Consider Poppi: it zigged and zagged, changing its proposition, name, and packaging until it found an identity that worked.
This playbook would not work for every CPG brand.
If a mature brand repeatedly changed its identity and positioning, it would give its millions of established consumers vertigo. Poppi offers useful marketing lessons, but they are not repeatable for everyone.
Borrow the principles, not the mannerisms
Established companies need to translate, rather than replicate, insurgent marketing.
Often, established companies just copy the most visible characteristics of insurgents: an authentic founder-led purpose, naturally-formed digital communities, and a deep, organic affinity with tightly-defined cultural groups.
But once reproduced by a large organization, these practices can lose the authenticity and genuine creativity that made them powerful.
A purpose looks fake—or may even backfire—when consumers sense that it was reverse-engineered in a workshop. An agency-created community rarely behaves like one that emerged naturally, and the unique cultural angle that helped a small brand conquer a niche may feel forced when replicated by a mass brand—and fragment its vital broad relevance.
But it’s possible to get the best of both worlds.
For example, a new product launch must create desirability, build mental and physical availability, and get people to try it.
Insurgents excel at the first; large companies, armed with the budget to buy broad-reach ads, can often be much more effective at the second and third.
In this situation, established brands should borrow insurgent techniques when they unveil a new product: staggered launches, drive pre-launch demand creation, and find culturally relevant partners and rapid feedback loops to create desire among a high-affinity audience. Then, leverage their much stronger distribution and advertising muscle to convert cultural heat into scalable demand.
In essence, incumbents should fall in love again with their scale—broad distribution, retail influence, R&D, manufacturing capacity, data, established brand equity—which gives them advantages most insurgents could only dream of.
