🛠️ How Method built a true rival brand
What they did: By this point, you probably know Method – a successful challenger brand in the household cleaning products space founded in 2000 and sold to SC Johnson in 2017. We would actually call them a true “rival” brand, as they’ve succeeded in changing their category and in many ways have become the incumbent for a new wave of eco and health-friendly cleaning products that came behind them. They’re now no longer an edgy disruptor, but instead almost an accepted mainstay in their category – one of the signs that a challenger has become a true rival.
But there are still many lessons we can learn from how they built their brand and drove growth of their business back in the day. We came across this podcast from Business Casual with one of the Method founders – “From Boring to Billions: Building Brands People Love”. It’s worth a listen to get inside the mind and early marketing thinking that led to their success. An eco and health-focused cleaning product now seems like a boring idea, but that’s in large part because of how they changed the category and set a new bar for new challengers.
Additional reading:
- How Method is disrupting the monochrome cleaning scene through colour and design
- Method Products: The Power of Passion and Purpose
What it means for you: The biggest takeaway from us from Method’s success is the clarify and consistency of their purpose. Clarity in that what they stand for and what they’re trying to accomplish (beyond making money) is so simple and succinct (see here). But also consistency, not just in how they communicate it to the world, but how it comes through in every single touch touch point the consumer has with their brand, as evidenced by the Drum article above on how they used colour and design.
Where, outside of advertising, can you deliver on your brand purpose with more consistency?
🔭 Nike is one of the few brands to get metaverse marketing right (so far)
What they did: We like (ok we love) to call our bad metaverse marketing campaigns. It’s 99% of the brand activity that’s happening in that space right now. At best it’s misguided, but let’s be honest – the vast majority of these fails come from marketers and agency chasing headlines and awards. It’s marketing for the sake of marketing, not marketing focused on delivering real, differentiated value to the consumer.
But Nike is part of that 1%. 21 million people have visited Nike’s Roblox store. That’s real attention and real value delivered through the metaverse. Nike was an early adopter (and acquirer) of the metaverse marketing world, likely more as a long-term play, but they’ve also been able to do well in the short-term when most brands haven’t.
How? By focusing on where the attention of their audience already is as opposed to trying to pull it to places where it isn’t. Roblox has a massive audience already. Decntraland does not.
It’s so simple, and yet for many brands so far. Go to where the attention of your audience already is, and figure out how your brand can deliver value in that space.
What it means to you: Think about your current marketing investment and activity through the lens of consumer attention and the trends shaping it going into 2023. Where will there be less and more attention next year? Where can you deliver value in new and different ways where people are already spending time?
🖥️ Digital advertising that actually does good things
What they did: Good Loop is a “purpose-led ad platform” based in Edinburgh currently operating in the UK and EU. Their model has viewers watch ads to unlock donations to charities (Good Loop keeps 50% of the revenue). It’s an interesting model and mission and while it’s still early days for them (they just raised a $6M Series A round earlier this year, it seems to be going well. Their CEO claims that there is more meaningful brand engagement and ad recall is “4.5X higher than the industry standard”. They’ve run ads for many blue chip brands including Coca Cola, Unilever and Amazon.
What made us write about them this week is the report they published recently, which found that 76% of marketers think the ad industry is not doing enough to tackle digital advertising’s carbon footprint. We’ve been having more and more conversations with clients and in the industry about this topic and definitely think there’s a growing opportunity for marketers and brands to start taking action. The spotlight is growing on the carbon footprint of the advertising supply chain, particularly in digital, and while it may seem like a bit of a novel thing now, it won’t be two years from now. If you’re in a position to do something about assessing, understanding, and improving your carbon footprint as an advertisers, do it now. Not only because its the right thing today, but because there’s still an opportunity to be seen as a first mover.
What it means for you: Have thought about or tried to measure the carbon footprint of your digital advertising activity? Do so, and then do something to make it better. (NB: This is something we do at Rival so reach out if we can help!)
