❤️The Challenger We Loved This Week
🥤Olipop is a challenger soda brand that launched in 2019 and has received a lot of attention for the design and effectiveness of their marketing strategy. As a self proclaimed “prebiotic” soda, it’s good for your gut, but there’s more to glean from the brand when it comes to marketing effectively in a segment dominated by incumbents like PepsiCo and Coca Cola. It’s no small feat to build a category changing business worth over $200m in the space of 4 years, but here’s how they’ve done it…
👀The Olipop Marketing Playbook, centers around 3 core pillars:
- Develop a highly differentiated brand that speaks to new trends in a crowded, but fast-changing category
- Use influencers for content production, not just distribution
- Pair beautiful, fun design with a highly data-driven approach
Let’s dive into each one.
📊Develop a Highly Differentiated Brand
Olipop found a point of difference in the market as a “gut health” soda brand where “healthy meets delicious”. They’ve even trademarked the slogan “a new kind of soda”. This point of differentiation is core to everything they do, from new product development, to brand positioning, even how they built and engaged a community around the brand in the early days.
👯Use Influencers for Content Production, not just Distribution
Olipop invested in influencer partnerships as both a distribution and content production channel, and ramped up heavily on TikTok in an authentic, contextual way before other brands were there.
✎Pair Beautiful, Fun Design with a Highly Data-Driven Approach
Olipop’s design is pretty great in its own right, but it’s their highly data-driven approach to marketing that’s really driven their growth. They are in the market through both e-comm and retail (about 50/50 from what we can tell), but data drives a ton of their investments and decisions across channels. (Check out this (very) deep dive into their e-comm, email, and SEO strategy if you’re into that kind of thing)
🔑Key Takeaways for you to apply
- Identify the emerging trends driving change in your industry and build your brand positioning on top of them
- Think of and invest in influencers as a content production channel, not just a distribution channel
- Get your first-party data set-up and strategy done right - it’s a huge competitive advantage that will pay massive long-term dividends.
👉Check out the brand here
👑The Great British Brand-off; UK Public Sees King’s Cultural Impact as Similar to Bisto
🤴In the wake of the Coronation, we released our latest Rival Spark research into how the UK public ranks King Charles against some household British brands when it comes to cultural impact.
🇬🇧Whilst only ranking in line with Bisto Gravy, which can be argued as the mainstay of any Sunday roast, King Charles was rated with more cultural significance than challengers like Revolut and Gymshark but less important than Jaffa Cakes (a challenger to the world of biscuits/cakes in it’s own right).
This exposes a truth that although challenger brands like Monzo and Starling are gaining economic traction, they are still a way off being considered as integral to British culture.
See below for the full report here
