We help businesses hit their growth targets by building challenger brands and teams.
We work as part of your team to develop strategies and tactics across three areas of the marketing function.
Jump to
Building brands that break through in a crowded market.
The Rival BrandOS creates the foundation for challenger growth by developing a brand that's relevant, authentic, and differentiated in the market. Our process always starts with the customer and what problem you're trying to solve for them. We then analyze the market to find the sharpest point of differentiation between your proposition and your competitors.
Key elements of a rival brand
What makes a Rival brand shapes our process for how we construct them
Featured Brand Development articles from our Content Hub.
Developing the strategies and systems to drive effective and efficient growth.
The Rival GTM Machine combines strong marketing fundamentals with challenger principles and practices to build a powerful growth machine. We focus on creating a shared understanding in the market around your brand while also communicating your point of difference in distinct ways to key audiences and communities. Our planning process covers communications, distribution, and business intelligence.
Building the GTM machine
Everything stems from the point of difference you want to own in the market
Featured Go-to-Market Strategy articles from our Content Hub.
Developing in-house talent and teams alongside best-in-class partners
The best strategy in the world doesn't matter if you don't have the right people set up in the right way to execute it. The Rival Talent Ecosystem develops structures, capabilities, and partners for high-growth marketing teams. We also focus on impacting people and culture no matter what our engagement is. We aim to transfer our expertise and experience to your team as quickly and thoroughly as possible.
We also offer in-person training workshops and coaching through our Rival Academy. Learn more here.
Designing the talent Ecosystem
Setting up the right people and processes in the right way to execute and evolve
Zag
Ep. 40 – Marketing’s role in an squad team structure, How Otherland sells candles on design (not scent), and launching a challenger telco brand Inbox
How challengers build a laboratory culture in their marketing department
The Rival B2B Playbook
Featured Capability Building articles from our Content Hub.
We aim to work ourselves out of a job as quickly as possible.
Regardless of the length, size, or shape of an engagement, we are always trying to work ourselves out of a job. We want to transfer as much of our experience and expertise to our clients as quickly as we can. In order to do this, we work quickly through a three-stage process.
Discovery
Fast onboarding to get us up to speed and embedded as part of your team
Development
Iterative and collaborative series of working sessions to build and finalize the deliverables
Deployment
Final delivery and support to ensure buy-in and activation of the deliverables
We work differently than many consultancies based on who we are and what we believe leads to the best work. We have three principles that we live and breath throughout any project we take on.
People not process
In every interaction we have, we are trying to have an impact on the people we work with. We aim to transfer as much of our experience and expertise as possible to your team.
Collaborators not consultants
We work as part of your team, supporting (and challenging them) as much as needed to get the job done. We never want to feel (or have you feel) like we’re an external third-party.
Outcomes not outputs
We believe marketing exists to drive growth of the brand and business. The only thing that matters is the impact and results we’re able to deliver.
Recent work
We work with challengers and incumbents around the world.
Evolving the brand purpose for a heritage business with challenger ambitions
We worked with Reebok’s CEO and leadership team to evolve their brand purpose after their transition to a new owner and with a new CEO. We brought together the invaluable equity of Reebok’s history with their ambitions to challenge the industry again. Our work was presented to all employees and key retail partners.
Finding the whitespace in a crowded market to drive product and market expansion
We worked with the CEO of Bud to develop a brand positioning that would help the business stand out and grow internationally after their Series B. In a category as crowded as open banking, we focused on clarifying and simplifying the core of what makes the Bud product and proposition different.
Developing a marketing dept strategy and org structure to support 10x growth
We worked with the marketing leadership team at Omnipresent to design their org structure, ways of working, hiring roadmap, and budgets to support the 10x growth ambitions and $1B valuation of the business.
Designing a digital communications plan for a new accelerator program
We worked with the innovation and marketing teams at Avery Dennison to develop the channel and messaging strategy for a new, global program focused on attracting start-ups in the B2B packaging and adhesives space. We developed the channel mix, messaging hierarchy, paid media plans, budgets, and ROI forecasts for three major markets.
Developing a greenfield challenger brand for a leading incumbent
We worked with leading insurance company in Africa, Old Mutual, to develop a greenfield product by developing the brand positioning, architecture and name based on audience research and value proposition.
Building a simple, clear brand position for a complex product.
We worked with the CEO, COO, and Head of Marketing at RTGS.Global to develop a brand positioning and architecture that would clearly communicate the functional and emotional benefit of the proposition. As a challenger in the wholesale, cross-border settlement space, we needed to build trust as well as excitement.
Building a company and community around a B2B brand
We worked with the CMO of Autobooks to support annual planning for owned, paid, and earned channels leading up to Series C funding. We also trained the team on paid media planning and execution that led to a significant increase in conversion rates.
Give us your biggest marketing challenge.
We love helping businesses and teams grow. Get in touch to schedule an initial working session with us.
