Category Disruptors: The Playbook for High-Growth Brands

Brands who aren't afraid to disrupt are winning. But how do brands coming up against legacy players find their audience advantage and outsmart the competition?

Download your chosen playbook to unlock:

🕵️ Demographic data of who's actually in your category, identifying whitespace and overlooked groups.

📺 Media consumption data – where do your target audiences hang out?

🤫 Insider advice from experts on how to turn category insights into strategic action.

📚 Case studies from buzzy disruptor brands that grew from 0 to 100 in the last five years.

Choose your playbook:

• Running Shoes, US
• Better-For-You Drinks, US
• Premium Haircare, US
• Protein Bars, US
• Skincare, UK
• Makeup & Cosmetics, UK
• All other categories

Here's a sneak peek 👀

Preview

In today’s fragmented cultural landscape, you can spot a challenger brand from a mile away. They enter the arena in a way that’s odd enough to sit up and take notice. It could be that the bold packaging stands out on supermarket shelves. Or their social media community building is suddenly everywhere you look, tapping into an underground niche.

Specificity is the new mainstream. Challenger brands know that it’s all about making choices — which audiences to prioritise, which channels to invest in — because unlike category leaders, they rarely have the budget to reach the whole market.

Disruptive brands are winning.

There’s something addictive about the pleasure of rooting for an underdog: the scrappy upstart that breaks through with surprising energy and wins against all odds. At Tracksuit, we love a good challenger brand; an up-and-comer that demonstrates why exactly we got into this brand business in the first place. It also helps that they’re usually easy to love.

As our friends over at eatbigfish — the team that wrote the OG playbook for challenger brands — say: “One of the reasons we continue to be fascinated by Challengers is they can’t afford to be dull. It’s existential for them; they are the anti-blah.”

You can’t be everything to everyone. Your customers are one click away.

The democratic collapse of channels, alongside reduced costs of entry, has made creation, distribution and marketing all easier. It’s created a landscape perfect for challenger brands. According to Bain & Company, brands with less than 1% market share are responsible for 27% of category growth in consumer goods. The shift is real.

But there’s also never been more brands popping up hunting for that airtime. And not just brands either, but influencers, media outlets, internet forums, films, television shows, and basically any other form of entertainment trying to capture your attention. So if you’re a small fish fighting for a scrap, you have to act smarter.