memorable in your given category. You need to build a brand that instantly comes to mind when people are ready to buy. And the best way to do this? Aim for fame, the single biggest driver of growth. 

Ref 1: You should aim for fame - in order to become the most remembered when people are ready to buy.

Yet the truth is only a handful of brands ever achieve fame. Those who do tend to stand for something, challenge the status quo, and in turn win disproportionate levels of attention. We call them Defiant Brands and our company exists to build them.

Lesson two? Embrace ambivalence, aim for fame, and build a Defiant brand.

THIS WEEKS SPONSOR

This week we have two sponsors of Stratlabs, please take a brief moment to support this newsletter by checking them out below.

Elevate is a great-tasting, low-caffeine, coffee blend infused with nature’s finest adaptogens and superfoods that will give you that energy lift, without the caffeine crash. Have been drinking it myself over the last week and its bloody brilliant. Find out more HERE.

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#3 SNAKE OIL SALESMEN

Perhaps our biggest frustration in the founder and scale-up world is the sheer amount of ‘snake oil salesmen’. Those full of big opinions but with very little real strategic experience. Those tend to win by being massively cheaper than those who know what they are doing.

Look we get it. Budgets are small and wallets are tight. Often you end up having to get your strategy or creative work done, by these cheaper alternatives. That is why are holding a free workshop to help. A workshop that will reveal to founders & scaleups the ‘truth and lies in marketing’ and how to actually scale a brand. Interested in attending? You can sign up here for free - founders, startups and scaleups only though.

There are only a limited number of spots if you want the win the chance to attend - simply sign up here:

workshop — ϟ STRATLABS ϟ

www.strat-labs.com/workshop1

CONCLUSION

If you are a founder, startup or scaleup remember these three things:

1. Always take the time to define your strategy

2. Aim for fame to drive memorability

3. Ditch the snake oil salesmen and join our free workshop

Thanks as always for reading and please don’t forget. If you like this week’s newsletter please just spend one second forwarding it to someone or sharing on Linkedin and/or Twitter. We really appreciate it.

________________________

Expect big thinking & small typ0s because i'm #MadeByDyslexia 

________________________

Will Poskett

Co-Founder Defiant

Welcome to SratLabs. The place where thousands of founders, CEOs & marketers learn the strategy secrets behind the world’s most successful brands. If you like what you see click the button below to join us for free.

INTRODUCTION

This week we are going to do something I have never done before. We are going to focus on failure instead of success. Specifically, we are going to focus on how and why the Body Shop went from hero to zero, and the lessons we can learn from it. Ready? Ok, let’s dive right in. Ok, let’s dive in…

#1 START A MOVEMENT

One of the many tools we teach in the STRATLABS course is ‘starting a movement’, in culture. What does this mean and why is it important? Let me explain in a little detail below.

Many are quite happy to follow the status quo, focus only on short-term sales, and never rock the boat. The Body Shop once was not one of those brands. They took a long-term view to brand building and looked to start a movement. A movement that would move their category and the world forward, to a better place.

When the Body Shop opened in 1976 the beauty category was toxic. Beauty brands cared for one thing above all else, profit. They cared little about the damage their products did to the planet, people, or the animals they tested on. And that’s not to mention the long-standing toxic beauty standards they pushed in their communications.  

Ref 1: In the 1970s the beauty industry was toxic on many levels

Anita Roddick, The Body Shop founder, spotted this pattern and realized there was an opportunity to build something better. There was an opportunity to start a movement, that could redefine beauty. One that would build a beauty brand that is better for people, the planet & animals.

Ref 2: The Body Shop cut through in their category by creating a cultural movement

#2 ACTIONS, NOT WORDS

Brand purpose gets a bad name these days. Why? Well too often we have seen brands claim to better the world when in reality it is nothing more than purpose washing. These brands love to communicate how they are good for the world but ultimately fail to back it up, with meaningful action. Bud Light’s Dylan Mulvaey & Pepsi’s Kendall Jenner debacle are two great examples of brands talking a big purpose game, but failing to deliver on their promises.

Ref 3: Pepsi is one of the worst offenders of purpose washing

The Body Shop was so successful because it truly delivered on its brand purpose of “We exist to fight for a fairer, more beautiful world”.  It pioneered new, and more ethical, trading standards with suppliers. It ensured those people, often in third-world countries, who supplied the ingredients were treated humanely & compensated fairly. They also constantly innovated, creating a new range of products that were cruelty-free and toxic-free. In short, The Body Shop is an example of how powerful purpose can be, when you back up your words with meaningful action across the whole business.

AN OFFER YOU CAN NOT REFUSE

The STRATLABS newsletter has grown to over 5,000 readers in just one year. In 2024 we want to take this to the next level, however. We want to 10x our growth. The only way we can do this, however, is if you lovely people share STRATLABS around. However look we get it, you are busy and time-poor. That’s why we are going to make you an offer you cannot refuse.

If you share this newsletter with 50 people & they sign up - you will win a free ad placement in this newsletter. Whether you are a startup or scale-up looking to sell more. Or a consultant looking to win more work. This is the perfect chance to grow your own brand awareness and sell!

NB: To win you need to get people to sign up for the STRATLABS newsletter. So if you want to win, best to avoid sending it to just anyone and ensure these people with an interest in brands and/or marketing.

#3 LOSING YOUR WAY

The problem with starting a cultural movement is that it takes decades to build and only days to fall apart. This is the very reason we see The Body Shop faces failure today. 

When L’Oreal acquired The Body Shop in 2006, it was in many ways the beginning of the end. The brand began to lose sight of its purpose and increasingly stocked a variety of non-natural and unethical products in the store. All the meaningful action it had once taken away, was slipping away. At the same time, newer brands such as Lush & Sephora had taken over and won the hearts of minds of new consumers. In short, the the movement The Body Shop had started, had moved on. 

Ref 4: The Body Shop lost its way in recent years

In recent years The Body Shop has turned a bit of a corner. When Natura acquired the brand in 2017 they helped the brand to find focus again. They pivoted the brand back to stocking only ethical products, fixed supply chains and even introduced ‘refillables’ to help combat the plastic pollution crisis. However, in truth, it was too little & too late.  You see the problem with cultural movements is once you’ve lost momentum, It can be very hard to recapture it. 

YOU WILL LOVE THIS…

If you like this newsletter then you will love your STRATLABS course & community. We help to banish your imposter syndrome and become a world-class strategist, in just one month. A strategy school & community taught by a team of top strategists. To find out more check out our new “about’ page on the site here: https://www.strat-labs.com/about

Want the chance to win one free lifetime access to STRATLABS? Well, we are currently giving away a handful of free places, to the first people who get 100 people to sign up to this newsletter. Spaces are limited and they will go fast! When you get past five referrals below this gold ‘achievement’ will be unlocked!

NB: To win you need to get people to sign up for the STRATLABS newsletter. So if you want to win, best to avoid sending it to just anyone and ensure these people with an interest in brands and/or marketing.

CONCLUSION

This week we showed how powerful starting a cultural movement can be, but also gave you a warning. If you promise a big purpose but fail to deliver on it, it will very likely fall and the business will fail.

Thanks as always for reading

________________________

Expect big thinking & small typ0s because i'm #MadeByDyslexia 

________________________

Will Poskett

Co-Founder Defiant

Welcome to SratLabs. The place where thousands of founders, CEOs & marketers learn the strategy secrets behind the world’s most successful brands. If you like what you see click the button below to join us for free.

INTRODUCTION

In only a few years Duolingo has reached $483M in revenue, doubled its share price and experienced 43% year-on-year growth. How did they do all this? By doing strategy better than anyone else in their category. Let me tell you all about it.

PLAY BY DIFFERENT RULES

Most brands fail not because their product or service is bad. They fail because they don’t reinvent their category. Duolingo, however, is not one of those brands.

When Duolingo was founded in 2012 language learning was already saturated and competitive. You had competition from legacy players (Rosetta Stone), traditional classrooms, and increasing new challengers (Babel). Now Duolingo could have tried to compete in this overly crowded category directly, but thankfully they didn’t. They do what all iconic brands do, they look for better opportunities.

Duolingo realized that despite all this competition, language learning was very much stuck in the past. In fact, it had barely changed in over one hundred years. Learning, they realized, still mainly involved mind-numbing repetition of words and hours sitting at a desk or in front of a computer. And these outdated teaching methods were holding many back. You see many students were not failing to learn a new language for lack of effort or willingness. They were failing because the outdated teaching methods were so ineffective

Understanding this revealed to Duolingo the real and more lucrative opportunity ahead. Instead of trying to win in the overcrowded language learning category, they should seek to find new and more fun learning occasions.

How did they do this? Well before I proceed I have some news…

STRATLABS IS LIVE

Want to know a secret? This newsletter is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to mastering strategy. If you want to learn how to write brand strategy & creative briefs like the best brands and creative agencies in the world, then you need to join our community. Here you will get lifetime access to our main course, all future content, private community, and office hours where you can ask me any questions.

Who is it for? Three types…

WHAT BUSINESS ARE YOU REALLY IN?

How might Duolingo create a more modern & fun way of learning? By Looking to culture. Here they observed that a rapid rise in smartphone adoption has seen users of all ages, invest countless hours playing games. Yet often these games were far more than a frivolous pastime. Often people would spend countless hours investing their time and energy into mastering a new ‘skill’ such as drawing (ie Draw Something) or spelling (ie Worlde).

Understanding this unlocked a powerful strategic pivot for Duolingo. They realized if people were willing to spend months mastering drawing & spelling, they would likely do the same when it came to language learning. Grasping this made Duolingo reframe the business it was competing in. They realized they were not in the learning business, they were in the games business. And they should, therefore, create games that gets the world learning through the power of play.

This pivot has gone on to guide all the brand has done moving forward. It saw them create a playful learning experience more addictive than CanyCrush. One filled with achievements, and passive-aggressive nudges when you fail to play. It has seen them create a DUO, a playful (and somewhat psychotic) mascot. It has seen them create a playful brand world filled with characters you might find in video games. And it is an approach that is now enabling them to expand into new verticals such as maths and science.

COMMUNITY SHOUT OUT

Want to get a shout and a follow from my 23k LinkedIn audience next week? Well, every week one reader has the chance to win a shout-out from me on Linkedin. All they have to do is the following:

• Share this week’s newsletter on Linkedin.

• Write something nice about it & encourage people to sign up

• Tag me on Linkedin so I can see it.

This week's shout went out to Pedro Porto Alegre. Thank you legend 🙏.

CONCLUSION 

Duolingo teaches us the power and importance of reinvention. It teaches how powerful it can be to look beyond the obvious, identify new opportunities, and find new occasions to win.

Want to know how to do all that? Then you need to join STRATLABS. And the best thing of all? The community is full expensable if you are a freelancer/business owner or can pay for it out of your compani’s annual training budget (go ask your boss 😉 ).

________________________

Expect big thinking & small typ0s because i'm #MadeByDyslexia 

________________________

Will Poskett

Co-Founder Defiant

Welcome to SratLabs. The place where thousands of founders, CEOs & marketers learn the strategy secrets behind the world’s most successful brands. If you like what you see click the button below to join us for free.

#1 INTRODUCTION

This week many a LinkedIn ‘guru’ has posted about the latest brand campaign from TikTok. Yet whilst many scramble to give their hot take they too often miss what is going on here. They miss the strategic tools TikTok is applying to unlock exponential growth. Want to know what they are up to? Ok, let’s dive in.

#2 TIKTOK IS TRAPPED

As many of you will know TikTok has undergone exponential growth of late. It has grown faster than any other social network and has already surpassed some legacy players.

Fig 1: TikTok has unlocked exponential growth

Yet despite this growth, TikTok faces a problem. They are locked into one audience and have struggled to expand beyond it. Simply TikTok tends to be used by younger generations and struggles to appeal to older ones. And because any social network is only as valuable as its network effects, this limits the commercial potential of the brand. Yet TikTok has been smart in how they have begun to address this issue. They haven’t rushed to the strategic solution. They have, instead, taken the time to define better problems and in turn unlock better opportunities. Let me explain more below.

Fig 2: Tiktok is locked into a younger audience

Members of the STRATLABS™ community will know that any strategy will only ever be as good as the problems you define. Specifically, problems that go beyond the obvious and unlock new opportunities. This is exactly what TikTok has done. They dug deeper & realized that the real issue TikTok faced was that culturally the platform was seen as mostly childish. It was seen as a place where teens did dance-offs and shared silly memes. Addressing this issue was the real opportunity and one, that if resolved, would unlock growth with a wider audience.

Fig 3: Tiktok took the time to define a better problem which revealed the real opportunity.

#3 REPOSITION VIA CULTURE

To reposition the brand TikTok realized it needed to look to culture once again. It needed to understand what people were talking about online and around the brand. Understanding this revealed a surprising cultural truth. As people became increasingly distrusting of Google’s algorithm they were increasingly turning to new platforms, such as TikTok, as the primary search engine. 

Understanding this enabled them to reposition their brand from a place of silly dance-offs to a new kind of search engine. A place where new things can be discovered and exciting things happen. And this is in fact, as you can see, the strategy behind their new creative campaign below.

COMMUNITY SHOUT OUT

Want to get a shout and a follow from my 20k LinkedIn audience next week? Well, every week one reader has the chance to win a shout-out from me on Linkedin. All they have to do is the following:

• Share this week’s newsletter on Linkedin.

• Write something nice about it & encourage people to sign up

• Tag me on Linkedin so I can see it.

This week's shout went out to brilliant Lara Mulday who is also a member of our STRATLABS community. Thank you legend 🙏.

CONCLUSION

This week we learned a couple of things. First the importance of defining better problems that unlock opportunities. Second, the power of cultural truths. Ones that can unlock new paths forward and help brands to reposition themself.

Wait a minute I hear you ask? How do you find better problems and cultural truths? How do you use them to write a killer brand or creative strategy? Well if you want to know everything we have learned working with the world’s most famous brands and creatively awarded agencies then simply head over to STRATLABS™ page to find out more.  

Who is STRATLBS for? Well, three types of people…

With STRATLABS™ you can pay monthly or as a one-off. Either way, you will get lifetime access to all the material, future content, and our growing community where you can ask us any strategy questions. One final note the course can be paid for via your company so it is fully expensable or if you work for a bigger company ask your boss about the annual training budget, because that could pay for it too 😀 .

Anyway, we would love to see you over in the STRATLABS™ community, and thanks so much for reading the newsletter. I spend my weekends writing them.

Like this newsletter? We would love it if you shared it

Ps we have decided to launch the full course earlier. All modules will now be going live next week!

________________________

Expect big thinking & small typ0s because i'm #MadeByDyslexia 

________________________

Will Poskett

Co-Founder Defiant

Welcome to SratLabs. The place where thousands of founders, CEOs & marketers learn the strategy secrets behind the world’s most successful brands. If you like what you see click the button below to join us for free.

INTRODUCTION

Every year tons of trend reports are released into the world. Yet come on, let’s be honest,  who has the time to read them all? That’s why this year Rachel Higgins of Because of Marketing & I did all the hard work for you. We read as many as we could get our hands on. Below is just one of five key trends to give you a taste. The full report can be found downloaded below.

BTW if you haven’t already I highly recommend you sign up to Rachel’s newsletter HERE. One of the best sources on the internet for the latest & greatest campaigns.

Ok, let’s dive in…

EMBRACE THE ABSURD

When it comes to the world of creativity we are very much living through the best and worst of times. On the one hand, we have more creative tools at our disposal. On the other hand, the world of creativity feels more bland than ever. 

We are faced with an almost endless array of spin-offs, sequels, and reimaginings of established IPs. The number of sequels, spin-offs or remakes has increased by over 400% since 1981. At the same time, the ‘MrBeasifaciton’ of YouTube has created an almost endless stream of copycat content. Here, an army of creators increasingly chooses to serve the algorithm over creating original ideas. This has led to our streams being filled with ‘identity kit’ content. A world where jump cuts & fast edits are the new norm. 

This content death spiral goes way beyond YouTube, however. The ‘MrBeasifaciton’ of content is now taking over the likes of TikTok & LinkedIn too. Where each platform sees creator copying creator and the same ‘popular’ content is recycled over and over again. In short, whilst we have the best ever creative tools at our disposal, an increasing focus on efficiency is leading to some of the most generic & ‘worst’ content around.

HOW SHOULD BRANDS RESPOND?

Whilst it can be tempting for brands to follow an efficiency mindset we urge them not too. Because in a world where audiences are increasingly trying of movie sequels and the MrBeasificaiton of content, it pays to be absurdly different.  What do we mean by absurd? Simply be experimental & embrace those weird ideas others are too afraid to. Because in a world where content increasingly becomes predictable & bland, being absurd can prove hugely effective.

In short…
In a bland world, brands should embrace the absurd.

How might they do this? Well here are three practical examples below…

#1 BE ABSURD IN YOUR CATEGORY
In just three years Liquid Death has x30 its revenue from $3M to $103M. A key factor to their success has been their absurd approach to the bottled water category.  They look to steal drinkers from the alcohol category rather than talk to existing bottled water consumers. They focus on festivals rather than sports. And their content is bold & daring, compared to the sea of sameness often found in the bottled water category.  Brands can learn from Liquid Death and look to break through by being more absurd in their category.

#2 ABSURD THE ALGROTHM
At a time when everyone is trying to ‘Beastify’ their content, Hilton Hotels did the complete opposite.. They turned their backs on short-form content and jump cuts and did something totally absurd on TikTok. Their #Hiltonforthestay campaign, featuring Paris Hilton, was absurdly long at ten minutes. It worked because of a famous celeb and for being wonderfully different on a social platform that too often looks the same. Brands can learn from this and look for ways of being absurdly different when it comes to playing the algorithm game. 

#3 MAKE NO SENSE
One of the breakout tactics for 2023 was the CGI stunt. Jacquemus started it all with the absurdly brilliant ‘Handbags’ stunt. Why does it work? Well in the era of doom scrolling & boring content, making no sense can really cut through. Giant handbags driving through the city are so surreal and unexpected that instantly stop the scroll and get shared. Brands can learn from this that are so strange they stop people in their tracks.

You can download the full report here.

BTW to all of you who have signed up for the STRATLABS course. The first of six modules will be going live this Sunday afternoon. We spent months writing and filming. Excited to share it with you.

________________________

Expect big thinking & small typ0s because i'm #MadeByDyslexia 

________________________

Will Poskett

Co-Founder Defiant

Welcome to SratLabs. The place where thousands of founders, CEOs & marketers learn the strategy secrets behind the world’s most successful brands. If you like what you see click the button below to join us for free.

INTRODUCTION
Welcome to SratLabs (formely Grow Club). New year. New name. New format. Some readers asked to try a shorter format so here goes & let’s not waste any more time.  Let me teach you one of the best strategy tools around. A tool that saved the beer company Stella Artois. And one of thirty tools we teach on the new STRATLABS™ course.

WEAKNESS TO STRENGTH
In the early 1980s Stella was struggling to cut through in the UK beer category. British drinkers thought Stella sounded a bit weird, came in a funny-looking glass and worst of all it was considerably more expensive than the competition. How did Stella turn things around? Well, they leveraged one a great tool we teach in STRATLABS. What is it and how did they do it? Let me show you.

Fig 1: In the 1980s Stella was struggling to win market share

Stella did what all great strategists do. They didn’t rush to a positioning or fill out one of the many strategy frameworks other ‘strategy gurus’ try to sell you. They knew that any strategic solution would only ever be as good as the problem identified. And so they went in search of better problems, ones that would reveal the real challenge & opportunity ahead.

Fig 2: One of the many things we teach on the STRATLABS™ course is how to get to better problems like a pro.

They spent months researching their category and target market which in turn revealed an interesting truth. They discovered that whilst British consumers had been stuck in their ways, tastes were changing. They were increasingly open to paying more for exotic new foods such as Prawn Cocktail and beverages such as French wine. Why was this case? Well looking to culture we can see that the boom years of the 1980s had seen many Brits get rich quickly and adopt new status symbols, such as exotic foods, as way to show off their wealth. Understanding all of this shift helped Stella identify a better problem to solve.

Fig 3: The 1980s saw Brits open their minds & taste buds to new foods

It helped them to realize that whilst their initial challenge was ‘Stella was seen as overly expensive” there was an opportunity to turn this weakness into a strength. There was an opportunity to “show that Stella’s expensive price tag was a mark of quality’. A mark of quality just like the exotic foods and beverages they were increasingly favoring.

Fig 4: Stella cleverly turned its weakness into a strength

This simple & clever tool helped them turn their apparent weakness into a killer strength. One that would go on to inform their brand positioning & reshape their approach to business.  It saw them refuse to discount their product when most other beers did.  It saw them win placements in some of the poshest pubs & restaurants in the UK. And it changed the way the brand communicated, as we can see below.

Did it work? Fantastically. It established the brand in the UK and unlocked exponential growth. Now before I get to the final section for this week, I want to introduce our new readers to community shoutout.

COMMUNITY SHOUT OUT
Every week I give one reader a shoutout to my 19k followers on Linkedin. All you have to do is the following:

• Share this week’s newsletter on Linkedin and write something nice about it.

• Tag me in the post so I can see it.

During the year there will also be a few secret prizes and giveaways for those of you who do decide to share the content. 

CONCLUSION
Ok let’s wrap up this week's newsletter with the key things you must know to level up your strategic thinking. 

1. Don’t listen to the fake gurus and rush to using strategic frameworks. Always begin by identifying the real challenge & opportunity ahead. 

2. Don’t do what most brands do and shy away from their weaknesses. See if there are ways to turn this weakness into a strength. 

Hang on i hear you ask…how do I use this problem to write a strategic positioning? And what strategic model is best to use? All of this will be covered in future editions but if you want the true masterclass consider signing up for the STRATLABS course. Here coach in you the dark arts of brand strategy, showing everything we learned, working for the best brands in the world. You can pay monthly or as a one-off. And for a limited time, we have an early bird discount price. The first modules in the course, go live next weekend.

BTW what did you think of the shorter format - love it or hate it? Reply to this email and let me know. Always looking to make things better for you.

Expect big thinking & small typ0s because i'm #MadeByDyslexia 

Will Poskett

Co-Founder Defiant

Welcome to Grow Club. The place where thousands of founders, CEOs & marketers learn the strategies behind the world’s most successful brands & creators. If you like what you see click the button below to join us for free.

GOODBYE

Wait what? Is the newsletter finished? Is Grow Club no longer?….no lol…but clickbait headlines sure do help to get people to open their emails, don’t they 😉. I simply wanted to say goodbye for now and wish you all a Merry Christmas & Happy New Year. Honestly, it’s not easy trying to get detailed strategy breakdowns out each week but all the positive feedback and community shout-outs keep me going.

As we turn to 2024 I have some ideas to make Grow Club even greater. First, I have been asked to move the newsletter from Sundays to Fridays. Second, I have been asked to try and make them shorter. What do you think? Good idea? 'Also, if there is anything you’d like to see change or any suggestions, simply reply to this email and let me know your thoughts. I will try my best to incorporate them.

I will be busy spending most of the holidays putting the finishing touches to STRATLABS™ and all being well Grow Club should be from the week commencing January 15th. However to our newer readers now might be a good time to catch up on some of the ‘greatest hits’ of 2023 which I have placed below.

TOP THREE OF 2023

#1 THE STRATEGY THAT SAVED BAILEY’S LIQUOR
A masterclass in unlocking exponential growth by identifying new occasions.
Link here: https://www.grwclub.com/p/baileys-strategy

#2 STRATEGY RED FLAGS
Want to write a great strategy? then you must avoid these three things
Link here: https://www.grwclub.com/p/how-to-write-great-strategy

#3 THRIVING IN UNCERTAIN TIMES
In case you missed we pulled together our own trend report at Defiant at the beginning of the year. Still lots of useful stuff in here.
Link here: http://tinyurl.com/3wvsxajf

COMMUNITY SHOUTOUT

A special final community shout-out of the year goes to Loly who comes from Spain!. Thanks so much my friend i appreciate the share and loved your Christmas post, using the formula!

Thanks to all of you for reading this year and Merry Christmas to you and your loved ones.

Expect big thinking & small typ0s because i'm #MadeByDyslexia 

Will Poskett

Co-Founder Defiant

Welcome to Grow Club. The place where thousands of founders, CEOs & marketers learn the strategies behind the world’s most successful brands & creators. If you like what you see click the button below to join us for free.

INTRODUCTION

What would your perfect Christmas look like? Time spent with loved ones? Or perhaps an endless supply of mulled wine? In truth, the idea of a perfect Christmas is very subjective. What about Christmas communications, however? Can there be a recipe for the perfect Christmas campaign? Well in this ‘holiday special’ of Grow Club we are going to find out. So are you ready to discover the recipe for a perfect Christmas campaign? Let’s find out.

#1 THE TRUE MEANING OF CHRISTMAS

What is the true meaning of Christmas? Some may believe it's just an excuse to sell more products. I prefer to take a more positive point of view. I believe Christmas, at its heart, is about reconnecting with friends & family. Furthermore in a world where families are more separated than ever. And in a world where loneliness is the pandemic of the modern age, the idea of reconnecting is more powerful than ever before.

Ref 1: Loneliness is the pandemic of the modern age. 

Looking at this year’s Christmas ads we can see that some brands lean into this idea of reconnection, but the question is…is it effective? Well thankfully the clever people over at Zappi have done some brilliant ad testing and it looks as if the idea of reconnection really does resonate.  In fact, four of their top-scoring campaigns all lean into this idea of reconnection.

Ref 2: Zappi’s Christmas analysis reveals that Amazon, TK Maxx, ALDI & Boots scored the highest for ‘love’ . A key indicator of a successful campaign. 

Amazon ‘Joy Ride’ the top scoring campaign sees old friends reconnect & make new memories. Boots ‘Give Joy’ sees a mother & daughter connect to find a gift for Santa. And even ALDI & TX Maxx centred around the idea of reconnection, albeit in a slightly more surreal way, seeing animals & vegetables reconnect.

So what is the first ingredient for the ‘perfect’ Christmas campaign? Try to lean into a truth about Christmas which has the greatest cultural relevance. At the moment the idea of reconnection is powerful…but this may change as the cultural context does.

#2 TREAD WITH CAUTION

When you think about it, Christmas is kind of strange. We drag dead trees into our houses. We have little calendars filled with chocolate. And we even let some fat guy in a red suit take all the credit for the kids' Christmas presents. Yet in truth, these traditions are what make Christmas. Traditions are rituals which create memories & shared connections over the years. And when it comes to traditions, and your Christmas campaign, you must tread with caution. 

Looking once again at our Zappi data we can see that both ASDA & Sainsbury score well by leaning into traditions. ASDA taps into the modern Christmas tradition of Michael Bublé (he only releases Christmas albums now right?). And Sainsbury’s leans into a very relatable, albeit unofficial tradition, of kids asking difficult questions about Santa. The latter does particularly well at landing a ‘heartwarming’ message, which is surely what we all want at Christmas.

Ref 3: This year’s Sainsbury’s campaign scored 3rd overall for landing ‘heartwarming’ messages.

On the flip side, those brands that attempt to challenge traditions received a more mixed response. For example, whilst Marks & Spence does evoke ‘happy emotions’ it scores well below both ASDA & Sainsbury for heartwarming…a key Christmas metric.

The M&S home campaign did at least perform better than John Lewis’s efforts this year in terms of ‘brand lovers’ and ‘consideration’. In fact, John Lewis performed well below its usual scores, receiving the second highest ‘haters’ rating overall in Zappi’s research. Why so many haters? Let’s find out below…

Well, historically John Lewis performed well by having a ‘surprise’ payoff at the end. This year, however, the ‘surprise’ (ie Venus fly trap) is revealed in the first twenty seconds of the ad. Simply they may have given the punchline away too soon. Beyond this, I think it’s almost important to remember that John Lewis in many ways had the toughest brief this year…with a whopping 50% of UK consumers saying that the John Lewis ad was their most anticipated ad this Christmas. Simply there were very high expectations to meet.

Ref 6: Zappi data reveals John Lewis had the second highest ‘haters’ rating of all campaigns tested.

Taking a step back we can discover the second ingredient for our ‘perfect’ Christmas campaign…. try to lean into traditions rather than trying to reinvent them. And if you are tempted to challenge them, tread with caution.

#3 COMMUNITY SHOUT OUT

Want to know when you should never tread with caution? …giving this community a shout-out. This week I want to give a special mention to Edwin for shouting out Grow Club on Twitter. Thank you so much, sir.

Twitter tweet

Want to get a shout-out to over 3,900 CMOs, CEOS & founders next week? Simply share this week’s newsletter on your LinkedIn and write a few words about why you recommend Grow Club. Please also make sure to tag me on Linkedin to ensure i see it.

3/ DON'T BE TOO PUSHY

Let’s not beat around the bush. Christmas is one of the most important times of the year for retailers. It is a time when they have big targets to hit & a lot of products to shift. Yet selling products well at Christmas is an art form. It requires a clever approach. An approach that avoids being too pushy.

All the best-performing campaigns from our Zappi research have one thing in common. They are story first and product second. Simply, all of them tell a great story that gives a clear role for their product or brand to play. Both Aldi and M&S turn their food into central characters and place them at the heart of their story. Michael Bublé acts as a quality controller for the ASDA brand. And Amazon places its app at the heart of its heartwarming reconnection story. So whilst they all feature products throughout, they never come across as too salesy or pushy.

So the final ingredient for our ‘perfect’ Christmas campaign? Don’t be too pushy and always try to wrap your products in a compelling story. 

CONCLUSION

So can there be such a thing as the perfect Christmas campaign? Probably not. Similar to what each of us prefers about Christmas…it’s all very subjective. However, if you implement the following ingredients into your Christmas campaign next year you will likely vastly improve your chances of success:

• Lean into a Christmas truth which has the most cultural relevance.

• Treat traditions with respect and tread with caution if you're looking to challenge them

• Don’t be too pushy when it comes to product and always aim to be the story first.

Thank you for reading this week’s newsletter and a special thank you to this week’s sponsor Zappi. What is Zappi? It's an agile research platform that helps big consumer brands create better ads and products. They’ve helped global brands like PepsiCo, McDonald’s and Reckitt infuse consumer insights early and often in creative development and learn from each new data point. 

Thanks again and Merry Christmas,

________________________

Expect big thinking & small typ0s because i'm #MadeByDyslexia 

________________________

Will Poskett

Co-Founder Defiant

Welcome to Grow Club. The place where thousands of founders, CEOs & marketers learn the strategies behind the world’s most successful brands & creators. If you like what you see click the button below to join us for free.

INTRODUCTION

Do you think that brand strategy is just about creating clever ads or messaging? Or do you think brand strategy is simply there to serve a business strategy? Well today is going to be a punchy one. Why? Well, today I am going to show you why everything you might have been told about brand strategy is wrong. I am going to show you why brand strategy, if done properly, can be the most powerful tool a business has. Don’t believe me? Well, let's reveal why it is by unpacking the strategy behind Dove. Let’s look beyond the award-winning creative advertising and learn a masterclass in transformative brand strategy.

#1 WHICH CATEGORY?

Dove launched in 1957 as a humble bar of soap. Over the coming decades, it rapidly expanded into new markets & product verticals  (ie shampoo, conditioner, face creams). This expansion was so successful that by 2001 the Dove brand was radically different from where it first began. It had gone from single market to multi-market. It had gone from one product to a range of products. And the humble soap bar, where it all began, now represented less than half of its total sales. So radical were these shifts that it prompted the brand team to sit back & take stock. It prompted the brand team to ask one very important question…what category should our business really be in?

After deep category analysis and sizing the opportunity head, they identified a far more commercially lucrative way forward. They realized they could reposition Dove from a soap brand to a beauty brand. And if they could achieve this, there was a far greater commercial opportunity ahead. An opportunity that would allow them to better sell their expanded portfolio. An opportunity that would also allow them to sell to a category with 10x the commercial value. 

Ref 1: Dove’s brand strategy pivoted the category it operated in

There is an important lesson here for any brand. Your brand strategy is about far more than clever ads. Brand strategy, if done properly, will change the entire direction of travel for your business. Many great brands already get this. Liquid Death, for example, looks to compete in the far bigger alcohol & energy drink category, rather than the bottled water category. Airbnb positions itself as a better alternative to hotels that enables you to ‘Belong Anywhere’ rather than compete in the relatively smaller, vacation rental company category.    

Yet when it came to Dove, how did they actually position their business within the beauty category? Let me explain how below.

#2 SHAPE CULTURE

The beauty category of 2001 was radically different from the one we know today. It was a category that was obsessed with ‘perfect beauty’ rather than realistic beauty. An obsession that was having a devastating effect on women’s self-esteem.

Thankfully Dove positioned themself as an antidote to this all too often toxic category. They positioned their business & brand as a force for good in the world. A brand that would champion a more realistic & healthier version of beauty. A brand whose purpose would be to ‘Champion beauty without artifice’ with the ultimate mission of helping ‘women feel more beautiful every day’.

Dove’s brand strategy is incredibly smart for a few reasons. First, it achieves fame by tapping into a cultural tension & actively seeking to make things better. Second, it stands out in a category that is too often obsessed with perfection. Third, it speaks to a truth consumers actively want. And fourth it speaks to a truth about the Dove brand, that they have a range of products that are suitable for women of all shapes & sizes. 

Ref 2: Dove’s brand strategy

So the second lesson for today is that no matter whether you are a scaleup or bigger brand, the ultimate prize would be to develop a brand strategy that actively seeks to shape culture for the better. However, I must offer a fair warning here. Far too many brands attempt to do this but fail miserably. Why? Well, their brand strategy fails to properly guide their business in the right direction. It fails to guide the business toward making the decisions necessary to back up the ambition of the new brand.

You see the most powerful brand strategies should guide every facet of your business. If they can properly do this they have the potential to thrive. If they fail to do this they will likely fail. Let me explain more about this below.

#3 BRAND-LED BUSINESS 

I came across an interesting article the other day by a fellow strategist whom I greatly admire. His article made a useful distinction between the three ‘rungs’ of strategy. Let me give a brief overview of his definitions below: 

• Business strategy; the overall direction of the business.

• Brand strategy;  how your business strategy is ‘presented’ to the world.

• Communications strategy; how your brand strategy is communicated.

Said strategist also goes on to argue that the process generally goes from top to bottom. The direction of a business is defined first, a brand strategy then ‘presents the business’ to the world & then finally all of this is communicated via communications strategy. Well here’s the wonderful thing about strategy…disagreement is common &  healthy. So let me explain why I don’t agree with this hierarchy by using Dove as an example. 

Dove’s brand strategy “Champion beauty without artifice” was indeed born out of some business decisions (how they went from soap to a broader range). However, it was their brand strategy that ended up guiding the mid & long-term direction of the business. Let me explain below:

• It was Dove’s brand strategy that identified the more lucrative beauty category to expand into. 

• It was Dove’s brand mission of making “women feel more beautiful every day” that saw them develop products & initiatives which serviced said mission.

• They created products that could be used by women of all shapes, ages & skin types.

• They created initiatives such as the ‘Real Beauty Pledge’ to help promote a more positive portrayal of beauty in the world. 

• They also created communications that championed real beauty.

So as we can see from the above it was Dove’s brand strategy that actually guided their business & communications strategy. And being a ‘brand-led business’ in its strategic approach empowered Dove to sidestep the category by being more creative in their commercial & communications decisions. You see as a business they could have kept selling to the soap category or defaulted to behaving the same as every other beauty brand…but they didn’t. Why? Because they were led by a creatively minded brand strategy.

Ref 3: Dove’s brand strategy guides both their business & comms strategy

Dove is not the only brand to adopt this ‘brand first’ approach to strategy either. In fact the two brands mentioned by said strategist, ironically, are also brand first in their strategic approach. Red Bull’s brand strategy of ‘giving you wings’ has seen them pivot from an energy drink business to a media business that inspires people to be more daring. Apple’s brand strategy ‘creativity through technology’ saw them pivot from a business that makes computers to a creatively led business that went on to develop iPods, iPads, Music & more recently TV series.

Of all the lessons mentioned today, this third one I feel is the most important. Why? Well in a world where most businesses increasingly lack creative thinking. A world where too many businesses are led by short-term ‘business strategy’ decisions focused on cost rather than value. And in a world where those brands that do adopt a more creatively led brand strategy tend to win…then surely brand strategy has never been more important or valuable.

That is why we are launching STRATLABS™ in January 2024. A school & toolkit that helps businesses of all shapes & sizes apply the full creative power of brand strategy. So whether you are a founder who wishes to unlock exponential growth for their company or a freelancer wanting to win more clients, by using a better brand strategy, STRATLABS™ is perfect for you. What makes it different? Well, three things:

• We give you all the strategic frameworks you desire but also a unique toolkit we have developed. A toolkit that helps you develop world-beating brand strategy, faster. A toolkit we developed working with the world’s most creatively awarded agencies & famous brands.

• The STRATLABS™ cohort is taught by a team of award-winning brand strategists who have won over 100 awards and have over thirty years of experience.

• Unlike other courses, we offer bi-weekly live office hours where you can share your work, receive feedback and get proper mentorship.

We recently updated our website and would love to get your feedback on STRATLABS™ on what you think. There is almost a limited-time 10% discount if you reserve an early bird spot for January 2024 right now.

Check out STRATLABS here.

I genuinely would love any feedback. So please take one second to reply to this email and let me know what you think.

CONCLUSION

Thanks for reading this week’s newsletter. Bit of a longer one this week but I hope you found the topic useful. To summarise the two most important lessons are:

• Brand strategy can (if done properly) guide everything a business does, from product to category entry points.

• Brand strategy can (if done properly) have a net positive impact on culture.

Will Poskett
Co-Founder  Defiant

than

Welcome to Grow Club. The place where thousands of founders, CEOs & marketers learn the strategies behind the world’s most successful brands & creators. If you like what you see click the button below to join us for free.

INTRODUCTION

This week I am going to do something a little different. Instead of deep diving into a strategy story or case study, I am going to give away a tool I helped to develop many years ago. A tool that I frequently use to help better understand customers’ pain points & in turn how brands can leverage them to drive growth. Curious to find out more? Let’s begin…

THE PROBLEM WITH PERSONAS

I have been in the strategy game for a long time. Working with brands at every stage of growth from startup and scaleup to enterprise level. Regardless of their stage of growth, one problem seems to arise time & time again…wasting tons of time & money on consumer research. So before I lay out the tool I use let’s first highlight what many brands get so very wrong.

Many of you might relate to the following situation:

• An expensive research agency is hired.

• Thousands of interviews were performed

• Detailed consumer persons were developed

Each of these personas will have dug deep into the nuance of their many ‘different’ audiences. How they differ in age, attitudes & demographics. Yet the inconvenient truth is none of this rarely matters. Now before some of you become outraged or drag this email into the junk folder, let me explain myself.

The big issue with personas is that they define WHO buyers are rather than WHY they buy. They become more obsessed with character differences than the fundamental pain points & what will drive people to purchase. This is a distraction because (i) it assumes all people of a certain age/type are the same and (ii) it fails to realise many different personas can share the same paint points. The example below of Ozzy Osbourne & Prince Charles perfectly illustrates how very ill-informed personas can be.

Ref #1: Persons are a distraction & often dangerous.

To better illustrate this point let’s do a bit of a thought experiment. Imagine you are the owner of a gym brand & you are trying to attract more consumers. Which of the following information about your audience do you think would be more useful?

1. Bryan is a 42 y/o dad of three, from New York, he works in catering, earns $50K/yr and likes to watch baseball on TV.

2. Bryan feels increasingly exhausted after quitting sports years ago, due to his increasingly hectic life.

Clearly, number two is infinitely more helpful because it reveals the pain points the brand can tap into and answer: a hassle-free gym experience that can easily fit into a hectic life.

These pain points are far more useful because they reveal the pain points brands can trigger/speak to in order to drive purchase & nudge behaviour. They also tend to be bigger & more universal, spanning many different personas. It’s not unrealistic to imagine, for example, a busy young student working two jobs whilst studying for college, suffering from the same ‘hectic life’ pain point as Bryan. This latter point is especially important because it enables you to go after a broader audience & we know broad reach is far more effective when it comes to brand growth.

Ref 2: Targeting a broad market is more effective for growth

So now we know that pain points are superior to personas how can we best identify them and work with them? Well, this is where the customer journey framework comes in…

THE CUSTOMER JOURNEY FRAMEWORK

The customer journey builds upon the famous ‘Jobs to be done framework’ and creates something more bespoke for marketing. Something which is will be far more effective at a brand level, spanning the four Ps (ie Price, Promotion, Product & Place). Specifically, it is designed to convert a consumer from a non-buyer to a raving advocate. And in turn, always aiming to drive acquisition and reach (ie advocates bring new consumers into the fold).

How does the framework work? Well, first we need to begin by asking five essential questions that help us truly understand the pain points & the role the brand should play in order to nudge people into purchase and eventually advocacy. These five questions are as follows…

THINK
What are the big point points your audience is thinking about?

FEEL
How do these paint points make them feel?

DO
What is the current behaviour based on these thoughts & feelings?

ROLE OF BRAND
What is the desired behaviour change we want the brand to affect?

ASSETS
What are the owned, earned or paid assets we should leverage to affect change?

Understanding these broad paint points and the associated feelings & behaviours, helps us to better understand what nudging we need to do at every stage of the journey.

To help illustrate how this journey might work I have expanded on the gym example below.

Ref 2: The customer journey framework i use

But Will I want a copy of the framework?! Ok sure no problem you can find a link to it for free HERE. Simply make a copy and move it over to your Google Drive.

All I ask for in return is that if use it credit me and this newsletter. I have found someone else has been passing off my work as their own over the last week which was disappointing and honestly makes me want to stop writing. So please do take the time to share this newsletter and help us to continue growing.

WINNERS

Thanks to all of you who filled out the research survey the other week. Big congrats to our winners Yasin & Pollyanna. I will be in touch tomorrow to book our 1:1s.

CONCLUSION

Thanks for reading this week’s newsletter. What do you think of this different approach & format? Reply to this email & let me know. Always keen to get feedback and improve.

Will Poskett,
Founder of Defiant

Welcome to Grow Club. The place where thousands of founders, CEOs & marketers learn the strategies behind the world’s most successful brands & creators. If you like what you see click the button below to join us for free.

INTRODUCTION

Want to know one of the most common & dangerous misconceptions about brand strategy? That it only guides advertising & communications. A truly great brand strategy should guide everything the brand does. It should give you a ruthlessly effective path forward that makes everything work ten times harder. And do you want to know a brand that has been more ruthlessly effective than most recently? Uber. Ok, let’s break it down…

Ref 1: When it comes to brand strategy Uber is utterly ruthless

#1 STAND FOR SOMETHING BIGGER

Uber’s brand strategy separates them from the pack, guides all they do & allows them to stand for something bigger. All great brands do this. Nike doesn’t just sell sneakers, it sells the idea that everybody can be an athlete. A strategy that has guided Nike to create highly distinctive comms & expand into verticals beyond sneakers (ie wearables/events). Airbnb doesn’t just sell holidays, it sells the idea of belonging. A strategy that has again guided AirBnB to create highly dynamic comms & expand into verticals beyond rentals (ie events). And Uber doesn’t just sell cheap taxis, it sells the idea of a world with better mobility.

Ref 2: The best brands stand for something bigger

Specifically, Uber’s brand purpose is to “provide transportation as reliable as running water, everywhere, for everyone”. A strategy which sees them expand into new & more lucrative verticals. Which I’ll unpack in more detail, in the next section.

Ref 3: Uber’s brand purpose aims for something far bigger

OUR SPONSOR: BRAND GROWTH HEROES

A huge thank you to our sponsor this week Fiona Fitzpatrick of Brand Growth Heroes. A wonderful podcast that covers all things brand growth with a particular focus on FMCG brands. Fiona is also an advisor & consultant to multiple early-stage companies. I highly recommend checking out her Brand Growth Heroes podcast by clicking here.

Would you like to get your brand in front of 3,400 CEOs, CMOs & founders? Then drop me an email at will@grwclub.com to find out more.

#2 DOMINATE DISTRUBTION

When you boil it down brand building is fairly simple. Essentially there are two elements you need to aim to continually grow; mental & physical availability. The former is about ensuring you are top of mind when people are ready to buy. The latter is about ensuring you are easy to buy when people are ready.

Now long-time readers will know that when it comes to mental availability, I am fanatical about fame. Simply if you want to become top of mind you need to get people to talk about and share your brand. Want to know more about the importance of fame? Check out my previous write-ups on Oatly, Mid Day Squares & Dollar Shave Club . Yet despite the power fame provides, it’s all for nothing unless you have great physical availability (ie distribution). In fact, data now shows that distribution is the best lever to pull when it comes to growth. When you think about it, this is kind of common sense tbh. I mean how often would you go out of your way to buy a brand that was incredibly difficult to buy? Almost never. This is why physical availability & distribution are so essential to success.

Ref 4: Distribution is the biggest driver of growth (source: Professor Jan Benedict Steenkamp & Katrijn Gielens)

Understanding the importance of distribution also helps us understand why Uber’s mobility play, is so ruthlessly smart. Uber’s initial business (taxis) and even their expansion into food delivery, had limited the brand’s availability to cities. Both businesses required a high volume of orders from people who tend to not own their own car (ie city dwellers). The downside of this is that the brand had failed to scale beyond cities into the countryside.

Venturing into train travel and striving for mobility, rather than just taxis, allows the brand to overcome these limitations. It allows Uber to massively grow their physical availability & in turn their customer acquisition. This expanded availability could also see Uber likely dominate in its original taxi market. Why is this the case? Well, Uber trains will likely be the first touch point for many new people into the brand. These people can then be locked into the Uber ecosystem, via cross promotions, and so will be more likely to book an Uber taxi when they visit the city. Equally city dwellers may now have a preference for Uber, over other providers, due to the national rail discounts they can enjoy. In short Uber’s purpose & distribution dominance creates a flywheel effect.

Ref 5: Uber’s purpose & distribution creates a flywheel effect

On all of the above, I think there is one important lesson for all brand’s to never forget. People are inherently lazy and want the path of least resistance when it comes to buying brands. Uber gets this better than most

COMMUNITY GIVEAWAY

From now until the end of the year I am giving away two 1:1 strategy mentoring sessions. No matter whether you are a founder, marketing person or strategist we can cover any topic you like. To be in with a chance of winning all you need to do is do two things:

• Share Grow Club on Linkedin and say some nice things (don’t forget to tag me).

• Fill out this 2-minute questionnaire to help me understand what content you would like to see more of at Grow Club.

#3 HAVING A LAUGH

As previously discussed in this community one of the biggest issues in brand strategy today is the debate over purpose. Specifically, whether purpose is useful or well…just a bit…b*llshit. I’ll recap my point of view below:

Turning to Uber we can see they, thankfully, avoided the trap of being too purposeful in their communications. They could have easily defaulted to an overly serious & pretentious manifesto-style piece. A piece stating how Uber wants to “get the world moving” or “promote human progress”…whilst massively underpaying its ‘staff’ and putting black cab workers out of work 🥲. Thankfully they didn’t. Thankfully they leveraged one of the most powerful tools in the marketing playbook…humour.

So it just goes to show that even if you have a big audacious goal and purpose, you can still turn up with a smile and humour. In fact, we know it’s far more effective to be humorous and 91% of consumers prefer brands that are funny. Even more so during tough economic times, like we are facing right now.

CONCLUSION

Now it is not my place to comment on the ethics of a company like Uber. What I can say however is that their strategy is ruthlessly effective. And to recap three lessons we can learn from them are as follows:

• Aim for something bigger in your purpose

• Fame without physical availability is kind of pointless

• Purpose does not need to always be serious business.

Many thanks,

Will Poskett,
Founder of Defiant

Welcome to Grow Club. The place where thousands of founders, CEOs & marketers learn the strategies behind the world’s most successful brands & creators. If you like what you see click the button below to join us for free.

INTRODUCTION

This week I want to break the rules. I am going to do something I have never done before. I am going to show you first-hand how I apply all the things I have taught you over the last 10 months. Specifically, I am going to show you the strategic & creative thinking behind Defiant’s (the agency I co-founded) latest campaign. Want to learn all my secrets? Let’s begin…

Ref 1: Our new campaign for Work-Life launched in October 2023

#1 STRONG STARTS

Long-time readers of this newsletter will know I advocate for better problems. Problems that go beyond the obvious and uncover something more interesting & useful to work with. Why is this so important? Well, the answers you eventually get to will only ever be as good as the initial problems you identify. And this is why, as with all of our clients, we took the time to identify better problems.

At first glance, Work Life’s problems are fairly obvious. They compete in an increasingly competitive co-working category. A category where the likes of WeWork have far greater awareness & spend than the smaller Work Life brand. Now some agencies might have stopped there. They might simply state that the problem is simply we are outspent & outshouted. They might have also offered up a fairly generic response in return (eg be disruptive or outsmart if you cannot outspend). Whilst these initial responses might be true they are fairly generic and not all that helpful. That’s why decided to dig deeper & define better problems. Want to know what we found? Let me show you…

Ref 2: Work-Life competes in the increasingly competitive co-working category

COVID-19 has changed many facets of our lives but none more so than the world of work & our attitudes towards it. In fact, it’s safe to say that we have thought more about work in the last two years than over the previous two decades. Simply, people were no longer willing to blindly accept five days in an office & all the bullsh*t that comes along with that anymore.

Ref 3: the pandemic has made us all reflect on the kind of work-life we want

What was most interesting, however, is that no co-working or office brand had yet to tap into this growing & important conversation. Most brands simply blindly continued to talk about their various features or benefits in a fairly generic way. In light of this, we realised there was a big & better problem to address. We realised we should tap into & reflect this new and emerging conversation around the world of work.

Ref 4: Digging deeper allowed us to uncover a more interesting & useful problem to solve

#2 CULTURE FIRST

Fame, as many of you will know, is my obsession. Even if you never end up working with us at Defiant please just take one thing away from this newsletter... Fame is the single biggest driver of brand growth & what you should always aim for. What is one of the best ways to spark fame and get people talking about your brand? Tap into what people are already talking about (ie culture). And this is exactly what we aimed to do with our approach to Work Life’s new brand repositioning. Let me break down what we did below.

Ref 5: It is proven that fame is the single biggest driver of brand growth

Looking toward culture research realised the world of work was locked into a heated battle. On the one hand, most CEOs & founders wanted employees back in the office full-time five days a week. It allowed them to more closely monitor staff & they believed it made their workforce more productive. On the other hand, however, employees wanted a more flexible way to work. Their desires, we found, were increasingly at odds with CEOs & founders. We realised that in order to develop an effective new brand positioning for Work-Life we first needed to find a way to resolve this tension. So we decided to dive deeper into this issue with consumer research.

Research revealed something interesting. Whilst on the surface CEOS & employees were at odds, they did share some common ground. They both missed and hated the same aspects of office life. They missed the social aspects of office life, collaborating in real life and hanging out with their ‘workmates’. What they both hated, however, was all the annoying bullsh*t that made work…well hard work. Stuff like messy offices, annoying coworkers, tiny desks and burnt coffee you couldn’t pay them to drink.

It was these shared beliefs, we realised, that could offer up a potential path forward for the brand…

• First, it was something no other co-working brand had leaned into. Most coworking advertising is cliche & generic. They all reflected an idealised view of office life & never call out the bad stuff we all love to hate.

• Second, Work Life had a unique right to take on all those things that make work, hard work. Why? Well because the company had a founding mission to improve happiness in the workplace.

Ref 6: Most of the existing work in the category is a cliche & generic representation of office life

Putting this all together we got to a more powerful & distinctive brand positioning as you can see below.

Ref 7: A bold & discintive postioning

This positioning of ‘We remove the hard work from working happy' allowed the brand to punch above its weight and start a new conversation in the co-working space category. And it was brought to life in a far more irreverent & distinctive way than the category had ever seen before…as you will see in the final section below.

COMMUNITY SHOUT OUT

Before I get on to this final section of this newsletter I want to first break another quick rule. I want to give not one but three shout-outs to three legendary readers. Big thank you to Michelle McClure , Oliver Budworth & Steph Egger for shouting out Grow Club over the last couple of months.

Want to get a shout-out to thousands of CMOs, CEOS & founders next week? Simply write something nice about Grow Club on Linkedin & tag me. The more you share the more we can grow this community 🎉🎉🎉.

#3 BRAND WORLD

I had a chat with a co-founder the other week which whilst wonderful did leave me a little bit shocked. They thought that Defiant only did strategy work when nothing could be further from the truth. At Defiant we specialise in working alongside brand teams to help with strategy, creative, production & media buying. No matter whether you an in-house creative team looking for a strategic boost or a brand looking for a full external team, we can help. If you are interested in seeing more examples of our current & previous work simply click here.

In truth, our creative capabilities are in many ways our secret weapon. Why? Well, when you work with us you get access to our blackbook of the very best creatives from around the world. Ones we have worked with over the last seventeen years at the most awarded agencies in the world. The very same ones who also helped us to develop a radically new approach to Work Life. A bold & distinctive approach the likes of the co-working category have never seen before. Want to know more? Let me show you how the strategy was brought to life below.

We realised that our ambition was to go far beyond a creative campaign. If we want to be the brand that removes hard work, from working happy, we need this to be reflected in every touch point. So we focused on creating a brand world, not a creative campaign. A world filled with funny & relatable characters who had to endure all the worst bits of office life.

Ref 8: working with our production partners we began to bring our brand world to life

Once we had begun to define our brand world we then began to place our characters in relatable bad office situations, which many of us could relate to. First & foremost via hard working short format social films.

We then expanded our world to high-impact OOH placements across London & Manchester.

All of this is just the beginning, however, and the campaign is beginning to roll out across every touchpoint of the brand - from workspaces to stickers and eventually merch.

Ref 9: The campaign is also being rolled out across the entire brand world too.

We also wrapped everything together into a ‘60 poem calling out the worst of office bullsh*t too. Which you can see below.

CONCLUSION

So what are the main lessons from this week’s newsletter? Well let me breakdown them down below:

• Avoid working with teams that don’t take the time to define better problems. If they stop at the obvious their work will never be as effective.

• If you want to aim for fame, aim to be culture first.

• If you want fresh & bold creative work…come say hi to us at Defiant 😉

Finally would love to know whether you like, love or hate the work? Please just spend 2secs replying to this email.

Many thanks,

Will Poskett,
Founder of Defiant

PS Sorry there was no newsletter last week i was away on holiday

D