Find Your Filter: How Challengers Decide What Not to Do
By Tara Henderson
So what will you not do?
This is a question we frequently skirt around when discussing our brand. Often, it feels easier to focus on everything that you should do – it feels more positive after all. It gives us a sense that we are building momentum, and it makes us feel like we aren’t being left behind in our category. But herein lies the trap - we know all too well what happens when we spread our resources too thinly and try to do too much. Having a solid strategy is not about doing everything. Strategy, as American businessman Michael Porter once said, is about making trade-offs – it’s about making choices.
The most famous (and successful) brands understand this. Take Liquid Death, who see their brand as a character – they always ask: What would this character do? And what would they not do? Then they define their brand activity from there. A strongly defined brand strategy should act as a filter for any decisions you make. It should tell you what to sacrifice and what to overcommit to.
I recently had the pleasure of interviewing Charlotte Langley, CMO of flower delivery service Bloom & Wild. Already being a customer and a fan of Bloom & Wild, I knew they had a powerful brand, but after speaking with Langley, it was clear that it is their strategic focus that allows them to flex and grow in some areas while sacrificing others in order to consistently challenge their category.
Bloom & Wild ‘care wildly’ and they want to help their customers do the same. As Langley told us, their audience is predominantly women who really want to show they care, but sometimes can only do so from afar. In a nutshell, it’s “women, who have a support network, who they are also working hard to support.”
While, this strategy has enabled them to do a number of things, more importantly, it has shown them what they shouldn’t do. For example, they decided to stop selling red roses on Valentine’s Day as this was mostly a one-off purchase by men who they knew weren’t their primary audience. As Langley explained, “Why are we suddenly changing our range for one week of the year to suit people who are not our core customers?” On top of this, Bloom & Wild is also a B Corp with sustainability sitting at the heart of everything they do – so the wastage involved in the red-rose-Valentine’s-trade just didn’t sit well with them. Not only was this ‘Not for Sale’ decision newsworthy, it also showed how they care for their customers. They know who they are speaking to and consistently deliver on what is actually right for them – not just what the category thinks is right.
Over the last couple of years (thanks in large part to trends during COVID), the overall category has seen an expansion into plant delivery. But with ‘care wildly’ front of mind, Bloom & Wild knew that they didn’t want to be a place for people to buy their own plants - each plant should be a gift. And if these plants were gifts, unboxing needed to take centre stage and not be just an afterthought.
“When we were designing our broader [plant] gift range, really knowing that it’s going to be sent directly to the recipient, that immediately says, okay, the unboxing is really important. It has to be a proper gift experience.”
As they have moved into further gifting occasions and products, ‘care wildly’ has helped them dictate where they should and shouldn’t put effort in. Langley told us, “As we evolve, we always try to do it with that ‘care wildly’ lens as to how we can do this more thoughtfully than our competition.”