Challenger Times Issue Two by eatbigfish

CHALLENGER TIMES From

Boom!

The Big Fish Inside

Opportunity is all Around

The Trouble With Insight

Windbreakers & Window Boxes

The eatbigfish Offer

The Drama Of Fashion...

A Downtown Debate

Inexperience Wanted

Hollywood Has The Answer

Norwegian Pirates Plans

How We Can Help

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The Challenger Times

Issue Two What's The Big Idea? eatbigfish are a consultancy whose unique focus is Challenger thinking and behaviour. Our expertise comes from researching and working with businesses who either are or want to be Challengers. We do not view ourselves as traditional consultants, but rather as catalysts that help clients reach their own solutions. We do this primarily through a facilitated workshop approach. Our offer is broad and covers large parts of the brand development cycle. We want to increase the effectiveness and reach of our work, so much of our thinking and the tools and frameworks we use are also available in on-line programmes and in DIY kits that clients can run for themselves. For more information on how we can help your business please turn to page 10 to read about our core offer. What is the Challenger Project? The publication of the book Eating the Big Fish in 1999 coined the term Challenger Brand and was the first output of what was to become known as 'The Challenger Project', eatbigfish's ongoing research project into the strategy and behaviour of Challenger brands and businesses. 2004 saw the publication of The Pirate Inside, an investigation into the personal qualities it takes to succeed as a Challenger, particularly as an individual within a large organisation. In 2009 a revised and updated edition of Eating The Big Fish was published to address the huge shifts that had occurred in the marketing landscape in the ten years since the initial publication. Our research into Challenger Brand behaviour is constant and informs and inspires everything we do. In 2010 we launched 'The Challenger Project' online, an evolving resource for those who wish to learn from and act like Challengers themselves. Here we have selected just a few of the articles published online over the last twelve months - to read the latest thinking, watch interviews with key Challenger Brand leaders, delve into the archives, and to join the project please visit www.eatbigfish.com.

The Challenger Times

1) 13 Minutes He didn’t say ‘you don’t have long’, or ‘you have around a quarter of an hour’. He said ‘13 minutes’. Twice. He knew exactly how long he had to make the impact he needed. And it was the tension between the time he had, the importance of success, and the lurking cynicism of the audience that gave an urgency and drama to how he decided to do everything that followed.

BOOM!

So…Let’s understand exactly how long we have to convince our audience of our vision, how long we have to make the impact we need. And let’s use this fixed time frame to give urgency and drama to everything that follows. Note here that we are not necessarily talking about external audiences. It could be our CEO, our sales team, our R&D scientists. Anyone we need to enlist and excite.

Act One

ast year I went to see Tom Ford speak about his first film, A Single Man. The critic of The Times was on stage with him, asking him about the making of the film, and his vision for it, and at the end they turned it over to the audience for questions. So I stuck my hand up.

So you need a big start. Boom! Act One. Out it comes. And as you start to tell your story you have to really focus the audience. I turn the lights off and have a spotlight on the stage, otherwise they are all waving to their friends and checking their phones.

2) Act One He is telling a story without words. So he sees each appearance on the catwalk as an Act. Each Act tells a part of the overall story. And these Acts are thus not simply connected, they are sequenced. So…What are the five key Acts that will together convey our vision? What is the right sequence for them? How does this sequence of Acts build our story?

You start to tell your story and you move on. Boom! Act Two. On you take them.

I had read that he described his sense of his catwalk shows as ‘filmic’, and asked I use music very him what he meant deliberately to try to by this – what he has control the audience’s Words Are A taken from the world emotions. To help of film into the world Strategy To control the rhythm in of fashion. Until then the room. And after he had been leaning Overcome Nakedness a while you can hear back in his seat- witty, the breathing of the engaging, poised. room (he inhaled and exhaled at this But now his body language changed, point). ‘You can start to feel them reacting and he leant forward. His voice became together to your story. It is palpable. Till rather more urgent, more compelled, less at the end as you finish they all exhale reflective, as if rising to the challenge of (and he exhales a big breath at this point) that catwalk – and as if the challenge at the same time.’ of that temporary theatre, that small catwalk performed to a tiny audience He was a hugely stimulating speaker for just one afternoon, was a steeper and (I am going to write about how central more demanding challenge than that of having a point of view is to everything he making a film that will be viewable by does next month). And I was very struck anyone in the world, and will last forever. by a number of things he emphasized He said: ‘In a fashion show you have 13 minutes to convince a room of 200 people of your vision.’ He repeated the time: ‘13 minutes.’ He continued ‘And this is a very cynical, seen-it-all audience in this room. So you have to have an idea. And then you have to tell a story.

3) Boom! These actions are intended to create a sense of drama, and arresting Ford’s audience at the beginning of each act is critical. So his ambition for each one is to start with ‘Boom!’ A very striking word. If you wanted to have the effect of ‘Boom!’, you’re not talking about getting heads nodding, or quiet agreement. You are talking about really getting them to sit up and take notice. So…What would it mean to define our ambition for each act as Boom! What kind of response would we be looking for, not just at the end, but at the beginning of each Act? How can we more theatrically engage with our audience right from the start of each element of our storytelling?

in conveying his sense of how to communicate a vision. Struck by how useful they could be for us as owners and drivers of Challenger Brands when it comes to communicating our stories, convincing our own audiences of our vision. When it comes to translating our Saying into Doing.

4) The Spotlight Even in a Tom Ford fashion show, if the audience can get distracted they will. He can’t allow that. Even drama is no guarantee of attention. Tom Ford forces his audience to focus their attention.

It’s a little prosaic to spell it out, point by point, but indulge me while I do that anyway, because I think each is worth focusing on.

What is our equivalent to his spotlight, and where are we going to focus it? 5) Music

In reality, the notion of a viewer of our spectacle is wrong. Ford knows he will not succeed by engaging his group’s eyes alone – he has to engage their emotions. He is going to think about how he can use every sensory trigger at his disposal to do that. What are the sensory triggers at our disposal? How can we use them to engage every sense to bring our audience along with us? 6) Exhale Ford has a whole new metric for emotional engagement. One that is – in his words – ‘palpable’: whether the audience breathe in and out at the same time. If they exhale together at the end, he has succeeded. If they don’t, it hasn’t worked as he intended it to. Hugely demanding, but very simple, very clear, very measurable. So what is our metric for emotional engagement? That is hugely demanding, but very simple and clear and measurable? That is palpable? And he has also denied himself something critical, that most of us rely on more than we should: he has denied himself words. I am not suggesting that we do this ourselves, but I am intrigued by Pinter’s observations that ‘words are sometimes just a strategy to cover nakedness’ – and that forcing yourself to be less dependent on words requires you to have more substance, as well as more theatre. That if as Challenger Brands, and as owners of Challenger Brands, we thought more in terms of ‘Boom! Act One!’ then actually we would not find ourselves all too often dressing up the insubstantial, but the very opposite – pushing ourselves to greater substance. Of course, there are also limits to this analogy for many of us. Ford has at one level a captive audience, for instance – they cannot leave the room. And that is certainly not true of our external audiences for us. But then most of us are not presenting to as tough an audience as Nuclear Wintour, either. Adam Morgan, eatbigfish founder.

The Challenger Times

1. Know what you want. There’s just no substitute for a clear plan and some definite asks. Ambiguity kills progress faster than a Republican filibuster. Get the story down, rehearse it, deliver it with confidence.

THE

2. Be relentlessly positive. People want to believe. Belief and purpose are a basic human need and all the latest data reinforces that people — and brands — need it. Yet fear in the face of change is just as real and makes everyone feel nervous and appear schizophrenic as they inevitably shrink from the difficult mission. You have to stay on it. Think of it as an internal campaign.

BIG FISH

INSIDE

3. Apply all the same skills and rigor of your outbound marketing to your internal marketing (what Kerri Martin calls “Invertising”) — it is just as important and just as difficult to get right. Who are the audiences? What are their motivations, needs and biases? How do you craft your message to get their attention? What ‘media’ do you choose?

Creating A Challenger Culture

n Wednesday evening June 16th, four CMOs and two CEOs walked into a downtown San Francisco restaurant to debate the following: The strongest, most enduring, and inspiring brands are not built by marketing campaigns alone. Perhaps more important is the shared culture they create among the people who live the brand’s mission. There must be a strong connection between internal culture and external promise. In your experience as a CMO/CEO of the business, what are the best practices you have seen in ensuring alignment between these two — brand promise and internal culture (and perhaps a few “less than best” that we could learn from)? The food and wine at Perbacco were excellent; the discussion better still. Everyone was promised confidentiality around the specifics, but agreed to allow the main themes to be summarized for the Challenger Project. Anyone who is trying to use brand and identity to create momentum for a business, large or small, can learn from this conversation. Thanks to Peter Boland, Managing Director, Black Rock for sponsoring the event. Attendees were: Gary Briggs, CEO of Plastic Jungle, former CMO of ebay Alastair Dorward, former founding CEO of Method, now starting up another company

Kerri Martin, former CMO of MINI for first 5 years of launch, then VW, now running the Gallo business for BBDO

4. Get to the top. Suss out the CEO and where s/he’s coming from — if you don’t have a CEO that gets the importance of identity and culture this will be a fool’s errand. And find that personal avenue. They need to “find themselves in the story” or they won’t care, so your pitch must be as personal as it is professional. Yes, there must be a robust business case, advanced using the language of the CFO. But unless you can connect the organizations core belief to the CEO’s personal story, they’ll find it hard to walk the talk with you in a way that is authentic.

Kevin McSpadden, former CMO of Timbuktu and now founder of Think Brand New Rhonda Ramlo, just recently CMO of Dreyer’s Amy Schoening, former CMO of Gap, Inc now founder True Story Branding

7. Do NOT take their word for it. The only way to know for sure that the CEO is really on board is to have the identity drive substantial change to the product/ service offering. If s/he is still on board after you have changed that, then you know it’s for real. So do that and do it quick. Until that’s done a change of heart could pull the rug from under you. There are other short-term things that you can do to move in the right direction — launch events, an internal venture fund where you make your marketing dollars available for people’s ideas on how to bring the purpose to life internally — but there’s no more powerful signal than the “product”. 8. Change how and where people work— few things work better than taking down walls, having people not sit in functional silos. The identity needs to unite all your people and there are physical, tangible ways to encourage that unity. Make them identify with the organization, not their function. 9. Change who you hire — Marketing should run recruitment, simple as that. Your ability to execute the strategy is all about having people who come to you “pre-aligned”!

At eatbigfish we are very clear that “having great ideas is the easy bit” of any strategy and that great execution is the hardest by far. In The Pirate Inside, Adam detailed many of the personal qualities and cultural conditions necessary for successful follow-through and I couldn’t help wondering if getting the great stuff 5. Work the Internal Influencer Model — out the door isn’t just as big a fish as any competitor and just as in the outside should be analyzed world, there is an Great Execution Is with just as much Influencer Model at rigor and creativity. work internally. The The Hardest By Far Many of our CMOs CEO’s opinions are told stories of great always shaped by 2-3 trusted advisors. Know who they are ideas that didn’t make it, or were diluted and what’s on their agenda. If you can along the way. So this dinner served get one of them to advocate for you, do to underscore just how important the it and get out of their way. If you are one internal campaign is and just how tricky of the trusted advisors leverage it hard. that can be. I hope the 9 tips above really If you have done all the hard work to help anyone who senses the presence of define a meaningful, purpose-driven that Big Fish. Good luck in there. strategy to this point, what is more important than this? Commit.

Peter Boland, Managing Director, Black Rock Caroline McNally, Marketing, iShares

them up at night? Help them with that. How will this help them succeed? Your identity must clearly connect to that.

Director,

First, no one questioned the premise of the statement. All attendees are clients of eatbigfish, and all buy into the idea that being a belief-driven organization is essential to being competitive today (especially critical for the Challenger) and that brand is a manifestation of culture as well as a driver of it. This conversation was not about Marketing per se, but about identity — the Big Why. The group quickly decided that getting the CEO on board first was critical. On this issue the discussion was animated. We shared tips, tricks, successes and failures, a few F bombs and some table pounding. I’d characterize the discussion as one part Missionary, one part Machiavelli, seasoned with some Dale Carnegie. Here are the main themes:

6. Use Fear & Greed — these are still the most powerful drivers of behavior, especially at the top. What’s keeping

Mark Barden, eatbigfish West Coast Partner

The Challenger Times

translucent plastics. He turned to a confectionery maker for advice and inspiration. The iMac was often described as ‘yummy’ looking as a result – ‘a gumdrop of a computer’. Appearing on main streets around the world are Lush cosmetics stores. These are not the sanitised marble clad white environments that we find in department stores but more resemble a green grocer or a deli. As theatres of colour and sensory overload, they look nothing like other cosmetics stores. The inspiration can be traced to an entirely different category.

OPPORTUNITY IS ALL AROUND US

Add a new emotion to people’s experience of the category When you think ‘computer services’, you don’t immediately think cool or fun. But for anyone who has encountered an original Geek Squad agent, you will recognise the power and loyalty driving potential of that business, as they turn up in their Geek Squad cars looking like something from ‘Men in Black’, and flash their agent badge before fixing your hard drive. Geek Squad really does put ‘cool’ into IT.

‘Opportunity is all around us, but it often occurs in the most unlikely of places’

’m writing this at 37,000 feet above the Indian Ocean, and in an extraordinary act of serendipity I glance at the screen in front of me to hear these words. Words from an Indian textile entrepreneur who finds the inspiration for his next design on the key fob of a taxi driver in a cab in Sao Paulo. He was simply open to the stimulus. Prepared to look beyond the usual sources of inspiration for his industry. He has a different outlook, and he knows that this is a sense – like seeing, hearing, smelling – that he can practise and refine. Put simply, Outlooking is a skill you can learn to help you see opportunity. And many great Challenger stories start with an act of Outlooking. ‘Important Job Offer – Inexperience Wanted’ One would think that the more experience you have, the more easy it is to see opportunity. So that when you want to solve a problem, the most natural solution is to get a whole bunch of experienced people in a room and run at the issue. Experience = Knowledge and Insight… surely? Yes, but…Experience can blind us too. Experience tells us that there are ‘rules’ and ‘codes’. We believe we know what can or can’t be done. We become closed to things that don’t fit our model of the world – the model that is based on years of experience.

but also huge excitement and clarity of thought. You have the energy to change things for the better. You see things with fresh eyes, and a million questions – small and large – occur to you. ‘why do they segment the category that way?’ ‘why can’t people buy the products directly?’ ‘couldn’t we sell things cheaper and yet make more profit?’

You’ve lost your intelligent naivety. You’ve stopped looking out. our

Intelligent

So, what skills and techniques can we adopt to regain our intelligent naivety?

Look beyond the borders of your own category for Inspiration Many of our favourite challengers practise this. Jonathan Ive, the Chief Designer at Apple, often applies this principle. In revolutionising the aesthetics of the computer world with the iMac he found that the industry was incapable of producing truly vibrant

Despite this, Audi in North America believe the diesel market will grow and offers huge potential. They were clear however that the traditional rational arguments for diesel engines were falling on deaf ears. With the launch of the Audi Q7, they chose a different story to engage with. They identified that if 30% of Americans shifted to diesel in the US, then American would no longer need to rely on Saudi Arabia for any oil. They expected some 10% of their sales to be diesel vehicles. In fact, over 40% of their sales have been diesel.

Always.

But as time passes, and you become more ‘experienced’ , the questions recede and you come to understand ‘how things work’ in your category or business. And as your sense of certainty increases, the energy and enthusiasm wane a little.

Inexperience Wanted

If you don’t believe me, consider the feelings you have in the first few days in a new job. Certainly a little fear,

Open To Opportunity.

‘couldn’t I bring some of my knowledge from other jobs to this industry?’

Regaining Naivety

Attach your story to a bigger issue – something to set tongues wagging

In Europe the diesel car is well established. In North America less so, where – despite all the huge advances in these engines, and the mileage benefits – it still carries a reputation Ability To Be for dirtiness, noise and a lack of performance.

‘why are we structured this way?’

Important Job Offer

However, many of the challenger stories we have researched, start with In-experience – people who have no experience of the business that they are going into, or deliberately bring a perspective from another industry or category. People with intelligent Naivety.

The

Or who could have thought that socks could be scary. Burlington recently parodied the horror genre to make their iconic socks more relevant to a younger generation, http://sockhorror.burlington.de/ .

Flip the conventions of the category Sometimes people associate being a Challenger with breaking every rule and code out there. We wouldn’t ever recommend that but…as a place to start a process of looking for new opportunity and a way to outlook… you can do worse than list all the category conventions you can think of, then flip them and ask the question – ‘Is there any potential benefit in seeing a category convention from the other side of the coin?’ One of the greatest examples of this was Saturn cars – ‘A different kind of car company’ – who inverted many of the conventions of the car industry in the USA: from where it was made, to how it was sold, to the emphasis on a great ownership experience. Saturn was an off shoot of General Motors and achieved such success for

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a time that its parent company struggled to reconcile managing two very different business models. But the freshness of thinking that led to Saturn can also be seen in the inspiring interview with Hugo Spowers of Riversimple on the eatbigfish website.

irritating at one level, yet flipping successful too.

The business model success of Ryan Air is inspired by similar thinking – flying into regional airports, making revenues from helping to develop those airports rather than paying exorbitant landing fees, and even charging for spending a penny. Flipping

Challenger success depends on the ability to be open to opportunity. Always. To do this we need to recognise that experience can be a constraint at times rather than an enabler. We need to find ways to systematically regain our

You can see another great example of a business that has flipped conventions in the interview with Gav Thompson of giff gaff on our site. Outlooking is a skill to nurture

intelligent naivety. Outlooking and the techniques we have touched on here, forces us to put on new lenses. It forces us to see the world from a different perspective, and opens the senses to new possibilities. Some challengers seem to be permanent outlookers; for the rest of us it is a skill we can practise.

Hugh Derrick, eatbigfish Partner

THE TROUBLE WITH INSIGHT

hen my twin boys were four, I asked them what the capital of America was. ‘Washington’, said one, ‘Hollywood’, said the other – and it was hard to say who was wrong. Because one offered me a truth, and the other offered me an insight. And it is Insight that most Brand Owners feel they are most short of. We can buy creativity, we can outsource innovation, we can hire social media strategists. But Insight remains something that we feel we need to be generating ourselves, at the very centre of everything our company does – and yet for all the money we spend on research, what we find ourselves served up with most of the time are very expensive truths, rather than brand-changing insights. Too much Washington, and precious little Hollywood. And the reason surely is that we have far too monochromatic a view of what an insight is and where to find it – we tend to use ‘insight’ as a shorthand for ‘consumer insight’: something the consumer says or does that will open up a new possibility for us and our brand. Yet if one looks at brands that have really broken through in their categories, we see that there is a much broader range of sources of insight that we should be drawing on: Insights into why consumers have much stronger relationships with other categories than they do with ours, and what it would mean to bring some of those drivers into our category; Insights into what made the brand successful when it was most successful and what that would mean today; Insights into why our company culture is unique, and what element of that our consumer might find compelling. The kinds of questions, in other words, that we briefly consider in the first couple of weeks in our new job, and then get pushed aside as the heat to deliver this quarter’s results kicks in. Obvious, isn’t it? Yet hardly any of us do it. So if we want to expand the horizons for our brand, the first thing we need to do is expand our sense of what an insight is. Look for entirely new sources of insight, and give ourselves the time and space to explore them properly. It’s the only way to get to Hollywood.

Adam Morgan, eatbigfish Founder. This article first

The Challenger Times

WINDBREAKERS &

WINDOW BOXES A Story About Some Norwegian Pirates.

o be more accurate it is a story about a group of sea faring DIY enthusiasts who liked camping but preferred house building. So the story goes that a few years back a group of people from mainland Oslo set out on a weekend boat trip around the Fjords stopping to explore each of the islands as they went.

So they decide to build a number of windbreaks at right angles to each other be sure to protect each individual tent from the North, South, East and Westerly winds. Four adjoining stone windbreaks should do it they think – a bit like the four walls of a conventional house but with a tent in the middle.

construct in order to protect their tents from the fierce winds – that is as long as these windbreaks are made entirely of the natural materials that are found on the island.

and the information they were given as the means to their end. If you’re trying to build a metaphorical house within your organisation and the powers that be say no, don’t just build it anyway. That will piss them off. But don’t give up.

So the very next weekend this pirate gang set sail with their boat and their tents. Being summer the winds aren’t too bad You might have and so they create themselves a small Apparently after some Build In Stages To to break down the collection of windbreaks made from time the tents were jump for them a bit Now some of these islands had remained twine and sticks and straw-stuff reaching removed from inside Reach Your Goal if it’s a big demand uninhabited (as some 5 foot tall which they the four stone walls that you’re making. still are today) and leave on the island of each of these little Be A Pirate In Your So take the time to build in a number of this group of people and erect each time houses and nice carved wooden beds took a liking to one they visit. And for a presumably replaced the sleeping bags on stages to reach your goal. Organisation of these islands in few weeks this works the floor but no one knows exactly when. If your goal is simply too scary for particular. So as they out ok but every now It was probably about the same time that words help them out by redefining your sat watching the sun set that Sunday and then a strong gust of wind huffs and the roofs were put on. ambition according to their rules and afternoon they decided that they would puffs and blows them down. Today the owners still stand by the fact that their language. What is your equivalent ask the Norwegian authorities if they to the windbreak? could build a few weekend houses on this So they decide to build their defenses their lovely homes with their permanent island so that they could visit at the end with stronger stuff and create a new set of looking window boxes are merely a set And of course if you’ve always wanted a windbreaks from logs that they collect in of very effective windbreaks that can be seaside retreat but are finding beachfront of a hard week at work. the forests. And this works out ok too for removed at any time the Government property prices prohibitive you could So on Monday morning once back at a little while until a particularly furious wishes. I guess the Norwegian authorities try out the windbreak vs. house-on-thetheir desks these people go through the wind blows these windbreaks down as just don’t have the heart, or maybe they beach approach with your preferred appropriate channels and write to the well. don’t want to mess with these DIY Pirates seaside council. appropriate people to find out if their who have a strange and quiet way of house-building dream is possible. They And so on their next getting what they discover that it is not. They absolutely visit these Pirates want? Or maybe it’s Use No As Olivia Knight, eatbigfish Creative definitely certainly cannot build any go about collecting something to do with Director permanent residential structures on this rocks that happen to the publicity and Inspiration island or any other uninhabited island for be lying about on the revenue generated by beaches and construct a million and one reasons. this now infamous windbreaks made from stone and sand. tourist attraction? But they can camp. And of course no matter how hard the Using the Power of No They are allowed to create a campsite wind blows these brick and cement walls For more stories, articles stand fast against the elements. on the island as long as they bring only One of the Challengers we interviewed and our latest thinking a limited number of tents with them Now the only problem that our Pirates for The Pirate Inside said that he used join the Challenger from the mainland each weekend and face is that the wind tends to blow in many the word no merely as a request for more Project at take them away with them when they different directions and these now 40 foot information. In this case these Pirates leave. The only evidence of the campsite stone windbreaks, although definitely not used the word no as their inspiration to www.eatbigfish.com that can remain between visits are the permanent, are pretty hard to maneuver. find a new way of achieving their goal windbreaks that they are allowed to

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a successful outcome. We also provide tips on running a successful session, additional digital and physical stimulus to get the creative juices flowing, and voting to help you select the best ideas.

THE

You don't need to have any prior experience. There is no need to have run a workshop before. We designed the kit so anyone could run a session using the step by step guide but if you'd like a facilitator to guide you through the day we can help with that.

EATBIGFISH

Out Now - Outlooking

OFFER

An idea generation session to find insights of opportunity by looking outside of your category, consumer and competition. Coming Soon - Inlooking The exercises in Inlooking ask us to look at the familiar in fresh ways. To interrogate what we have through a magnified lens. (This session can work in conjunction with the Outlooking session)

How We Can We Help You.

The 12 Challenger Narratives

SPEECHES Want to hear the latest thinking on Challenger Brands? The eatbigfish partners are experienced speakers, from keynote speeches to after dinner addresses to small groups, we are able to attend events in the US, UK, Europe and worldwide. Here are a few of our current speech topics. The Principles of Challenger Thinking and Behaviour If you want to introduce your audience to what it takes to act and think like a Challenger, then this is the speech for you. While the principles remain the same, the examples and case studies we feature are constantly evolving. It includes ideas and frameworks that help the audience apply the principles themselves.

10 years into our work we are clear that there are many different Challenger stories to tell and different brands tell them in different ways. This speech explores 12 different ways to tell the Challenger story, and begs the question – ‘Which type are you?’ With implications for how and where you tell your brand story and an expanded sense of the Challenger canvas, this speech helps us all to understand that Virgin isn’t the only Challenger model to follow. Creating a Culture of Innovation We believe Challengers offer a different perspective on Innovation. Less about linear process, more about a virtuous circle that nurtures a culture where ideas flourish. Less about 'innovation', more about opportunity. Less about looking inside your category for ideas and more about looking out at other categories. This speech brings this distinctive approach to Innovation to life. Necessary Piracy What personal qualities do we see in successful challengers? What skills do they have that we can learn from? How do they build successful entrepreneurial teams? What leadership traits do they display? And how do these Necessary Pirates navigate successfully through the waters of the corporate world and multinational organisations.' A speech that looks at what it takes to be a Challenger yourself.

ONLINE How do you bring the challenger mindset to your business at large? How do you seek to embed this approach in your team? How can you transcend geographies? How do you offer something that can fit around people's hectic work schedules? eatbigfish online training might be the answer. The Credos

IN A BOX Our In A Box Workshops contain all the digital content, printable files and physical stimulus needed to run your own one day workshop. Each workshop kit includes four of our most tried and tested exercises, with step by step instructions to ensure

With frameworks and exercises borne from our study of Challengers, this 7 module online programme looks at the key stages of Challenger strategy and behaviour, known as the Challenger Credos. Each module consists of a series of videos to be watched online - theory, inspirational stories and interviews with Challenger Brand leaders, finishing with a practical exercise that can be completed individually or as a group, to cement your understanding of the key principles and generate

The Challenger Times

ating The Big Fish; how Challenger Brands can compete against Brand Leaders.

Most marketing books are written about brand leaders. But the fact is that the vast majority of brand marketers and business people do not work on brand leaders; they work on brands that are 2nd or 3rd or 4th or less in their market - and are striving to achieve greater and greater returns on these brands with increasingly limited resources. The marketing mantra of the 90’s is “Do More with Less”. This book is about brands, and companies and people that have successfully (and famously) done more with less - so much more that they became, if not the new brand leaders, then a key (and profitable) part of the landscape, and in doing so changed much of the landscape of the category and the competitive brands within it and around them, forever. The Pirate Inside; building a Challenger Brand culture within yourself and your organization.

This 3 module online programme looks at ways Challengers can push the scope of innovation. The first chapter outlines the ‘Four Agendas’ that we should be aware of within the consumer landscape, and offers an exercise to map and focus your innovation activity against this model, the second looks at the ‘Customer Journey’ - how Challengers find opportunities for unexpected innovations throughout this experience, and the third focuses on ‘Changing Behaviour’ - how we can innovate without changing our product at all…

Powerful brands and particularly powerful challenger brands – are built by people. Not by proprietary methodologies, or by unique brand frameworks, but by people. In fact, for many of us getting the brand strategy right is the least of it while we can all come up with smart strategies and creative thinking about how to drive our brand forward, the real issue is this: how do we need to behave in order to really drive the implications of that brand thinking through our organisation until it becomes real? When, all too often, the organisation’s systems and structures seem more geared to slowing and diluting, than spurring and galvanising our intent?

The Fishfood online programmes can be completed by individuals or teams, self directed or with guidance and support from eatbigfish, helping to make this content not simply inspirational but to have direct application.

This book looks at what it takes to be a Constructive Pirate: the personal qualities and behaviours required of an individual to be a successful Challenger, and in particular one that is trying to create breakthrough in a large, relatively conservative organisation.

BOOKS

WORKSHOPS

Innovation

ur core business. We take a strategic approach, based on our analysis about how Challengers succeed. Although we offer a number of products tailored to client’s particular needs, they all draw from this central point of view. Our products centre around helping clients who want or need to think like Challengers in some or all of the following areas: •

Building a Challenger Lighthouse Identity

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Insight & Idea Generation

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Innovation

• Using Media other than communications to project one’s Identity • Developing a stretching 5 or 10 year category vision (and thinking through the portfolio implications that fall from that vision)

• Brand Experience (including new ways to map consumer touch points in service and retail businesses) • Brand Subcultures (nurturing Challengers within multinational, multibrand organisations) Our approach utilises facilitated workshop-based programmes developed from our learning’s and understanding of Challenger brands and their business. We believe in working with a crossfunctional senior management group and their primary business partners to help them arrive at their own solutions. This cross ownership is vital to the projects success and the programme has a strong bias to action. The length of the workshop depends on the nature of the task – a Challenger Lighthouse Identity project will take the form of an intense three day workshop, followed by another one or two day session a month later. Some of our clients to date have included Reckitt Benckiser, Eurostar, PepsiCo, Unilever, Jim Beam, The Guardian, Hewlett Packard and eBay.

Maybe what it you are looking for doesn't fit neatly into one of the services outlined here? Maybe you'd rather speak to someone directly? Maybe you need help in exploring some alternative ways to approach your brief? We are a small personal business and we enjoy the challenge of briefs that are a little different. So, if it's not here, please don't assume we cannot help. Want more information? You can explore our wider offer at www.eatbigfish.com/our- offer, contact us directly at info@eatbigfish.com, or if you want to speak to someone you can call our London office on +44 (0)20 7234 9970.

eatbigfish is a consultancy whose unique focus is Challenger behaviour and thinking. Our expertise comes from researching and working with businesses who either are or want to be Challengers. We do not view ourselves as traditional consultants, but rather as catalysts that help clients reach their own solutions. We do this primarily through a facilitated workshop approach. Our offer covers large parts of the brand development cycle, but always through a Challenger lens. We want to increase the effectiveness and reach of our work, so much of our thinking and the tools and frameworks we use are also available in online programmes and in DIY kits that clients can run for themselves.

CONTACT eatbigfish First Floor, Bramah House, 65-71 Bermondsey Street, London, SE1 3XF, UK

London

San Francisco

Teresa Murphy

Mark Barden

teresa@eatbigfish.com

mark@eatbigfish.com

+44 (0)20 7234 9970

+1 415 891 8348

New York

Auckland

Chad Dick

Kate Smith

chad@eatbigfish.com

kate@eatbigfish.com

+1 203 227 6919

+64 21 338 680