big fish®

🧠 The Brain Tickler #5 - where 30 years of brand building battle scars become your weekly source of insights and strategic advantage Why Jesus was the ultimate challenger brand and the lessons we can learn… It’s Christmas, so let’s talk about the original challenger brand, Jesus.   WTF? Stick with us and all will become clear…   When Riverford’s founder, Guy Watson, famous for calling consultants like us “marketing tossers”, was dragged to our doorstep by his sister, we knew we had to think differently. Guy hated branding jargon and marketing “bollocks” that many consultants try and palm off as valuable advice. But he also knew Riverford needed a sharper brand to thrive and scale. So, we took a radical approach to explain challenger branding, we turned to history’s boldest disruptor, Jesus. From breaking conventions to creating a rallying cry, Jesus nailed (pun intended) the principles of challenger branding over 2,000 years ago. We showed Riverford how these behaviours were already embedded in their DNA and could be amplified into a bold strategy to build their brand and rally their team. The result? A rallying cry “Live life on the veg”, a sharper brand focus, and a thriving business still growing today. Even Guy admitted we weren’t “marketing tossers” after all. Phew! Want to see how challenger theory, divine inspiration, and a surfboard picnic helped rebrand one of Britain’s most beloved organic food companies? #branding #challenger #marketing #bigfish #consultancy

This week’s brain 🧠 tickler casting our minds back to Dorset Cereals with whom we are proud to be able to say we are still working with nearly 20 years on!!

🧠 The Brain Tickler #4 - where 30 years of brand building battle scars become your weekly source of insights and strategic advantage. From Bags to Riches: When Dorset Cereals arrived on our doorstep in 2005, they were a £4m brand with big plans to revive the forgotten category of muesli.   We convinced them to invest almost their entire advertising budget into redesigning their packaging instead of traditional advertising media.    We nicknamed this strategy "packvertising" which led to an extraordinary series of events that their teams embraced with gusto and bravery.    Moving their operations from a bag to a box required serious hard work, overcommitment and added complexity. But the return on investment of spending £250k on packaging instead of ads paid off.   The result? A once modestly purchased muesli brand became a breakfast table icon, growing from £4m to £45m in just a few years.   Read the whole story and discover why your most powerful advertising channel might be sitting right in front of you. And the best part? It might not cost you a penny in media spend! #branding #marketing #breakfast #entrepreneurship

🧠 The Brain Tickler #3 - where 30 years of brand building battle scars become your weekly source of insights and strategic advantage. Our third edition explores why most brands aren't overnight successes. They're built slowly but surely. This week's article is for all you twitchy entrepreneurs out there, with ants in your pants and a lion's appetite for exponential growth. Find out how patience isn't just a virtue but a strategy. Plus, discover how two brands leveraged patience to make £300 million each. #patience #brandbuilding #success #entrepreneurs #marketing

🧠 The Brain Tickler #2 - where 30 years of brand building battle scars become your weekly source of insights and strategic advantage. Our second edition reveals how classical methods of advertising to your consumers risks annoying them and the trick is to vertise to them (yep, spelling is intentional). The secret to vertising? Here are three strategies for building genuine connections with consumers. #consumers #advertising #brand #marketing

We always say we are only as good as our clients. Delighted to see that GrowUp Farms have won the Champions of Champions Grocer New Product and Packaging award for their “Unbeleafable” products. 🥇 We created both the GrowUp brand identity and their consumer salad brand “Unbeleafable” a while ago now. Back then they took a brave punt with us on building a brand in an own label dominated category. Their view was that this was an own label manufacturing opportunity and that it was hard to build a brand in this category. In fact, it was so risky, we shared that risk and became shareholders in GrowUp! So, with that in mind we looked at a house of brands strategy and how a predominately own label supplier could brand their own salad. For them back then this was a nice to have if it worked scenario. We ran our process and came up with some hypotheses that led to the creation of a number of brands. One was the Unbeleafable range, another The Fresh Leaf Co. Since then, GrowUp have exclusively sold salad under their brands not under own label, which just goes to show that having a clear strategy does change the course of your business. We have always been proud to be associated with their incredible work in producing sustainable food that not only tastes incredible but reduces vast amounts of waste at so many levels, frees up land to be restored and ensures quality, healthy food can be made affordable without the need for pesticides and other grim stuff. Huge congratulations 🙌 and we can’t wait to see what’s next for this exciting game changer of a business!! And thank you Kate Hofman and Marcus Whately and Ben Amory for putting your faith in us back then. 🙏 #verticalfarming #innovation #growup #unbeleafable #grocerawards

🧠 Introducing The Brain Tickler - where 30 years of brand building battle scars become your weekly source of insights and strategic advantage. Our first edition reveals how we used reverse psychology to create an adult indulgent dessert brand that turned into a £150m success story. From founder bias to consumer desire, discover the psychological tricks behind building this iconic brand. Want these insights in your inbox? Link in comments 👇

Is your tea fear free? Do you think before you drink? What’s your view on brands that exploit workers to bring you cheap deals that seem too good to be true? Perry Haydn Taylor 💚 explains how we helped Typhoo Tea Ltd rethink their purpose and start a move against wrong doing in the tea industry.

Team big fish® are cycling from London to Brighton in June next year to raise money for the British Heart Foundation. So, calling all wealthy, kind and generous people! We need your lovely wonga please!! ❤️ x

Here's the answer, but what's the question? #bigfish30quiz