Challenger Brand Success Is All About Great Storytelling

Adweek Intelligence study highlights the challenges, threats and tactics used by market disruptors

Challenger brands are highly adept storytellers that understand the way to a consumer’s heart is through an emotionally resonant narrative. With their entrepreneurial mindset, they get that a great story can transform mundane products like mattresses, razors and luggage into passion points for consumers to be surprised and delighted by.

These are among the key findings of “The Truth About Disruptors: 2019 Challenger Brands Study,” groundbreaking research from Adweek Intelligence that examines the impact of challenger brands and identifies the challenges, threats and marketing practices of these direct-to-consumer disruptors. It is based on an exclusive survey of more than 200 brand marketers.

Check out the complete e-book of “The Truth About Disruptors: 2019 Challenger Brands Study.”

The brand narrative is critical, as the study finds that challenger brands pull storytelling levers like Instagram (used by 85 percent of challenger brands) and influencer (used by 55 percent) to focus on short-term customer acquisition. But a big question remains: Can this be scaled? In fact, 75 percent of brand marketers indicated that balancing short-term customer acquisition vs. long-term customer value was challenger brands’ top hurdle. Find out more about these influential emerging brands. Get the free study below: