That’s why we’ve gathered together 23 brand growth strategy examples highlighting the different tactics that brands like Cadbury, Gymshark and Lego are using to grow brand equity and revenues. And don’t miss these other top brands who’ve had great success from their brand tracking projects.

With case studies from across a range of sectors, including food and beverage brands, tech, consumer finance, fashion and gaming, you’ll find plenty of inspiration. Read on for ideas you can apply to your business (don’t worry, even the most original brands sometimes ‘borrow’ stuff!) 

What is a brand growth strategy?

A brand growth strategy is a comprehensive plan for a company to increase brand equity and market share over time. To develop an effective brand growth strategy, you need to consider a variety of factors that can affect your brand’s success. For example, brand awareness, perception, association and consideration can all play a significant role in a user’s decision-making process when choosing a brand.

A company’s overall brand awareness strategy may include a combination of different strategies, such as market penetration, market development (entering a new market with an existing product), brand development, new product development and diversification. It all starts with using a brand awareness tracker to know where you’re at now, and assessing how your brand’s perception and awareness change over time. Then, by taking a strategic branded approach and considering all the factors that can impact your brand’s success, you can create a plan that sets them up for long-term growth and success.

How to measure brand awareness

Here’s what you need to know about measuring how aware consumers are about your brand—and use this to guide your brand strategy!

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23 brand growth strategies you can steal

Porsche brand growth strategy: finding a new audience

For the launch of their new electric vehicle – the Porsche 99X Electric Formula E race car – Porsche wanted to engage a brand new, hard to reach audience. The carmaker wanted to target 18 to 34-year-olds who weren’t already targeted by traditional TV and radio advertising.

Porsche teamed up with Twitch, the live-streaming platform for gamers, to create an interactive “play your own adventure” gameplay ad. It took viewers four hours to figure out the puzzles in the ad, where viewers controlled the IRL actions of two drivers in order to reveal (or “unlock”) the new car.

The experiment was a huge success, with almost a million people playing the game across the four hours it was live on Porsche’s Twitch channel. It was also the most viewed live stream globally and generated a storm of engagement in the platform’s chat. 

Enterprise’s brand growth strategy: a savvy sponsorship 

When car rental company Enterprise found trust levels around renting had fallen, they needed an influential brand with unrivalled access to their target audience to change this. 

Enterprise partnered with Absolute Radio to sponsor the station’s 2019 Isle of Wight Festival coverage. The mission was to improve awareness of Enterprise as a rental car company and increase consideration of Enterprise for listeners’ next vehicle hire. 

Research found that Absolute Radio’s audience of “Reluctant Adults” (people who balance responsibility with adventure) were 80% more likely than the UK average to have hired a vehicle in the last 12months. 

Enterprise activated the sponsorship with a four-week “Road to the Isle of Wight Festival” content programme, bringing exclusive coverage through integrated talent involvement, audience engagement and online activity.

The sponsorship campaign succeeded in reaching over 6.8 million of Enterprise’s target audience, achieved a 47% conversion rate for the competition the brand was running and 155,906 video views on social posts. Consideration of Enterprise amongst heavy Absolute Radio listeners grew by 6% and perception of Enterprise as ‘trustworthy’ grew by 3%.

Shell’s brand growth strategy: using intent to purchase marketing

Consumer research carried out by Shell found that low interest in motor oil meant consumers spent very little time deciding which brand to buy. To combat this, Shell realised they needed to reach potential customers before they go to the store. 

Working with Mediacom, Shell began mapping online data points for millions of consumers, which included an individual’s search behaviour, their contextual interests, in-market data and geographic data, in order to accurately predict when motorists would need to buy oil. 

“We turned to applied advanced data science to predict when individuals would be in the market for motor oil. We defined high-value actions as signals of purchase intent, such as visiting the workshop locator page of Shell.com, or oil-change specialist workshop visits (using geolocation data),” Mediacom explained.

“We then mapped these hundreds of signals of purchase intent for the millions of individuals in Shell’s digital ecosystem. Predictive analytics and machine learning gave each individual an ‘intent to purchase’ (ITP) score from 1-10, based on their likelihood to purchase motor oil.”

With this insight to hand, Shell was able to focus their marketing investment on people with high purchase intent scores. This led to a record-breaking ROI of 4.44 for every marketing dollar spent in the US and 2.49 in China. Shell is now rolling out intent to purchase marketing across every global market. 

Papa John’s brand growth strategy: supporting charity

Everyone knows you don’t give to receive… but supporting a charity can result in favourable exposure for a brand. It allows you to make a positive statement about your brand values, which consumers can buy into.

Papa John’s did this in an innovative way. Instead of paying a creative agency thousands of pounds to create its Christmas 2020 campaign, the pizza company produced a DIY ad in-house. The money saved by the brand was donated to Crisis and the Trussell Trust.

The stop-motion ad featured pizza boxes, which internal staff had written on with marker pen to explain the charity initiative. Not only was it an effective way to highlight two of the most prevalent issues faced by the UK; hunger and homelessness, it helped Papa John’s stand out in a sea of samey festive ads.

Bloom & Wild Brand growth strategy: expanding internationally

Bloom & Wild specialises in sending fresh flowers in letterbox-size boxes. The concept has seen the company blossom in the UK and Ireland, but looking for further growth, they started scoping out new international markets. 

Bloom & Wild hoped to launch in France and Germany, but realised their core proposition – flowers through the letterbox – would need to be adapted because people in these markets don’t tend to have letterboxes. 

The brand did not let that deter them, instead carrying out research (using the Attest platform), to uncover consumer preferences in France and Germany. 

“We saw that prospects in Germany and France behaved in very different ways to our UK base and that different elements of our product resonated,” said Bloom & Wild’s Head of Business Intelligence, Mairead Masterson. “In the UK, the letterbox packaging is a core part of our proposition as it makes the experience easier for recipients, however in France and Germany people don’t tend to have letterboxes, so we needed to understand which of our other USPs were important to them.”

Bloom & Wild discovered that hand-tied flower bouquets were the preference, with minimal and eco-friendly packaging. They were also able to pinpoint specific photography styles that resonated in each market. The research was used to create tailored marketing campaigns, which helped the brand take root abroad. 

Gymshark brand growth strategy: supporting consumers

When coronavirus closed gyms and sales of fitness clothing looked set to plummet, Gymshark saw an opportunity to support customers. The brand launched a series of initiatives, which were focused on building brand loyalty and engagement. 

These included Gymshark Dailies; a daily email covering topics like home workouts, nutrition ideas and mental wellbeing activities, and Deload, a mental health platform. 

“It’s helped us show that we actually really give a shit about our customers and it’s not just about selling leggings. We’ve been able to provide tools to empower them and adapt to this new normal through the things we’ve introduced like free content, education, ways for them to connect and even earn money through the PT initiative we’ve launched, offering an hourly rate to host online workouts,” says Lorna Phillips, Audience Insight Manager at Gymshark.

The initiatives were designed using consumer data gathered through Attest, which helped Gymshark understand their customers’ current priorities. 

“We know that some of this might not be profitable for us, but we know that this is also what people really appreciate at the moment and that’s how we can build loyalty in the long term.” 

Weber brand growth strategy: overhauling social media 

Aiming to grow brand awareness in Europe, American barbeque brand Weber enlisted creative agency Because to rejuvenate their social channels. 

But this came with an added level of complexity, because it was against the backdrop of a global pandemic. The aim was to develop a relevant and entertaining content strategy that was going to be genuinely helpful and engaging.

Because focused on developing a Weber-specific, conversational tone of voice and visual aesthetic to reflect the ambitions of the brand. As the agency began to plan social content, each channel’s features (such as Instagram’s interactive stickers) and algorithms were taken into consideration to maximise engagement opportunities.

“Then we started to create sizzling content from relevant tap-through recipes, to masterclass videos and live Q&As with Weber’s Master Griller, Dan Cooper. It was important we optimised the content beyond ‘likes’ – focusing on meaningful ideas that helped us build a relationship with our community, and at the same time genuinely helped the community get the most out of their Weber BBQ experience.”

Other initiatives included creating a hashtag to acknowledge fan-generated content, alongside a range of Weber emojis. Because has taken the brand into new formats and platforms including IGTV, Interactive Stories and Instagram and FB stores to drive sales. This resulted in a 25% uplift in followers in just six weeks and the brand’s best performing content to date. 

FabFitFun brand growth strategy: influencer marketing

In a crowded subscription box marketplace, FabFitFun have used influencer marketing to stand out. The tactic, which aims to connect brand advocates with potential subscribers in organic, fun ways, has driven a 300% sales growth annually. 

The brand’s first influencer partnership was with Giuliana Rancic, and they later teamed up with Joelle Fletcher, both of whom have more than two million followers on Instagram – more than FabFitFun themselves.

Michael Broukhim, the Co-CEO and Co-Founder of FabFitFun, said working with Giuliana Rancic helped the subscription box brand find an initial audience. Now they try to reach as many women as possible through social media, partnering with diverse influencers that have  specific audiences. 

“We do quite a bit of influencer marketing today working with different influencers in terms of doing unboxing events and things like that,” Broukhim told Single Grain, adding that FabFitFun uses Instagram, SnapChat, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube to get in front of as many eyeballs as possible.

“To the extent that you can get into the stream of where the eyeballs are in an organic and fun way, that’s the way you want to think about how to do your marketing or at least a really big part of it.”

Calm brand growth strategy: running a PR stunt

Piggybacking on an event that’s already getting a lot of attention can put brands in the spotlight – especially if it’s done in a clever way. A great example of this is what Calm did during the 2020 US Presidential Election.

The meditation app sponsored CNN’s Key Race Alert coverage, reminding people to stop and breathe if the stress of the election got too much to handle. In addition to a logo for the app being shown during CNN’s coverage, Calm aired 30-second commercials featuring relaxing scenes, like rain or a beach.

To support the PR stunt, Calm offered 40% off premium membership, as well as free coping and calming tools to help stressed out Americans through its resource hub. The campaign not only reached thousands of CNN viewers, but also succeeded in securing a bunch of media coverage and saw Twitter mentions spike.

Crucially, it substantially boosted downloads of the app. On iPhone in the US, App Annie says Calm moved up 20 ranks from the day before Election Day to reach No. 79 overall across both apps and games. It also reached No. 1 in the Health & Fitness category.

Made.com brand growth strategy: discovery commerce

Traditional e-commerce sees people searching and finding products through a retailer’s website, but what if this could be reversed, with products finding people? Known as “discovery commerce”, this strategy has brought great results for online furniture retailer Made.com.

Made.com leveraged the Facebook Discovery Commerce System, which uses big data to understand how people are interacting with a retailer’s business, then uses sophisticated advertising tools to ensure the right products find the right people. 

To understand the difference in performance between some of their top markets, specifically the UK and Germany, Made.com set out to run two simultaneous two-week conversion-lift studies. Made showed dynamic ads featuring relevant products in carousel and video formats across four placements, including Facebook news feed, Instagram feed, Facebook Stories and Instagram Stories. 

Prospecting through broad audience targeting yielded the strongest results across both markets, with a 27% sales uplift in the UK and a 22% uplift in Germany. There was also a 30% decrease in cost per incremental conversion compared to retargeting audiences for the UK.  

This study not only validated the importance of discovery commerce for Made.com but also allowed each market to better understand who it is targeting, helping it to refine their custom and lookalike audience lists to continue to reach new customers, Retail Week reported.

McDonald’s brand growth strategy: renewing brand purpose 

You might expect a big multinational like McDonald’s to be clear on its brand purpose. But the fast food restaurant says it needed to translate its historic values “from Shakespearean to modern-day English”.

“We needed to clearly establish what our role is beyond the product we sell and what are the behaviours that let us fulfil that,” McDonald’s Vice-President of Global Communications, Michael Gonda, told Campaign.

McDonald’s “renewed purpose” is to feed and foster the communities it serves around the world. The purpose gives the brand a clear direction going forward and will guide both McDonald’s actions and communications.

“When we are working toward building trust, customers want to understand what are the values of that brand, what are the causes they support and do those align with mine? So we are taking a long, hard look at how we modernise our comms to more clearly and effectively communicate the value and causes we stand for.”

L’Oreal brand growth strategy: transforming customer service

After experiencing a 60% increase in e-commerce during the coronavirus pandemic, L’Oreal wanted to better meet the needs of customers shopping online.

The beauty brand has overhauled their approach to customer service by breaking down silos between various teams, including marketing, e-commerce and customer experience. As part of what they call their “100% responsiveness program”,  L’Oreal ensures that each brand across markets has a consistent set of tools to engage with consumers in real time. This, says Céline Dumais, Global Chief Consumer Care and Experience Officer, enables them to be truly consumer centric.

“We’re aiming to blend all of the teams with different skills so you don’t have the old model, with a customer service person doing one thing and a community manager doing another with different tools,” she says. “It’s shifting from a case mindset to more of a conversation mindset.”

Getting all hands on deck to provide enhanced customer service for e-commerce customers has included the redeployment of bricks and mortar store workers. L’Oreal has been teaching their beauty advisors to transfer their skills online so that they can continue to support customers. 

This evolution is supported by new products, such as a tool that allows consumers to digitally try on makeup using augmented reality. After discovering that Gen Z are socialising more on video calls, L’Oreal created 10 filters for Snapchat, Instagram and Google Duo that let people wear digital makeup looks.

Asos brand growth strategy: identifying “tribes”

Asos has accelerated growth through a customer segmentation exercise that allows them to tailor marketing to different niche audiences known as “style tribes”.

The fashion brand uses these consumer profiles to create YouTube content that drives sales. One such series is called ‘Sneakers In 60’, curating the most exciting new releases for its “sneaker-head” audience. Data reveals that the UK watch time of trainer videos on YouTube has increased by over 80% in the last year. 

“Those kinds of franchises are fun and energetic, and they do stimulate sales,” Asos Brand Creative Director John Mooney told Marketing Week.

Another Asos YouTube series called ‘How To Style’ is hosted by a team of in-house influencers. These individuals represent a diverse range of “style tribes” and provide general fashion advice rather than prescribing specific items. 

Asos tracks sales figures relating to each “tribe” to check which tactics work best and tailors its YouTube content accordingly. The brand has also identified a trend for “thrifting” and is creating content encouraging their audience to upcycle, which is designed to foster longer-term brand loyalty rather than immediate sales.

“It’s not just smart; it’s the way things are. Gen Z are heavily tuned into these conversations, and I think we’d be called out if we weren’t too.”  

Lego brand growth strategy: pruning back

As organisations grow they can easily become unwieldy. This is precisely what happened at Lego. Chairman Jørgen Vig Knudstorp, said the complexity that had been added was making it harder for the brand to grow further.  “As a result, we have pressed the reset button for the entire group,” he said.  

Unfortunately for Lego’s employees, this did mean cutting about 8% of its global workforce. But Knudstorp said this pruning back would prepare the company to grow back stronger: “We will build a smaller and less complex organisation than we have today, which will simplify our business model in order to reach more children. It will also impact our costs. Finally, in some markets, the reset entails addressing a clean-up of inventories across the entire value chain.” 

Having scaled back operations in the US and Europe, Lego was able to set its sights on new markets, like China. Lego’s brand growth strategy paid off and in 2018, the company returned to growth again, with profits and sales both increasing by 4%. 

The Ferrara Candy Company brand growth strategy: mining data sources

The Ferrara Candy Company has been around for more than 100 years but their approach to marketing is refreshingly modern. With hopes of doubling their sales to $2 billion by 2020, the company has turned to data.

In addition to tracking sales of their products across 120,000 stores, the company’s marketing team is analysing data that shows sales by household, TV viewing by household, and exposure to ad campaigns to see how these factors impact on demand. “The objective is to drive real-time data,” Todd Siwak, CEO of the Ferrara Candy Company, told AdAge.

Household data is gathered through loyalty cards and consumer panels, while exposure data comes through various partners. When combined, it forms Ferrara’s sales lift tracker, which shows by household, five or more weeks after an ad campaign launch, whether products have been purchased for the first time. It also shows whether households exposed to ads spent more per purchase compared to households not exposed.

And by keeping tabs on sales of competing confectionery brands’ products, Ferrera can see how it stacks up against others in the category. This helps the company develop strategies for increasing sales growth of particular product lines. “You can start to build a business plan, which is what we did around Black Forest Organic,” said Siwak. “It also helps us to dimensionalise the size of a business.”

Taking things even more granular, Ferrara can access data sources including the weather in a particular locale, gas prices, local flu outbreaks and information relating to the display of products in grocery stores. What could enhanced data insight do for your marketing? (Read more about the intersection between data and creativity here). 

S’well brand growth strategy: targeting young consumers

Since 2010, reusable water bottle company S’well has grown an army of loyal bottle-holders  – and one of the key ways they’ve done this is by marketing to young people. 

Founder Sarah Kauss worked alongside the New York mayor to gift 320,000 bottles to students across all five boroughs of the city. The idea behind the stunt is that it’s easier to change the behaviour of young people than adults. Embracing reusable bottles, the kids then encouraged their moms and dads to stop buying plastic disposables at the shop.

Campaign magazine called it one of S’well’s “savviest growth strategies”. “The move flipped around the classic parent-to-child filtration system of behaviour-change marketing,” they said. 

According to CMO Josh Dean, this strategy helped sustainability be seen as cool and led to S’well being adopted by celebrity fans such as the Beckhams, Ellie Goulding and Julia Roberts. 

And it’s put the brand in a prime position for pushing forwards with its mission for sustainability. S’well’s latest product is an insulated, reusable food container people can bring to takeaway food outlets to avoid single-use plastic containers. S’well plans to work with restaurant brands to provide discounts for anyone who fills up with their Eats bowl.

“We’re already at a point where, without the bottle, people feel like there’s something physically missing in their lives – and that’s an amazing place for a brand to be in,” said Dean. “But we have a responsibility and opportunity to move beyond the bottle.”

MoneySupermarket brand growth strategy: optimising customer experience 

MoneySuperMarket believes a focus on customer experience will help them win market share in a sector that’s been focused on saving money. 

The new brand growth strategy stems from consumer research the brand carried out in 2017 about people’s attitudes to money, and why they use price comparison sites. As you might expect, the research revealed that 79% of customers like to be in control of their money, and that price comparison plays an important role in that. But the most compelling bit is that customers felt comparing prices could be hard work online, and that there wasn’t enough tailoring of results.

“Customers expect more of technology-enabled brands than just filling in a form of 20 questions and then seeing results in price order,” Chief Customer Officer Darren Bentley told Marketing Week. “They expect more in terms of curation, individually tailored experiences, and higher levels of convenience alongside great value.”

Alongside a company-wide rebrand, new services that underpin MoneySuperMarket’s strategy include a credit monitoring app and a bill monitoring tool. Both make the user experience more personalised and relevant, and are designed to change the nature of MoneySuperMarket’s relationship with its customers.

“The relationship customers have had with MoneySuperMarket has been very transactional,” said Bentley. “It’s been come in, save money on car insurance/energy then come back to us in 12 or 18 months when you need to switch again. 

“The hope is we are now in the background, helping you with your credit score and using that to make tailored recommendations and make it easier to stay on top of your money. Then we’re in an ongoing conversation.”

To learn more about carrying out research to uncover consumer wants and needs, check out our Complete Guide to Survey Creation.

Graze brand growth strategy: adding a distribution channel 

Healthy snack brand Graze kicked off the subscription box revolution in 2008, but the market has come a long way since then. There are now a ton of D2C brands and endless options for subscription services, and this has made it tougher for Graze to compete. 

The brand responded to this challenge by expanding from an exclusively direct-to-consumer model, into retail. Graze products are now available in supermarkets and high street stores. Adding a new distribution channel turned out to be a winning brand growth strategy – Graze has since been bought by Unilever. 

Graze’s CMO, Pia Villa, told Marketing Week: “Retail we see as our channel to drive market penetration for the brand. Our launch into retail has not had any negative impact on our direct-to-consumer business, actually we’ve found it’s the reverse. Ultimately, retail is the majority of our business and is also the growth engine and strategy for the future as well.”

Villa adds that while Graze couldn’t have achieved their growth without retail, D2C remains an important channel for brand building and market research.

“Direct-to-consumer allows us to tap into a slightly younger, more millennial target group, which typically food brands find more difficult to connect with. We use it as a much quicker and cheaper market research tool by harnessing our community to test concepts. When we launch new ideas or packaging designs basically overnight we can get feedback from hundreds of thousands of people, so it’s an important source of intelligence for the retail business as well.”

Graze shows that distribution channels can complement one another rather than having to compete against each other. So, if your brand currently relies on retail, why not consider a subscription offering – or something else entirely? 

Starling Bank brand growth strategy: focusing on brand building

To stop being “banking’s best kept secret” and become a household name, Starling Bank embarked on a brand building exercise – a growth strategy that recognises that brand awareness translates to increased sales (Attest even developed a brand awareness template to help marketers make the most of this!)

The challenger bank boasted 900,000 accounts but aimed to expand further through initiatives like their first ever ad. The ad shows starlings taking flight across the countryside, accompanied by a cover of Avicii’s ‘Feeling Good’. It highlights how the app links businesses and their customers. 

Rachael Pollard, Chief Growth Officer at Starling Bank, told The Drum: “Our aim is to make Starling a household name, pursuing our mission to free the UK from cumbersome and outdated banking. As we fast approach one million customers, the time is right to accelerate our marketing strategy and stop being one of banking’s best-kept secrets.”

TV advertising is just one tactic for brand building. The best place to start? Experiment with your marketing and discover what has the biggest impact with brand tracking studies. Learn more with our Complete Guide to Brand Tracking.  

Sainsbury’s brand growth strategy: forming a strategic partnership

You don’t have to be working against your competitors when looking to grow market share – Sainsbury’s and Asda announced they were teaming up to create the UK’s biggest supermarket group. 

The idea behind the partnership is to allow both brands to benefit from increased economies of scale, allowing them to bring prices down for customers. Sainsbury’s and Asda said they would operate a “dual-brand strategy”, keeping both brand identities intact. 

Asda CEO Roger Burnley said: “The combination of Asda and Sainsbury’s into a single retailing group will be great news for Asda customers, allowing us to deliver even lower prices in store and even greater choice.

“Asda will continue to be Asda, but by coming together with Sainsbury’s, supported by Walmart, we can further accelerate our existing strategy and make our offer even more compelling and competitive.”

Sainsbury’s said enhanced purchasing power following the merger would allow them to lower prices by approximately 10% on many of the products customers buy regularly. On Twitter, the brand said: “We’re creating a dynamic new player in UK retail – three well-known, trusted brands in Sainsbury’s, Asda & Argos. We plan to operate a dual-brand strategy in grocery, with the scale to invest in the areas that matter most to customers: price, quality and more flexible ways to shop.”

The bold growth strategy will help the supermarkets tackle competition from discount stores Lidl and Aldi, as well as the growing threat of Amazon in the grocery sector. But partnerships don’t just apply to mega brands like these; teaming up with a competitor could work equally successfully for less established brands, especially if you’re operating in a small market.  

Cadbury brand growth strategy: producing original content

Think original content is just for the likes of Amazon and Netflix? Nuh-uh. Now, all sorts of brands are getting in on the act. Cadbury released a 22 minute-long film shot as part of its brand growth strategy for its Heroes range.

The film is the first in a series called ‘Families Reunited’, which focuses on real parents trying to reconnect with their distant teens by going on a “crash course” to understand their hobbies.

“It’s a brand often in the home where entertainment is: in the lounge, being shared. So, we thought we could make our own entertainment and find ways to share that with people,” Michael Moore, Senior Brand Manager at Mondelez, told The Drum.

He added that the brand would use video on demand, Facebook, Instagram and regular TV to direct people to the films. “We’re seeing that shift to people streaming content online so it does still fit with the habits that people are displaying already.”

In addition to the film series, Cadbury has also forged partnerships with Global Radio and Spotify to curate a branded playlist for families. The strategy shows how diversification into new areas, such as production of on-demand entertainment, can be used to promote growth of existing products.

Pizza Hut brand growth strategy: returning to its roots

You wouldn’t normally look back to go forwards, but sometimes a return to your roots can make sense for growth. This was the case for Pizza Hut, who had lost sight of what they stood for in North America. 

“As we evolved, our tone changed and there really wasn’t a clear understanding of what we stood for,” Marianne Radley, Pizza Hut’s Chief Brand Officer, told The Drum. “We should never have lost sight of where we came from, and that’s the fact we were born in a restaurant, not a boardroom. That’s really a point of difference for us within the category.”

The brand decided to tap into consumer nostalgia by resurrecting its red-roof logo that ran between 1967 and 1999. It also adopted a bolder tone of voice to assert the brand’s position as an American icon.

“Pizza Hut is an American, iconic classic that’s ingrained in people’s hearts and minds,” said Radley.  “We attest that to the fact we really were the original pizza company – the first national pizza chain – and we’re celebrating that with a little more of a confident and unapologetic tone.”

The strategy is backed by qualitative research conducted with more than 3,000 consumers that found people still consider Pizza Hut as “the OG of the pizza category.”

To reconnect with the original essence of Pizza Hut, the brand’s marketing team trawled through company archives, finding old menus, recipe cards and photos. It reminded them of the style the restaurant was once famed for: checked tablecloths, red glass tumblers and Tiffany-style lamps.

“It made us see that when the Carney brothers first founded the chain, their big thing was having more guts than brains. We thought to ourselves, we need to have more guts in what we’re doing and be more confident. I think we shied away from that over the years.”

GameStop brand growth strategy: investing in bricks and mortar 

Video gaming, by its very nature, is centred around digital experiences. But US gaming brand GameStop aimed to stimulate growth by investing in real-life bricks and mortar stores. 

GameStop wanted to bring video game culture to life in every neighborhood and partnered with innovation design firm, R/GA, to create unique in-store experiences.

The new approach follows research that identified four major motivations people have for playing video games: immersion, achievement, creativity and community.

As a result, GameStop have developed and piloted new store concepts, such as locations that sell strictly retro gaming software and hardware, and stores that offer competitive sessions for homegrown e-Leagues. 

“We’re on a journey to use our vast retail footprint to provide an engaging and well thought out experience that enhances our consumers’ gaming interests,” Frank Hamlin, Chief Customer Officer at GameStop, told Campaign. 

“Among its many strengths is R/GA’s ability to leverage consumer insights and technology to reimagine the experience our consumers can have in our physical space. Our investment in this partnership is the next stage of our transformation and growth strategy.”

“Among its many strengths is R/GA’s ability to leverage consumer insights and technology to reimagine the experience our consumers can have in our physical space. Our investment in this partnership is the next stage of our transformation and growth strategy.”

And if you remember nothing else…

Keeping a close eye on what other brands are doing is one of the best ways to understand what your brand should be doing. While you should pay particular attention to your direct competitors’ brand growth strategy, don’t ignore growth tactics being used successfully elsewhere. There are many benefits of brand tracking, and when combined with the benefits of competitor tracking, there is potential to create a strong brand.

Borrowing ideas from unrelated industries and applying them to your own can result in the best innovation. To learn which of these brand growth strategies and what tools to use to build your brand strategy holds the most potential for your business, get the consumer insight you need. Speak to one of our experts.

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What was wrong with the Brandless strategy, and what happened to the Brandless products?

It began with a lofty ambition; to supply a large range of attractive generic goods at a flat price of $3 by doing away with the “unnecessary expense” of branding. It sounds like a win for the consumer, so why did the concept fail? Was it because it rejected branding or were there other factors at play in Brandless’s demise? Let’s take a look…

Wasn’t Brandless a brand in its own right, anyway?

There’s more to brand than a name and a logo. It’s about having a distinct look and feel and this is something Brandless actually had. Its goods weren’t sold in plain paper bags. Brandless products were designed for the Instagram generation, in an array of pretty colours, and they were recognisable ‘on the shelf’. 

The Brandless brand name was even trademarked, so it’s clear to see that the company set out to be a brand from the beginning. What it wanted to do was destabilise other manufacturers’ established and successful brands by being a retailer that only sold its own brand. 

The premise was, by cutting out the middleman, Brandless could save its customers money. But, while value might be attractive, few people go to a supermarket to solely shop for own-brand basics. It’s like Tesco only selling its Everyday Value range or Sainsbury’s exclusively selling Sainsbury’s Basics. They’d never do it. So perhaps it was the Brandless business model that was the issue?

The Brandless strategy gives people something they didn’t want

Brandless launched with 110 products – from tinned soup and coffee to toilet tissue and hand cream – all priced at $3. The brandless strategy aimed to make things simple with a flat price but there’s a reason most retailers don’t do this…and it comes down to basic psychology. 

The amount an item costs infers things about its value. There are many psychological pricing strategies, from prestige pricing to discounting, and they all serve a purpose in attracting different types of shoppers. Someone who seeks quality may opt to buy the more expensive of two similar items, for example. Meanwhile, a bargain hunter might be more attracted to an item that’s on sale than to something that’s permanently low priced – it’s all about perception.

It’s why brands carry out pricing sensitivity testing; something that Brandless may well have failed to do. It opted for a dollar store model but pumped up the price to provide more sustainable products and target a younger, more ethically-minded audience. It believed there was a segment of young consumers who cared more about price than they did brand but wanted an experience elevated beyond the dollar store.

Did this audience exist? We don’t know if Brandless did much pre-launch market research or segmentation but if it had, surely it would have found out a bit more about how people shop for basics?

They don’t tend to do it in isolation; they’ll pick up these items as part of a wider shop where they also purchase other items with intrinsic brand value – be it their favourite chocolate bar or a tried and trusted face wash.

People who shop at dollar stores, don’t just shop at dollar stores – and they don’t go to them purely to get everyday consumables. Dollar stores offer the element of surprise because you don’t know exactly what’s going to be in stock that week. You might get a really great bargain. 

On the other hand, the Brandless strategy saw products tailored to the price. So you would get $3-worth of pasta, or a $3-sized bottle of shampoo. It didn’t feel like you were getting more than you should have for the price. 

When low prices start adding up  

The fact is, you might not always want to buy just one $3-sized bottle of shampoo. You might be buying for your family. Other retailers provide value to these consumers by running buy-one-get-one-free offers and selling bulk packages at a lower cost. They don’t just multiply the price per every extra 100g, which starts to look like bad value. So why would you buy from Brandless when you can get a better deal on everyday essentials at your local Walmart?

And while there may be some shoppers who appreciate the simplicity that comes with a singular price point, Brandless undermined this segment by introducing a $9 range. The company’s Chief Merchant Rachael Vegas herself acknowledged that there was a problem with the Brandless pricing strategy: “Nobody wants $3 worth of diapers; it’s not practical.”

Another sign that Brandless wasn’t sure what it wanted to be was its announcement last year that it aimed to be stocked in bricks and mortar stores. Brandless had also experimented with the subscription model. It hoped to build loyalty by allowing shoppers to receive selected products on a regular timeline of their choosing, with a $36 yearly membership fee for free shipping.

But in reality, the Brandless strategy just wasn’t working and repeat custom was frighteningly low. Edison Trends took a look at Brandless over a period between 2017 and 2018 and found that only 20% of customers who bought something in late 2017 came back the next quarter for a purchase, and only 13% came back the quarter after that.

Why the Brandless strategy wasn’t ‘sticky’

The mistake the Brandless strategy made was assuming that traditional brands are a bad thing because they spend money on things like marketing and retailer margins, pushing up RRPs. CEO Tina Sharkey called this a “brand tax” that consumers shouldn’t have to pay. 

But that infrastructure is there for a reason; branding and marketing help shoppers to make decisions. It enables people to decide if a product is for them – especially if the actual products are otherwise virtually indistinguishable from one another. As humans, we buy into ideas, into an image, and it gives us an important sense of control. 

Brand equity is a real thing – and it’s built through marketing expenditure. It’s not just a pointless waste of money; it drives loyalty and keeps shoppers coming back for more. The reason household name brands are a bit more expensive is that they’ve taken the time to communicate the benefits of their products to their users. And they’ve made people aware of those products in a way that sticks in their minds. Brandless didn’t do that.

In the end, the Brandless product range had expanded to more than 400 products and the company relied on word-of-mouth marketing for them all. But here’s the kicker, the products weren’t good enough to get people talking. While they were produced to the company’s ethical and sustainable values, they were still just basic products. The main motivation of someone who buys basic products is probably keeping costs down, and that means you likely don’t care where you buy them from.

Let’s be honest, most people don’t feel brand loyalty to Tesco 20p baked beans but they might buy them if they’re tight on money that week. Other retailers stock basic products as loss-leaders because they understand they can use them to draw shoppers in and then sell them other, more profitable, items. The higher-margin purchases subsidise the low prices; it’s how Amazon can afford to offer its AmazonBasics range, for example. But the Brandless strategy was based on selling only low-margin consumables (the average Brandless order size was only $34 last quarter), so mathematically, it was always going to be hard to succeed.

The Lidl and Aldi brand strategy difference

Like Brandless, Lidl and Aldi (mostly) don’t stock brand name products either, but there are a few crucial differences in their models that are worth pointing out. Firstly, they spend a lot of money on advertising. Their national TV and newspaper campaigns highlighting the price difference of their own-label products compared to big brands are really impactful. They also spend a lot of time and money on communicating the quality of their products – and more often than not, they live up to the promise. 

Secondly, they sell their products through bricks and mortar stores so it’s much easier for people to browse, choose and try. This is important when you’re largely selling on the strength of the product itself, and not on the brand. And then, of course, these retailers also use the sneaky tactic of imitating well-known brands. Because of the way the packaging is designed, they feel familiar. Far from trying to be brandless, these retailers create a huge range of ‘brands’ for their products to denote quality, which consumers then associate with a brand.  

The other aspect we can’t forget is the higher-priced products these retailers sell. Walk down the centre aisle and you’ll find everything from power tools to flat pack furniture. It’s a clever brand growth strategy. This section provides high profits and is why the non-food products on offer change weekly, to keep customers coming back. The Brandless strategy lacked that ‘what’s-on-offer-this-week?’ element that could convince shoppers to splash out on unplanned purchases. 

What’s the lesson?

It’s great to look for a gap in the market, but before setting off, you have to be sure it’s big enough for a new company to fill. If there are no other businesses trying to serve this audience or operate with this business model, is there a reason why? And how can your company’s brand strategy actually solve the problem with your offering?

The Brandless strategy, including its pricing model and audience segmentation, was fundamentally flawed. But beyond this, Brandless’s problem was trying to sell too many different products, none of them good enough to drive a cult following. 

If you’ve got an average product, unfortunately, branding and marketing are the only things that will save you.

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The cash had stopped stacking up

Lego reported its first drop in sales and profits in more than a decade in 2017. The problem, said the family-owned Danish company, was weaker demand in established markets such as the US and parts of Europe, where a saturation point had been reached. 

In the five years leading up to this point, Lego had invested in massive growth. They tripled their workforce and tripled the number of lines they offered, and this had left the company over-extended.

Stock was piling up in warehouses because Lego had too many product lines, and there just wasn’t enough room on the shelves in toy stores. The toy trade is all about what’s new, so the only way to shift the stock was by slashing the price – devaluing the brand in the process. 

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The toymaker recognised the need to expand into markets that were still growing, such as China, but was struggling to do so, said chairman of the group Jørgen Vig Knudstorp, in a press statement. “We have added complexity into the organisation, which now makes it harder for us to grow further. As a result, we have pressed the reset-button for the entire group.” 

Unfortunately for Lego’s employees, this meant cutting 1,400 jobs – about 8% of its 18,200 global workforce. Knudstorp said this pruning back would prepare the company to grow back stronger: “We will build a smaller and less complex organisation than we have today, which will simplify our business model in order to reach more children. It will also impact our costs. Finally, in some markets the reset entails addressing a clean-up of inventories across the entire value chain.”

The building blocks of Lego’s new growth strategy

When establishing a new growth strategy, Lego decided to set its sights on China, having already seen double-digit growth there. It would put money into opening stores, while shipping less product to retailers in the US and Europe. 

Chief Executive Niels Christiansen said Lego had taken “the active choice” to bring down operating profits by 16% in order to invest more. “We have the ambition of getting to as many kids as we can around the world, and getting to that means we have to keep gaining market share. We would rather do the investments upfront to be leading that change.” 

Opening its third-largest global factory (in the city of Jiaxing) positioned Lego to supply products not only for the Chinese market, but other Asian markets too, including Japan and South Korea. 

Research showed that Chinese kids play with Lego in much the same way as children of any nationality, and so the toymaker would not be developing product lines specifically for Chinese or Asian markets. It would, though, seek to combine physical and digital play to adapt to China’s advanced digitisation. 

“The fact that hundreds of millions of Chinese consumers will form an increasingly affluent middle class in the coming years is a huge opportunity for us,” said Lego spokesperson Roar Rude Trangbaek. “Lego products – the whole idea of creative play experiences – is something that resonates strongly with Chinese consumers.”

Lego’s growth plans included adding stores to less central cities in China. “We began with shops in the major cities and are now looking to reach more children by establishing stores in more cities as we see increasing interest and demand for our products,” said Trangbaek.

Everything is awesome (again)

Lego’s new brand growth strategy paid off – they returned to growth again in 2018, with profits and sales both increasing by 4%. CEO Niels Christiansen announced that 80 new stores would be launched in China during 2019, adding to the existing 60, and giving it a presence in 35 cities. Although, he added that the company would not be aiming for the “supranatural” growth rates of the past.

Just released figures for the first half of 2019 show steady progress with a 5% increase in global sales, including double-digit growth in China. The success comes despite issues with counterfeiting, where other manufacturers have tried to rip off Lego’s colourful blocks and branding. The Chinese authorities have been supportive in helping to uphold the firm’s intellectual property – Lego has won cases against six copy-cat companies.

The Financial Times believes the LEGO Group now has a “robust growth model” and that expanding its footprint in China is a smart move. “Store expansion should help secure sales growth. Shops create experiences, promoting the brand in un-Legoed parts of the world, including China,” it said in a comment piece.

And it’s not just the analysts who are praising the brand – for the second year in a row, UK consumers have named Lego as their favourite brand. And with a new flagship store in Beijing, featuring attractions like Lego replicas of the Great Wall of China and Forbidden City, it looks like the toy brand will soon be equally loved by Chinese consumers. As Head of LEGO Retail, Claus Flyger Pejstrup, said: “Our LEGO stores are a great tool for building brand awareness and emotional connection with our fans.” 

Building a bright future with a winning growth strategy

So what’s next for Lego? The company’s long term growth strategy includes a push into India and it has announced plans to open an office in Mumbai. 

“Within 10 years, there will be 100 million kids in India living in middle-class families,” Christiansen told the FT. “They are strong into education and products like Lego are very high on the wish list. The idea would be to get on some kind of journey like we are on in China.”

“The growing middle class, importance of education, and growing economy make India a logical next step in our efforts to reach many more children around the world,” he added.

The company also plans to open more than 70 Lego brand stores outside of China this year, including its fifth flagship store in Amsterdam, The Netherlands.

“We are making these investments from a sound financial base to capture the opportunities being created by mega-trends, such as digitalisation and global demographic and economic shifts which are reshaping the industry. Being ahead of these trends will allow us to inspire future generations of children,” Christiansen told Retail Insight Network.

Meanwhile, Lego will “invest heavily in e-commerce”, ensuring it won’t lose sales to online rivals like Amazon, which was blamed for last year’s collapse of Toys R Us. Lego is also thinking about other aspects of the company’s sustainability – it’s pledged to use sustainable materials in its products and packaging by 2030.

Staying agile

One lesson the Lego’s growth strategy teaches us is how important it is to stay agile. Become a lumbering beast, and it’s not easy to change course when you see the landscape changing. Equally, when opportunities present themselves, you need to be able to react quickly to take advantage of them. 

Another way Lego has restructured to be more agile is by bringing its creative agency in-house. According to CMO Julia Goldin, it’s been key to improving efficiency and effectiveness, not just in marketing but across the business as a whole. 

“It provides complete integration – same goals, same agenda, the ability to solve problems very quickly and much greater learning across the organisation,” she told Marketing Week. “And most importantly what that leads to is they are more agile and responsive to the marketplace.” 

Goldin and her team are now working to position Lego as one brand globally, and are preparing for future growth by creating a “holistic, immersive experience for consumers”. That means Goldin’s role encompasses both product and marketing, which she describes as a “really big shift” for the company. 

“We have to innovate across the whole experience from product to marketing, the whole value chain,” she said. “We’ve experienced supranatural growth, but when you are experiencing that it is sometimes difficult to see what is going to be the next wave.

“We have now come to a point where we are really active to the new wave of growth. It doesn’t have to be supranatural, we just want to make sure we are reaching more kids and we stay relevant and engaging. That creates a lot of hunger in the organisation,” she concludes.

Learning with Lego’s growth strategy

If you’re looking for brand growth strategy examples and brand messaging templates that you can borrow and adapt, Lego’s shows you how scaling back can sometimes be beneficial. It also underlines how vital it is to go after international expansion to secure long-term growth (alongside research to back up your plans). Of course, the above also demonstrates the potential benefits of brand tracking.

Reaching saturation point can come as a surprise, like it did for Lego, and then you may be faced with suddenly having to start from scratch in a new market to secure sales.

It makes sense for brands to start exploring potential new markets early on and begin forming partnerships that let you test the water without overstretching yourself. You can minimise risk and maximize brand awareness ROI with thorough consumer research and brand tracking, especially gathering consumer insights that let you gauge both interest in your brand among native shoppers and any cultural differences you’d need to adapt to. That’s how Lego established a sound growth strategy and pushed forwards with confidence.

Already thinking about how to grow your brand? Check out 6 ways to break through the barriers to international expansion.

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