Rania Robinson, CEO and Partner at Quiet Storm smashes the stereotypes and myths surrounding challenger marketing.
Strangely, challenger has become a generational label. You’re either born one - or you’re not.
If I'm honest, this idea isn’t just outdated, it’s actively holding brands back.
Because being a challenger isn’t about where you sit on a leaderboard. If you’re not number one, you’re a challenger by default; and if you are number one, your dominance is temporary - in today’s market, nothing stays still for long.
Which raises an important question: if almost every brand should act like a challenger, why do so many choose not to?
More often than not, it comes down to the stereotypes we’re still clinging to.
Most people picture a challenger the same way: fresh logos, founders in hoodies, an energetic team ready to take on the big players.
But excitement has never been the defining factor. Attitude has.
Take Haribo - founded in 1920, a household name across generations, the no.1 brand in its category. And yet it behaves as if that position is fragile.
Surrounded by own-label brands that copy its formats and compete aggressively on price, Haribo defends its relevance through distinctiveness, and constantly reinvents its brand, texture, flavour and emotional connection.
It’s about whether you’re still brave enough to change before you’re forced to.
Size is often mistaken for safety. If anything, it increases the risk of complacency.
Even Google - a brand so dominant its name became a verb - operates in perpetual ‘challenger’ mode.
In a world shifting towards AI-first discovery and generative answers, its core business - search - is under pressure to evolve. Rather than defending the status quo, Google continues to rethink how search works, experiment publicly with AI, and launch products that risk cannibalising existing revenue streams.
It doesn’t assume today’s dominance guarantees tomorrow’s relevance.
Big brands don’t fail because they’re attacked; they fail because they stop attacking their own assumptions.
Google doesn’t assume today’s dominance guarantees tomorrow’s relevance.
Rania Robinson, CEO and Partner at Quiet Storm
We talk about challengers as if they all need to be the Airbnbs or Ubers of their time.
But some of the most effective challengers didn’t invent anything new at all; they just reframed what already existed, and challenged a new way of thinking and behaving.
Liquid Death didn’t innovate water. It reinvented the culture around it.
Zoflora didn’t invent disinfectants. It challenged the monolithic, joyless logic of the category, and repositioned cleaning as something closer to a ritual than a chore.
Disruption doesn’t have to come from research and development. Sometimes it comes from asking a better question than anyone else in the category is willing to ask.
Customer expectations shift faster than organisational structures.
Rania Robinson, CEO and Partner at Quiet Storm
The idea that once you reach a certain size or status and you can switch off that challenger energy is fatal.
Airbnb is moving beyond accommodation into services and experiences, challenging the fragmented travel market; Red Bull stopped behaving like an energy drinks brand altogether, and moved on to building a media business that competes directly with Disney and ESPN.
They understand something many brands still resist: customer expectations shift faster than organisational structures. Categories blur. New competitors don’t come from the same category.
And history is unforgiving to those who ignore that reality. The original challengers - BlackBerry, Kodak, Blockbuster - failed because they treated challenger as something they could grow out of.
Strip away category and scale, the most successful brands tend to share the same values:
They are distinctive, willing to polarise, clear about what they stand for and what they refuse to become.
They prioritise longevity over hype, using provocation as a tool, not a strategy.
They behave consistently and let their brand value compound over time.
They assume their success is temporary; a mindset that keeps them uncomfortable, and alive.
The final stereotype worth smashing is the belief that challenger brands are a type of positioning.
They’re not - they’re a way of behaving in a world where nothing is set in stone. Where leadership is borrowed. Where relevance is renewed daily.
In this age, stopping being a challenger is the riskiest move of all.
Rania Robinson has spent most of her career in non-traditional agencies across account leadership and strategy, working with global brands including Haribo, Mercedes, Virgin, Google and Coca-Cola. A committed advocate for women in the workplace, she served as President of WACL in its centenary year and relaunched Create Not Hate in 2020, the agency's initiative to help underrepresented young people enter the creative industries by unlocking their potential. She is also an influential industry voice, contributing regularly to BBC Radio, Campaign and a broad spread of leading business and marketing publications. Rania’s leadership has been widely recognised. She was named among the Raconteur 50 in 2025 and features in the IPA’s iList, Campaign’s Top Trailblazers, A List and 40 Over 40, Ad Age’s Leading Women, and WeAreTheCity’s Trailblazers.
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