9 Challenger Brand Trends You Need to Know About

What to read before Brandweek: Challenger Brands

This week, we're excited to host our first Brandweek: Challenger Brands summit, a sold-out, 500-person, two-day event in New York dedicated to exploring all the ways direct-to-consumer brands are shaking up the retail game and how legacy brands can adopt a challenger mindset. More than 40 speakers—from Bethenny Frankel at Skinnygirl to Jen Sey at Levi's to Jeff Brooks at Casper—will share their insights onstage.

Whether you're joining us or following along from home, we've gathered some of our favorite stories from the past year to help you prepare. First, check out our new list of the hottest challengers around. And below, you'll find the top nine challenger brand trends along with our stories about them.

1. Scaling up from a product to a category

Often challenger brands enter the market with one product. Think Casper's mattress or Away's suitcase. Both brands recognized a hole in their respective categories and found a way to attract consumers through attention-grabbing marketing. As many challenger brands have matured, the need to offer more than one product and own their category has grown. Here are some examples:

2. Rethinking the retail experience

Much of the challenger brand space is dominated by direct-to-consumer brands that enter the market via ecommerce. Often as those brands grow, consumers want to be able to touch and feel the products before purchasing them, especially with big-ticket items. That's why many are entering the retail space with brick-and-mortar shops, though they're also working to redefine the retail experience for consumers.

3. Pop-ups

But a permanent brick-and-mortar presence might be too much of a commitment for some brands. Instead, they're using pop-up experiences, which allow them to give consumers a taste of retail without the long-term costs associated with an actual store.

4. Sleek design and signature fonts

For early challenger brands like Airbnb, Uber and ClassPass, creating a signature font to go along with sleek branding has been key, and standout design has helped make them the brand names we know today. Here's a look at some of the branding shops behind those distinctive looks we now know so well.

5. A big out-of-home push

Going big with out-of-home work is another common practice for challenger brands. For some, like Postmates, taking over subway stations has made a statement. For others, like Musicbed, creating hyper-targeted posters has been the ticket.

6. Customization and personalization

Several challenger brands are offering consumers greater freedom when it comes to how their products actually look and are designed. This includes customizable shampoo, shoes and more from brands like Prose, Function of Beauty and Hawthorne.

7. Creating communities

Consumers today want to have a dialogue with brands. While some challenger brands and direct-to-consumer companies are accomplishing that with physical retail spaces where people can engage with them directly, others are building communities digitally. Examples include Brandless, which hosted two weeks of programming at one of its pop-up stores, and brands like Allbirds and Outdoor Voices that used hashtags to build communities of shoppers.

8. Inclusive, bold marketing

Some challenger brands like Billie and ThirdLove have been able to garner consumers' attention by showing them images they don't typically see in marketing campaigns. Using inclusive imagery or messaging about timely issues has helped brands stand out.

9. A look ahead

Ecommerce reporter Ann-Marie Alcántara predicts that we'll see more partnerships and marketplaces; more challengers eyeing the kitchen, living room and healthcare categories; even more pop-ups and retail spaces; and a correction on valuations with fewer brands scoring Series A funding. There's also a new must-know acronym: BOPIS, or buy-online-pickup-in-store.